I can't answer to much here, as there is simply too much and a lot of it very good. Especially the comments about what might be understood in the times when the Old Testament, and specifically Genesis, were written or rewritten, most likely to ensure that the Judahite captives did not suffer the same fate as those taken into Assyrian captivity. Also as a most important rebuttal of the chaotic and polytheistic creation stories of their captors. So when was the Old Testament first compiled?

Many of the prophets, both major and minor, lived in the same times as did Jeroboam II and later on, during the Israelite's Assyrian captivity, the Judahite Babylonian captivity and on to the Persian Empire, the return to Jerusalem, and the establishment of Judea. Although much of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, and the Annals and histories could have been written as early as the times of the Judges, when there was already an alphabetic script, it is telling that after the fall of Jerusalem, there was both the time and the motivation to reorganise whatever they had managed to salvage from Solomon's temple and the demolition of that city. And that at least one of the major prophets, Daniel, has been identified scholastically in an Archaeology magazine at the end of last year as a high official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar.

As I must assert, Genesis is not just an explanation about the beginning of the world, the flood, Abraham and the Israelite place in it. It is very much a rebuttal of the polytheistic notions of the Assyrians and Babylonians. It is also a more coherent writing than what the ancients of the time believed. And in writing so coherently, and with such organisation, Genesis 1, especially, can be taken as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as far as the Ancient prophets, knew. And yes, that does imply that the processes of evolution are included. But a lot depends on what you mean by a day.

There are verses that positively leap out at me. Like this one: "And God said... And there was light". What God said, was 'Let there be light'. Light is a physical process in itself, involving only God knows how many complicated mathematical formulae, conditions, sources & ifs and buts. 'Let there be light' explains light simply and concisely, without giving people a headache. Even the ancient Chaldeans wouldn't have been up to that standard of mathematics.

Then there is this verse from Genesis I. "And the Spirit of the Lord moved across the face of the Earth". Yes, I'll bet the Spirit of the Lord did just that. Those of you who follow astronomy might be interested in these exoplanets that get found. One was pure carbon, and there is another that seems to be mostly other materials. And so far, there have been lots of reasons why no, these exoplanets would not support life, even when they are in the right position to their stars. How is it our planet does support life, then?

Why is it that our planet rotates on its axis in a steady 24 hour day? Why is the Earth's axis is tilted just so, so that we have nice seasons? Why not 8 hours as on Jupiter? Or maybe the sort of day the planet Uranus has, rolling along on its axis? Or we might not have had a day at all, like the Planet Venus, and the Moon. And exactly why did we have the extremely good fortune to have a Moon which is large enough to create tides as well as govern time, itself? What sort of planet would we have had with something like Phobos & Deimos, Mars' pathetic moons, for example?

I still like what that theistic evolutionary bishop said about God saying something from day 1 to day 6 and so it was authorised and ordained to come into being, no matter how long that time took. The Big Bang they said took only an instant of time, but I think God is independent of time, and time is only what we make of it, even on Earth.

If there was something...anything, in the Bible that could support Evolution I think it'd be much more accepted. But because the theory has no Biblical support (and I challenge anyone in this thread or anywhere else in the world to show me *contextual* verses that support it and point at it ) I cannot go with it.

....

As for evolution...I would think that a possible way to fit implied evolution into the Genesis narrative is to point to the fact that God chose to create the world in 6 'days', rather than all at once!

The environments created on days 1, 2, and 3 correspond to the occupants on days 4, 5, and 6.

Day 1 (light/darkness) -> Day 4 (sun/moon/stars)
Day 2 (sky/sea) -> Day 5 (birds/fish)
Day 3 (land/plants) -> Day 6 (animals)

One could say that God created all the environments first, and that evolution was the process of creating life to fill each of the environments, like liquid metal that changes into the shape of whatever mold it is poured into.

It's certainly not the most intuitive way to explain the creation story. But the literal Genesis interpretation of a six 24-hour day creation just makes no sense whatsoever to me when I try to think about it in physical terms. The entire scenario would revolve around God using magic to sustain everything until he was done on the 6th day because, given the order listed of creation of things, the universe would be in a disarray halfway through the week.

