I’M WONDERING SOMETHING about the folks out there who believe God created the universe in six 24-hours days and then rested on the seventh day.
If you’re one of them, here’s my question:
Why do you believe that?
I know that’s how it was preached in generations past.
And I understand if you’ve got that brainwashing thing going on—if you think that’s the problem. I know how hard it is to shake a lifetime of inaccurate teaching—even after we realize we’ve been led down the wrong path. I was taught that dancing was a sin, in spite of all the dancing that goes on in the Bible. I still don’t know how to dance; and frankly, it ticks me off.
I realize that the Bible uses the “day” word, the meaning of which scholars debate. But most Bible experts don’t take that “day” literally anymore. Even the Bible says God didn’t create the sun and moon—the tools we use to measure 24-hour days—until “day” four. Science seems to have amassed a heaping helping of evidence indicating that the universe is about 14 billion years old. You can hear that put to music in the sacred theme song of the “Big Bang Theory,” in reruns when the show is on hiatus.
Many Christians, perhaps most these days, don’t seem to have any trouble with the Big Bang theory of creation. They figure God pulled the trigger.
Yet I get accused of not giving equal time and energy to the traditional view of creation when I report on Genesis in my books. I really do want to present a balanced view. But honestly, the evidence seems incredibly lopsided in opposition to the view that most of us have heard preached in years past.
What’s your take on the Creation story?
I’m especially interested in any arguments that would make most skeptics say, “My goodness. I never thought of that. Now the six-day creation makes perfect sense.”
Or at least a smidgen of sense. I’d print that, in a Creationist’s defense.
I really do get the feeling that most Christians don’t buy into that traditional view any longer, in light of the new insights we’ve been discovering as we continue to explore God’s creation.
Well I believe in a Young Earth hope you have 17 hours 🙂 Enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szBTl3S24MY
Hey, thanks Donovan. I just listened to the intro, long enough to hear the speaker, Dr. Kent Hovind, ID himself as a former high school science teacher and as someone who believes that the original copy of the Bible was without any mistakes: the doctrine of inerrancy. If I understand the history of Bible interpretation, that’s a doctrine that developed in the 1700’s-1800’s, as science emerged and people began questioning the literal interpretation of passages such as the worldwide flood and the 6-day creation. I’ll listen to more of the video, but I’ve got to tell you that the speaker would have more credibility with me if he were a notch or two above a former high school science teacher (his Ph.D. is in education). A practicing geologist would be nice. He didn’t seem to get very good reviews when he debated Dr. Hugh Ross, an astrophysicist with a Ph.D. in astronomy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwlLoroZdes I’ll check out both videos more closely. Thanks for the link.
Wow, I just saw that Dr. Hovind is serving a 10-year prison sentence for creative tax offenses. 58 different offenses. Sadly, that doesn’t help his believability. Even so, I’ll take a closer look at that link you sent.
I have to say, that I have never questioned this theory, because we are talking about GOD & in my way of thinking, GOD is capable of doing anything He wants to do. I HAVE questioned why or how people lived so long in the old testament. That seems so odd to me, but at the same time I know that if that is how God wanted it to be, that is how it would be. Guess I shouldn’t be so naive. And, I feel the same way you do about the whole dancing thing. 🙂
My thought goes something like this: if God created time why do we think he is bound by that time. Say God wanted to literally process 14 Billion years in a matter of 6 days, since he is omnipotent and outside of time what is to stop that from happening?
Another interesting answer would be to question whether everything really began at the beginning. Surely if God wanted to start in the middle or even towards the end that would be entirely possibly for him to do too.
I tend to prefer the first answer but in the end this shouldn’t be a defining issue. All of this kind of debate should be inconsequential to someone who can believe in a higher power already. Even atheists should be able to agree though that if you believe in an all powerful God then either of those explanations could make sense.
Hey, Coop. I’ve wondered about the time thing, too. Especially after I’ve forgotten to pray for someone at a point in time when they really needed it. Such as during a job interview. I actually pray after the fact, figuring that God knew it was coming. But I have no idea how God works.
I actually had a six month discussion with early earth 6-day Creationists — let me say that I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, but I was accused of denying every major doctrine of the Bible for simply posing this question:
If the earth is less than 15,000 years old, then where did the asteroid impacts come from which would of wiped out all of civilization? — there is no record of such an impact in Scripture!
No one has ever been able to give me a concrete answer — some even told me that the word “yom” always means a 24-hour day (not true) and that they would rather believe the Bible than any “evidence” godless scientists come up with. This disturbed me. How many other things are “Evangelicals” wrong on? Science has PROVEN that the earth was hit by asteroids and that the earth is not young and I STILL BELIEVE THE BIBLE!
