The Tennessee Aquarium is home to 12,000 animals representing 795 species. It’s pretty amazing to even see many species from South America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and remote islands as well as of course the Tennessee River species. The fish species especially interest me. Genesis 1 tells us the God created fish (and fowl) on day 5, which I believe to be a 24 hour day. God created the sun and moon on day 4 to govern over a 24 hour night and day, and that was a law of physics from then on at least, if not from day 1 (which I believe all 7 days were 24 hour days). So day 5 which follows must also be a 24 hour day and all the fish (and fowl) were created in one 24 hour day. Atheistic Darwinian evolution says that the fish evolved all these different species over millions of years by natural selection and mutation. but I don’t think that is possible. Natural selection only eliminates some animals within a species. It doesn’t add new DNA genetic information to the species. Mutations are almost always harmful and it is unrealistic to think that genes gone bad could explain the variety within fish species. Many atheists even reject the Darwinian means of evolution.

So I see all that variety within the fish species at the aquarium. I rule out atheistic Darwinian evolution as the cause for reasons given above. So that only leaves one other possibility. If nature could not have created all the variety in fish species, then someone or something supernatural must have created them. Now I must admi that it is almost unbelievable to think that the God of Genesis 1 could have created all this variety in a 24 hour day. How could even God create all the different shapes, color, features of all those fish that I saw? One really hit me: the lion fish.

28 species of Clown fish. Nemo made clown fish famous!

Here is my thinking. Can you imagine getting a team of biologists and artists getting together to create 100’s or even thousands of imaginary pictures of fish with many different functions? Let them use their imagination. What they might come up with is what is at the Tennessee aquarium and all around the world. Then turn them loose on birds and tell them to come up with thousands of pictures of imaginary birds. Let them use their imagination. I wonder what they would come up with.

Imagine day 5 of the creation week. How in the world does God, in a 24 hour period based on my understanding, create thousands of fish and bird species? His Spirit fills the universe and usually HIs Spirit in the Old Testament is miraculous power exerted by God or revelation of the will of God to man. So the Spirit is everywhere on earth creating unique animals. Often times they are native to a particular location on earth (something observed by Darwin in the Galapagos Islands and in his travels). Atheistic evolutionists say that animals evolved by natural selection to live in a particular location, but I believe the Spirit created each unique animal for each unique location. Natural selection only eliminates some of each species that can’t survive in a particular location, but it doesn’t add new genetic info to create a new species. Cross-breeding can produce variation within a species, but that variation is always “horizontal”, not “vertical”. Horizontal is variation across a species and within a species, which does happen often. Vertical is when one species, like a fish, evolves into a totally new species of animal, like a human (the evolutionists say that happened). The vertical variatioon would be essential to the theory of atheistic evolution, but there no clear, convincing examples of vertical variation.

Back to my thinking. It just blows my mind to think of he Spirit over the entire earth creating so many unique, often weird looking fish and birds, in a 24 hour period. Even if you believe in an old earth (billions of years old), it is still mind blowing as to when and how the Spriit might do that over millions of years. All this is almost too incredible to believe, but the only other option is that there is no supernatural power (God) who created all this diversity. But atheism has no answers to creation or intelligent design.

So my final thought is this. It is almost unbelievable to believe in God who created all things. The other option is that there is no god and everything just created and designed itself, which is much more unbelievable. So my questioning mind chooses to believe in God, the God of Genesis 1, and the creation story in Genesis 1. Now I just need to really believe God created everything in Genesis 1 instead of just choosing that as the better option. When I really remove my doubt and just believe, then I can start praising God for His creation.

Then I read all the passages in the Bible that praise God for His creation.

Psalm 104:24 “Lord, how many are Your works!
In wisdom You have made them all;
The earth is full of Your possessions.
²⁵ There is the sea, great and broad,
In which are swarms without number,
Animals both small and great.”