Thank you, Minotaur 4 Aslan, for your excellent post and repeating something I think you said earlier. In 2011, we went down to see the Tutenkhamen exhibition @ the Melbourne Museum, shifted to next door to the pavilion where they first proclaimed Australia's Federation. Rio Tinto, a mining firm, had a geological display showing how the Earth was formed. They said it was no more than a giant snowball, until the Earth got going, releasing water & water vapour for the atmosphere. And I did have an Aha! moment, thinking of that exact post you wrote.

I think the Theory of Evolution is fascinating to read about, and I suppose from a scientific explanatory stance it probably makes a lot of sense, but for years people thought the Bubonic Plague came from stinky air, flies spontaneously erupted from spoiled meat, and the Earth was flat.

Yes people did. And people also thought that disease was due to the Wrath of God, and not to things like germs, genes, immunity, overcrowding, poor living conditions, famine, war etc. One of the reasons why Christians were so well thought of initially was because they used charity and a great deal of bravery, and trust in God's mercy, to minister to the sick and bury the dead, instead of running away. That bit in Revelations about the Four Horsemen, Famine, War, Pestilence and Death, wasn't mere imagery for many centuries until the 1800's. And still, today, those Four Horsemen do resonate.

Did you know that smallpox developed in humans from camelpox? And that the success of Islam in the 7th century AD was due to smallpox killing a lot of people as the followers of Mohammed advanced through North Africa and into Spain?

Disease is a terrible thing, and it also is a part of this temporary world. At the end, there won't be sickness and disease anymore. Why hasn't God gotten rid of it now? Because like all other bad things in this world, it does still have a purpose for right now. What's more, this world isn't meant to be perfect. It was never God's goal to make this world as pleasant and comfortable as possible. So why expect God to do something He never promised to do? It would be one thing if God said he was going to get rid of sickness and evil in this world, but he never claimed he was going to do that.

Yes, I agree with you. God created life. Not all of it is "nice" and comfortable. I like lions, and think they need looking after, but they are still predators who don't always treat their own very well. You like rabbits, but, here in Australia, they are abhorred as pests in a fragile ecology. And living close to animals, such as dogs, cats, pigs, chickens and ducks, not only horses, cattle, sheep and goats, can make humans prone to diseases which originally came from these animals.

Vultures are not cute little birdies like budgerigars, canaries or even galahs, but they serve a useful role in the world in removing the detritus of the wild. And humans are the worst form of animal of them all, since they, themselves, so often want to be the arbiters of what is good and bad. And so, they go to war with each other, they lay waste crops, or over crop where they shouldn't. Humans often live in overcrowded cities rife with criminals, corruption, injustice and poorly run services. They eat food that isn't good for them, indulge in substances they might be better off avoiding. And so opportunistic diseases can creep in to make our lives miserable.

We are lucky this century that there are answers to some diseases. But even then, there are people who object to vaccination programs, and to limits on their behaviour and activities. And so old diseases get the chance to recur again and again.

There is a lot more I could have said.

The vaccination object brings me(I am trying to say something with out seeming too rude) to the jehovah witness belief that taking someone else's blood in a transfusion is bad even if it is the only thing that will save their life. I am fine(well it is none of my business) with adults deciding they don't want to have a blood transfusion but for a child I think if it is needed they should get it, forget the religion because they have not had a chance to make up there own mind yet. I have read a few stories where the kid has died or the doctor has given them the blood transfusion and the family has cast them aside.

To add to that I think the whole jehovah witness religion is strange to say the least.

But a lot depends on what you mean by a day.

Indeed. Some people define day as "the space of time between one night and the next". Now, of course, that's a 24 hour period, due to the earth's movement and the sun. But during the first few "days" of creation, there was no sun. Light came from somewhere else; perhaps from God Himself, or perhaps from some temporary source. In that case, a "day" could be much longer than 24 hours. Perhaps even years. Centuries. Who knows?

My Christianity right now is about as soulless as it gets, I suppose. I'm not sure how to really 'mean it' when I say I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. The only things that tip the scales in my head currently towards Christianity are origins cosmology and the historical Jesus evidence. Not much else makes sense, I feel very much in spiritual limbo-land.

(And from a few days ago...)

