In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the Book of Genesis, revealing surprising alignments between the ancient text and modern evolutionary science.

Malcolm challenges common Sunday-school interpretations, showing how Genesis describes a timeline that closely matches scientific understanding: from the early Earth and origin of life, through aquatic creatures and large reptiles, to birds, land animals, and finally humanity. They explore alternate translations of key Hebrew words (like “yom” for “day/era”, “yatsar” for “formed/planned”, and “taninim” for great reptilian creatures), discuss the Big Bang, prebiotic Earth, the evolution of sexuality, and why Genesis stands out among global creation myths.

A fascinating conversation blending biblical scholarship, evolutionary biology, and philosophical insight that will challenge both skeptics and literalists.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to talk with you today. In a recent episode, I pointed out, I was like, “It is weird to within a modern context in Christianity and stuff like this, when people are saying that evolution is not coherent with Genesis.”

And I would say that at least my readings of Genesis, evolution makes me believe Genesis more because Genesis says a bunch of stuff that aligns with what we know of the, about the evolutionary timeline without saying anything that disconfirms the evolutionary timeline. So we are gonna get into this.

And it’s, it’s, it’s such a fun topic for me to get into because when I was a kid, and I believe that Genesis said what, as I call it, Sunday school Christianity, you know? Well Genesis says X, Y, and Z, and and I- if you look at it, and then don’t look up alternate translations of the words in it whenever something looks a little fishy or looks like it may be [00:01:00] factually incorrect or don’t look up how that word is used in other places in the Old Testament you immediately are like, “Okay, that’s believable,” right?

And so that’s stupid because that’s an old story for savages.

Speaker 2: We will call them cave Jews

Speaker 3: Attacker!

Malcolm Collins: And then you come at it with a more modern mindset. I mean, just if you look at the mere timeline given in it, right? It says first you have non-animal life. Then you have the vast array... No, it doesn’t even say, like, fishes.

It’s, it’s the vast array of creatures that live in the sea.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Along with some form of large reptilian creature. Hmm ... which, which, no- What could that

Simone Collins: be?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what, what could that be? Now, no, there’s, there’s a lot of really cool... First, it’s not as simple as saying, like, fi- they easily could have wr- fishes, right?

But if you’re describing- Yeah ... the [00:02:00] evolutionary timeline- Yeah ... the vast array of things that live in the sea is a very good description for early animal life. 100%,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m also gonna go into stuff in the translations here, where a lot of people argue that the, the giant thing that’s written here, the 吨, or whatever is like a leviathan, that it is a giant sea creature-like serpent or something like that.

And I’m gonna point out that actually if you read the, the correct, the Hebrew, which we’ll go into- Mm-hmm Isn’t necessarily talking about a sea animal. It’s only talking about a large reptilian creature. It just talks about it in the same context as it’s talking about sea animals, so people often assumed it was talking about sea animals.

And then it says- there were also some very large

Simone Collins: sea animals

Malcolm Collins: though There were some large reptiles, but I’m just saying, like, if I was trying to give an evolutionary timeline of history. Then it says you’ve got the birds. Then you’ve got the creatures on Earth today. So like before we go into this, this is, even broadly most people are aware it gives this timeline.[00:03:00]

Do you know how many other religions, and I’m talking even if I go Native American traditions, even if I go African traditions, ‘cause I have gone through AI after AI trying to find a single other religion that gets the evolutionary timeline as close to right as this. There isn’t one.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I can’t think of one, for sure.

One. There, there isn’t- Based on all the folk traditions I’ve heard, everything, yeah

Malcolm Collins: There isn’t even one that gets the first two simple steps right. Mm. Non-animal life and aquatic life. Or fishes, or anything. Like, I tried to give it so many outs. Wow. Nothing. Nothing comes close to getting those two stages right.

So again, this isn’t just like they randomly threw stuff together and happened to get it right. This is, like, easily very, very right related stuff. So we’re gonna get into that. Very, very fun.