God is a Lover.
This is not to say that God is not all-powerful OVER anything He creates.
Nevertheless, that power does NOT define what KINDS of things God values.
Pagan creation myths clearly show what are the kinds of things that the pagan gods value. Genesis 1-2 does NOT show that God values mainly His own POWER OVER creatures. It shows the following.
…1. First, God created the general, (or ‘masculine’) cosmos and the special (or ‘feminine’) Earth (Genesis 1:1).
2. Then God was concerned for how the Earth, as its own general subject, has the most valuable thing about itself in all the cosmos: its abiding maximal abundance of open liquid water (Genesis 1:2).
3. Then God was concerned for how all that water has a special relation to the Sun’s light, hence the water cycle (vs. 3-10);
4. Then God was concerned for how that water cycle is to have a special beneficiary and member, namely water-based life as such (vs. 11-12);
5. Then God was concerned for how that water-based life was to have a special category, namely animal life (plant/animal/mineral = animal) (vs. 20-22, 24-25);
6. Then God was concerned for how animal life is to have its own special category, namely human life (vs. 26-28);
7. Finally, God was concerned that the general man is to have the special woman (Genesis 2:21-23).
This seven-fold cosmic Divine Design can be seen both in the completed Creation and in Genesis 1-2.
So there is nothing of happenstance either in (X) or (Y):
(X) there are exactly five things that Genesis 1 reports that God names,
(Y) these five things easily seem to be the five basic non-biological factors of Earth’s water cycle:
Names 1 and 2: binary cyclically distributed thermal regulation ( v. 4-5 );
Name 3: radiologically mediative atmosphere ( vs. 6-8 );
Names 4 and 5: binary thermal surface distribution system ( vs. 9-10 )
Of the six days of the Creation Workweek, it commonly is assumed that the work of Day Two is not given any Divine esteem of ‘good’. I argue that it does, by what the work of Day Two is merely part of. Specifically, I suggest that the land and sea of the first half of Day Three is not alone that which God calls ‘good’ at that point of Day Three. For the land and the sea are mere subsystems of the Earth’s water cycle. On this view, that which God calls ‘good’ on the first half of Day Three is the water cycle.
In other words, that which God calls ‘good’ at that point is the *combination* of the five factors I already mentioned.
So God does not actually fail to call the work of Day Two ‘good’. He calls that work ‘good’ as part of the thing that that work is a part of, namely that life-critical thing, the water cycle, which is completed upon the formation of land and sea. After all, Genesis 1 is mainly about an actual process, miraculous as it was, of creating and assembling the actual ecology of the actual Earth. This is NOT to be reduced to an a-chronological list of mere ‘items’. Even a grocery list typically implies that an actual, lovingly prepared meal is intended. Consider a listing of the parts of a woman, as such. Ought we to say that such a listing is NOT intended to be describing a woman?…
Look at the Hebrew syntax of Genesis 1:1:
Barashete bara Elohim…
This puts the verb (create) prior to the subject (God). This is standard Hebrew syntax.
The English language typically puts the subject prior to the verb:
‘In the beginning, God…’
This English way of the verse is unfortunate. This is because it allows a sense that the verse is meant to imply that God is aloof and removed from us. But I do not believe that the verse is aimed mainly at having an imposing demeanor toward us, or us toward Unbelievers or ‘wayward’ Believers. For, even Apostle Paul mentioned that God is ‘not far from each one of us’ (Acts 17:27).
The Hebrew way of Genesis 1:1 affirms what Paul says there. This easily can be seen if we read the Hebrew so that we put a twenty-second silence between each idea (‘each word’). ‘In the beginning…….. (was) created (by)………..God………………the heaven and………………the earth.
This puts in us a sense of anticipating each word in turn.
The English way loses that anticipatory factor. And in its place is put a sense that God is aloof, even commandeering and imposing. So the English way allows, to too many pastors, a sense of justification for a kind of ‘imposing’ demeanor over their flock, and over even others who may seem to these pastors to be ‘resisting God’ somehow.
Fortunately, the English way of saying Genesis 1:1 is by no means compulsory for the native English speaker. For example, as seen in the way in which Yoda, of Star Wars, speaks, the Hebrew way is easily enough understood by native English speakers:
‘Created God the heaven and the earth in the beginning He did! Mmm!
And, it is only one step from there to the full Hebrew way of the verse:
‘In the beginning (was) created by God the heaven and the earth.’
So the worth of the Hebrew way of the verse is seen in the fact that the anticipation engenders more of the same with each verse, or each idea that, at least in my view of the account, SHOULD come to mind.