Rather, my biggest hurdle in full commitment to Christianity right now is mainly emotional. I have never felt any sort of noticeable response during prayer; it still feels like talking to a wall. I think the problem is I still don't know how to be open to a response, even if it's there. If I can make that leap to having a connection with God, I feel like I'd be all ready to have faith again.

Sorry, I wanted to respond to this back when it was originally posted, but didn't get the chance before the conversation shifted into other topics.

A lot of Christians put an emphasis on "a feeling of peace coming over them" every time they pray, or some kind of deep connection where they feel like God is right there in the room with them when they talk to Him. I've always questioned this. Maybe it's true for some people, I don't know. But I think a lot of people maybe talk themselves into creating that feeling themselves because they think they're supposed to have it; or they get a very "spiritual" feeling while worshiping in church, which is usually due mostly to the music, the people, and the atmosphere around them. This video by BlimeyCow reminds me of people who do that sort of thing:

Some people have had deep spiritual experiences. Some have never had that. And those who have had it don't always get it through prayer. It reminds me somewhat of Narnia in that only a few people have found it; and those who do, as Digory says, find it when they're not looking for it. And even those who do find it only get a temporary taste, and eventually have to go back to the dull dreariness of ordinary life, where God again seems far away and unreachable, just as the Pevensie children have to adjust to our world once they are forbidden to go back to Narnia.

No matter what sort of encounters we have with God, they're only temporary glimpses, and not something we can hold onto. We don't get to hold onto it until the after life, when our connection with God will finally be made into something solid and permanent. That's why I think there should be some debate over who are actually the "lucky" ones - those who have had deep spiritual experiences or those who haven't. If you've experienced it, it makes it much easier to believe. But it also makes it more difficult to be satisfied with this temporary, day-to-day life. Like I said, it isn't something you can hold onto. You have to let go and go back to normal. I think it's definitely one of those "be careful what you wish for" situations.

At any rate, I don't think it's anything to measure the quality of your faith by, if it hasn't happened to you. Lots of other people are in the same boat. And anyway, if someone else has had a deep spiritual experience, does that really make their faith better than yours? I would think it would be the opposite. They don't need faith now at all, really; they've experienced proof of God firsthand, so of course they're going to believe in Him. They'd be fools not to. But if you can believe in God without having the proof they had, I'd say you're the one with the stronger faith. Sometimes I wonder if God just gives deep spiritual experiences to the weak, because He knows they could never believe in Him otherwise. I'd say that was probably the case with me.

~Riella

This kind of sounds like a misrepresented version of what a lot of people here believe.

I contend that it is not.

First of all, if you believe in the inerrency of the Bible, then no matter what else you believe, you're going to end up "twisting and contorting" scripture; or at least, doing something that resembles it to other people.

Granted, although we still run into the problem of the Bible being God-inspired. There's also a lot of non-Christians that are militant towards our beliefs and are going to agitate against it regardless. To echo W4J it's deeply distressing when other Christians do it.

The problem is, there are a lot of parts of the Bible (especially the beginning of Genesis) that are very vaguely worded, use a lot of similes, symbolism, etc.

Which is where context can oftentimes come in and clear things up. Even if Genesis 1 is poetry, for instance, it doesn't automatically lessen its truthfulness on the matter anymore than a straight conversational account would. The Bible has a great deal of symbolism and imagery in it. I don't believe there will be 4 literal Horsemen of the Apocalypse and recognize it as imagery representing something else. Daniel's dream interpretations alone would be much more confusing if there wasn't that element in the storyline.

So when anyone goes into it to investigate possible meanings, or tries to figure out what's literal and what's symbolic, it's going to appear to others as "twisting and contorting".

How one views it is going to rely upon their existing beliefs. If God opens up their eyes to it is one thing. If they're dead set against Scripture then anything that comes out of one's mouth in support of it is going to be perceived as foolishness.

Second of all, I haven't seen anyone suggest that people in Biblical times were "dim".

I'll grant you that to a degree. I think that the first humans were a lot smarter than you or I give them credit for, considering they were pulling off unbelievably long life spans and had lots of time to spend on learning. But then I think one has to have a YEC mindset to believe that to start with, because it'd be a lot more difficult to explain it the other way.

If whoever wrote Genesis was given a vision of how the earth was created, then they could have seen it be created a good number of different ways, and still describe it in the way Genesis is written.

