Episode Details

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