Speaker 3: So note, a lot of people will be like, “Well, there’s some really obvious mistakes that you find. For [00:04:00] example, that non-animal based life came about before the sun and the moon.” To which I would be like, “Well, actually, hold on a second here. , Do you know what the oldest evidence of life we have on Earth is?

It’s

Australia’s Jack Hills zircons, which date about 4.4 billion years old, , into the Hadean era. All right? So do you know when the moon was formed? Formed, by the way, from a collision of a body about the size of Mars into Earth, which led to the surface being largely covered in magma for a period that would likely have wiped out any evidence we had of life from before that period. It was formed f- 4.5 billion years ago. So the moon is from 4.5 billion years ago in an event that would have wiped any evidence of life existing before it off [00:05:00] the surface of the Earth. Then 4.4 billion years ago, we see evidence of life. What’s the chance you think that there could have been life on Earth before this collision, and that it in some way influenced or seeded the life that came after the collision?

I’m gonna at least say, like, from my perspective, at least 20 to 30%, and I wouldn’t have known that without going into this.

Otherwise, you have to assume that coincidentally life just happened to first evolve almost immediately after this collision during one of the most violent times of Earth’s history, which seems unlikely

And then you can say, “Well, okay, but the sun definitely existed before that.” And we can say, “All right, but if you read the Bible, it says that it separated the night from the day.” That is the point of the creation of the sun in this particular story.

, And if [00:06:00] we go 4.4 billion years ago to those Jackson Hill zircons, right, , the atmosphere was still transitioning,

, More specifically, it had really high levels of CO2, potentially tens of hundreds of times higher than modern, and a very high level of water vapor that sustained a really strong greenhouse effect and permanent very thick cloud layers

, And the image I have in the background here is an image from, as you can see, it’s from a scientific catalog, right, of what scientists think Earth looked like during this period of Earth’s history.

So it would have been, , extremely, extremely diffuse and hazy. , Most days during that period from what we know , of Earth would have just looked like an orangish, reddish overcast.

Things you would not have been able to see, or would have been able to see very rarely, maybe once every few hundred years or something like that, are the stars and a [00:07:00] clear day and night. So actually, the Bible isn’t even that wrong on some of the weirder claims it makes

Malcolm Collins: A note here we’re gonna go into, like a lot of people will be like, “Uh-uh. It says that God formed the animals with the dirt, that it formed man with the dirt.”

And we’re gonna point out the word that is translated in your Sunday school Bible into formed throughout the rest of the

Old Testament, do you know what it means? No, actually. Planned. Really? It y- Oh. Yes. And we’ll go through instances. It, it, it can be used to mean formed, but it could equally be used to say, “God planned the dirt to become human.

God planned-” Oh my word ... “the dirt to become animals.” Ooh. But we’re gonna go over all sorts of fun stuff like this which is fun. And we’re gonna mostly be focused on the first story of Genesis, ‘cause Genesis sort of has two beginning of Earth stories that aren’t really that contradictory. We have [00:08:00] another episode, the Adam and Eve story, that goes over that one.

I think it’s one of the best episodes we’ve ever produced, if you’re interested. It’s, doesn’t even contradict normal Christianity that much and it’s very elucidating for, I think, a lot of people, around what’s actually in the Adam and Eve story, because it’s not often what you’re taught. And note here when people are like, “Well, if it’s saying that God like planned man to come out of dirt or whatever,” right?

Like that, that still doesn’t mean evolution, right? You know? Because evolution is a natural process, so that wouldn’t be God doing it. And here I’m gonna be like, okay, let’s just talk about the nature of miracles. Imagine God was like, “I’m gonna shoot that guy with lightning.” Right? Like calling the shots.

And then all of a sudden you see lightning come down from the sky and shock a guy, and he falls over dead. And then you turn and you go, “Yeah, but tha...