I disagree. It's a very simple and straightforward read. Please provide some different "ways" in which this may translated.

Because, as I said earlier, it's vague.

And yet I believe it provides enough information to base a few assumptions on. Does it provide mathematical formulas or equations to offer support? No, but none of the other miracles in the Bible do either, and I see no one here questioning their authenticity.

It can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

Yes, I agree, and people of all stripes are going to invariably do so. But in the end it really was only created in one way, and that's what we're all debating here when it comes down to it. If the Bible was written by Stanley Kubrick so that it was intentionally vague and left the reader to draw his or her own conclusions it would be one thing, but it wasn't. There are a lot of vague and low-detailed portions of Scripture that we're never going to be able to adequately explain, and I will be the first to admit this, but to shoehorn something we find more palatable based upon Man-made assumptions/beliefs is the wrong way to approach it.

Perhaps God was referring to the Evolutionary process being good because, in the end, it results in creatures that can thrive in their environment.

That's a bit of a stretch, and if you really do believe the Bible is inerrant and God inspired, patently impossible because Death was not in God's original intent. That was the result of Sin. All one needs to do is look about the world to see Design in action. I won't deny that God could use Evolution for His purposes, and that this is truly the only way such a thing could work, but He would at least provide some hint of explanation for it rather than allow a misleading Creation story into the storyline.

But if it ever came to pass that Evolution was proven beyond a doubt, even to the Christian community, and people started saying "Well since you said Evolution and Christianity can't both be true, and Evolution is true, then I guess Christianity is false!", then you can bet all the Christians would suddenly have lots of possible explanations for how Christianity and Evolution can work hand in hand.

In that setting yes, but in reality neither side can be definitively proven because there is so precious little about either belief system that can be tested. The only way to prove it conclusively is to invent a time machine, or if God directly provides input on the subject, something I'm reasonably sure isn't going to happen until after the New Earth is formed.

I'm not saying Evolution is true. I'm not saying it's false. But rejecting it because it's a "man-made" idea is a bit silly.

That's a bit of a misrepresentation of what I said because you omit the reason why. This is what I said originally:

That's spiritual contortionism, attempting to fit a Man-made belief into a God-breathed one. It doesn't work. It can't work because Man is fundamentally sinful and cannot mesh his sinful ways with God's creation. God cannot abide it, hates it, detests it, and abhors it. This is the very reason why Christ came. God loves us and wants us to be with Him, but we have this gigantic, colossal wall of Sin standing in the way. Evolution is rife with it because it goes hand in hand with death and imperfection. Theistic Evolution, simply on a spiritual/philosophical basis, is incompatible with Scripture.

It has yet to be proven that God used Evolution, a Man-made belief/origin story, that is steeped in Sin, and thus does not fit with God's plan. It is incompatible because it involves Death, and Death is something God never intended. I'm not saying that everything Man-made, idea or invention, is bad. I'm saying that Sin (and by extension Death) for Man did not exist until Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. One follows the other.

I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, but I don't identify as either YEC or OEC. Because, as much as I see the two sides debate, I'm not sure I can really trust either side. It's all so agenda-based. I don't see the true scientific spirit anymore - that human curiosity that holds knowledge and unbiased research/experimentation as its goal.

Silly question, but what's wrong with something being agenda-based, exactly? Doesn't the Bible follow an agenda basically?

I just see a lot of people who think they have the absolute truth, and want to prove the other side is absolutely false with no compromises whatsoever, and no possibility that perhaps both sides may have a few pieces of the puzzle.

Compromise isn't always possible. The problem is that the Creation story as depicted in the Bible or Evolution in its essence leaves no wiggle-room. They are two beliefs that are at odds with one another, each able to provide supporting data but neither side able to conclusively "finish off" the other. And this is not limited to just the Creation/Evolution argument but to a wide variety of topics.

And I'm not being a blind zealot, though I'm sure that I must be coming across that way at times. I see lots of data suggesting that the Earth is much older than the Bible says it is. I see lots of other data in support of a younger Earth too. In that regard I suppose that we'll have to save much of it for a Q&A session with God when we get to Heaven or the New Earth. In my experience though, having been an eager seeker of Biblical and Scientific answers to how we got here, my experience tends to show that most people are uncomfortable with a 6 day Creation because it involves the supernatural, and that is something that cannot be proven conclusively, and thus flies in the face of Science. And so the two sides war on the topic and will until Christ returns. And by then, who knows? Maybe we'll all laugh about it.

My Christianity right now is about as soulless as it gets, I suppose. I'm not sure how to really 'mean it' when I say I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

From your perspective perhaps . I see that you've changed a great deal. Salvation is a very difficult thing to accept if you're not looking at it the right way, and the only way to see it at all is if God taps you on the shoulder and says, "Pssst...look over here". I've been a believer since age 13 and sometimes I still stand back and think how unbelievable and incredible the whole thing really is, and yet I know it to be true because the Holy Spirit has shown it to me. And believe me when I say I'm about the worst Christian on planet Earth and He even shows me a lot of kindness. Believe me when I say that He hears you loud and clear even if you may think your requests fall upon deaf ears.

White hole cosmology sounds like a very interesting theory, but after some Googling, I see scientists and creationists alike panning it for being scientifically inaccurate...so I dunno.

It's not easily testable, and as with any theory there are holes there that are not easily explained. But that's true of almost every theory for everything ever observed. I mean scientists still haven't been able to figure out why people yawn . There's a perfect explanation out there and I think it's within our means to find it, but the key thing is that it will be able to perfectly mesh with Scripture and Science. WHC is, like I said, the best explanation that I have seen come from the YEC side thus far and is very convincing in that it mostly is able to cover both bases. I don't know if it's the way it was done, but I feel that with it we're closer to being on track than ever before.

Granted, although we still run into the problem of the Bible being God-inspired. There's also a lot of non-Christians that are militant towards our beliefs and are going to agitate against it regardless. To echo W4J it's deeply distressing when other Christians do it.

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that Christians shouldn't disagree with some other Christians' interpretations of scripture, if doing so leads them to agree with some atheists? Because Christians can be wrong in their interpretations; and atheists (though ultimately wrong about God) can still be right about a lot of things. Or are you saying something else entirely?

Which is where context can oftentimes come in and clear things up. Even if Genesis 1 is poetry, for instance, it doesn't automatically lessen its truthfulness on the matter anymore than a straight conversational account would. The Bible has a great deal of symbolism and imagery in it. I don't believe there will be 4 literal Horsemen of the Apocalypse and recognize it as imagery representing something else. Daniel's dream interpretations alone would be much more confusing if there wasn't that element in the storyline.

Sometimes context can clear it up, sometimes it can't. When an account uses a lot of symbolism, sometimes it's easy to tell what it symbolizes and sometimes it isn't. Revelation, for example, is a book that can mean so many different things that it's given birth to tons of different theories about the end times. The question that remains is, is Genesis a straight account to be taken literally, or is it something that is using a lot of symbolism and may mean something a bit different than it first appears to mean?

You seem to pretty firmly believe it's a literal account. Others don't believe it is. I have no opinion either way, and think it could easily be either. The point I'm trying to make here is that just because you believe one thing about it and others believe something else about it, that does not mean they're biased, or that they don't believe in the inerrancy of scripture. I just don't think it's a good idea for people to say "My interpretation of this scripture is the right one, and anyone who thinks the Bible might be saying something else is sinning/denying the inerrancy/being biased/contorting the Bible/etc." Because that isn't what people are doing here. We're simply investigating different possibilities. God's word is perfect, but our perception of it is not. People can believe in a certain interpretation of the Bible for years and years and still be interpreting it incorrectly. There can be something that we think is meant to be taken literally when it really isn't. There can be something we think the Bible is saying when it really means something else. So why not look into the possibilities and see where it takes us? If it turns out to be a dead end, we can always go back to believing a literal account. That interpretation isn't going anywhere, just because we consider some other possibilities for awhile.

How one views it is going to rely upon their existing beliefs. If God opens up their eyes to it is one thing. If they're dead set against Scripture then anything that comes out of one's mouth in support of it is going to be perceived as foolishness.

Some people here, such as myself, don't have any existing beliefs on the subject.

I disagree. It's a very simple and straightforward read. Please provide some different "ways" in which this may translated.

This whole conversation has been about the different ways it can be interpreted. You didn't agree with any of them, but I haven't dismissed all of them yet. Some of them have some unanswered questions, but that's the case with every theory.

If the Bible was written by Stanley Kubrick so that it was intentionally vague and left the reader to draw his or her own conclusions it would be one thing, but it wasn't. There are a lot of vague and low-detailed portions of Scripture that we're never going to be able to adequately explain, and I will be the first to admit this, but to shoehorn something we find more palatable based upon Man-made assumptions/beliefs is the wrong way to approach it.

It would be one thing if Evolution was just a philosophy man made up one day, with no basis whatsoever, to make themselves look good. If that were the case, I'd dismiss it quite quickly. But instead, Evolution is a process that has been widely accepted in the scientific community, and has many things that are regarded by scientists as "proof" for it. Now I'm not saying that actually does prove it, and I'm not saying Evolution is true. You could easily be completely right, and Evolution might be just a bunch of hogwash malarkey, and all of the so-called "proof" might all be a big sham. But since it is so widely accepted by scientific communities, I would like to look into it more, find out more about the "proof" for it, see if there is any validity to it. It interests me that there are interpretations of Genesis that could possibly allow for it.

Christians have been wrong in the past. If it turns out Evolution is true, all it will mean is that it's another thing God made, and that Genesis meant something a bit different all these years than we thought it did. That wouldn't be particularly earth-shattering. It would just mean that our imperfect human brains misinterpreted Genesis; just like we misinterpret a lot of things. On the other hand, if Evolution is false, I'd still like to look into it so that we know why. I don't think "Evolution is wrong because it doesn't match the way I've always interpreted Genesis all these years" is a satisfactory argument. That's putting faith in our human interpretive skills, not putting faith in the Bible. The Bible is inerrant no matter which interpretation is true, so "inerrancy" isn't even the issue. I just think the Evolutionary possibilities in Genesis is a conversation worth having.

That's a bit of a stretch, and if you really do believe the Bible is inerrant and God inspired, patently impossible because Death was not in God's original intent. That was the result of Sin. All one needs to do is look about the world to see Design in action. I won't deny that God could use Evolution for His purposes, and that this is truly the only way such a thing could work, but He would at least provide some hint of explanation for it rather than allow a misleading Creation story into the storyline.

The fact that, if Evolution is true, death would have occurred before the fall is a good argument. I don't have any explanation for that right now. You may be absolutely right; maybe Evolution is just some silly idea man made, and not something that is actually possible. On the other hand, maybe there is a reasonable explanation for it that we just haven't thought of yet. Who knows? However, if Evolution is true, I wouldn't say that makes the Creation story misleading. It would just mean humans interpreted it wrong. God isn't at fault for man's mistakes.

In that setting yes, but in reality neither side can be definitively proven because there is so precious little about either belief system that can be tested.

Yet. Since Evolution is supposedly an ongoing process rather than a temporary one that only existed at the beginning of the world, it may turn out to be provable as technology and research develops. (Or not.)

That's a bit of a misrepresentation of what I said because you omit the reason why.

I apologize; I misunderstood what you'd written. When you said it was steeped in sin, I thought you were referring to the fact that sinful people came up with the theory. I wasn't aware you were referring to the fact death would have occurred before the fall.

Silly question, but what's wrong with something being agenda-based, exactly? Doesn't the Bible follow an agenda basically?

Not really. The Bible is a book inspired directly by the Holy Spirit, so everything it says is truth, for the purpose of informing and transforming God's children who read it. When I say scientists are following an agenda, what I mean is that they have an opinion which may or may not be true; then they promote scientific discoveries that match their belief systems, and dishonestly hide discoveries that make their world views appear false. I have witnessed scientists (from both sides, sadly) engage in outright dishonesty and trickery, just for the sake of appearing correct and being respected by their peers. That's an agenda.

The problem is that the Creation story as depicted in the Bible or Evolution in its essence leaves no wiggle-room.

I'm not sure exactly why you feel this way. There are so many things that could be taken multiple ways. Such as the post I made earlier that a "day" could possibly mean more than 24 hours - possibly even years - since it was not, at that time, defined by the earth's movement in relation to the sun. There are a lot of factors to consider, and the smallest of them could make a world of difference.

I see lots of data suggesting that the Earth is much older than the Bible says it is. I see lots of other data in support of a younger Earth too. In that regard I suppose that we'll have to save much of it for a Q&A session with God when we get to Heaven or the New Earth.

Exactly; there are things that don't seem to be adding up. Which is why I think everyone should keep an open mind. Maybe we won't find out the answers till the afterlife. But maybe we will. Technology advances all the time, and with that comes new research. I'm sure we've already learned a good deal about our world that people long ago thought we'd never know till we asked God Himself. There's no harm in good old-fashioned curiosity. Nor is there any harm in the questions and research that curiosity leads to.

In my experience though, having been an eager seeker of Biblical and Scientific answers to how we got here, my experience tends to show that most people are uncomfortable with a 6 day Creation because it involves the supernatural, and that is something that cannot be proven conclusively, and thus flies in the face of Science.

That is true with a lot of people. I doubt it's true of most of the people here, though, since many NWers in this discussion are Christians themselves and believe in the supernatural.

~Riella

Ok. I have given this a few tries in the last couple days, and I have been kicked out of this thread for some reason. So here's another go.

I find it worrying that some Christians believe the Jewish and then Christian beliefs came from pagan beliefs. That's very disturbing. The Jewish beliefs came first. The pagan beliefs are a corruption of the one true God. They're ancestor worship, where man and woman become god. Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. Or rather, Christ fulfills the Old Covenant.

Shadowlander, excellent post. If the Bible says something, sometimes that's all it is. If you have to read between the lines to get the meaning, it's obvious. Day means day. God was communicating to us in a language we would understand, a human, earthy language. People over-spirtualise these things.

If the Bible says something, sometimes that's all it is. If you have to read between the lines to get the meaning, it's obvious. Day means day. God was communicating to us in a language we would understand, a human, earthy language. People over-spirtualise these things.

I'm not sure what is over-spirtualised about this. I know what day is, but how long was a day before the sun was created? Now we measure the amount of time within one day according to the sun. If the sun is not there, and the day is being measured according to something else, how long was a day at that point in time? There is nothing unreasonable about this question.

~Riella

If the Bible says something, sometimes that's all it is. If you have to read between the lines to get the meaning, it's obvious. Day means day. God was communicating to us in a language we would understand, a human, earthy language. People over-spirtualise these things.

I'm not sure what is over-spirtualised about this. I know what day is, but how long was a day before the sun was created? Now we measure the amount of time within one day according to the sun. If the sun is not there, and the day is being measured according to something else, how long was a day at that point in time? There is nothing unreasonable about this question.

~Riella

I will often reference AiG's website for questions like this. They know Hebrew where I do not, so rather than quibble over the definition of the word "day" I'll just paste their explanation of this rather than just link to the site. Here is the link for the root article:

The Hebrew word for day in Genesis chapter 1 is the word yom. It is important to understand that almost any word can have two or more meanings, depending on context. We need to understand the context of the usage of this word in Genesis chapter 1.1

Respected Hebrew dictionaries, like the Brown, Driver, Briggs lexicon, give a number of meanings for the word yom depending upon context. One of the passages they give for yom‘s meaning an ordinary day happens to be Genesis chapter 1. The reason is obvious. Every time the word yom is used with a number, or with the phrase “evening and morning’, anywhere in the Old Testament, it always means an ordinary day. In Genesis chapter 1, for each of the six days of creation, the Hebrew word yom is used with a number and the phrase, “evening and morning’. There is no doubt that the writer is being emphatic that these are ordinary days.

They go further and explain better than I do the ramifications of changing that 24 hour period.

The Bible says there will be a future restoration (Acts 3:21), with no death or suffering. How could all things be restored in the future to no more death and suffering unless the beginning was also free of death and suffering? The whole message of the gospel falls apart if you allow millions of years (with death and suffering) for the world’s creation.

Now I know that AiG tends to get itself publicly embroiled in the occasional dispute, most of which make it appear to be run by a bunch of Fruit Loops (for a number of reasons I won't list here, suffice it to say that any public proponent of a literal 6 day Creation is going to end up being viewed as a caricature in general), but the reasoning stated here is sound. I'd go so far as to say it's irrefutable.

Which leads back to my original postulate that a person is going to approach Genesis 1 with one of three specific mindsets. Any alternative to the Biblical narrative is going to invariably be at odds with said narrative because it automatically disagrees with it or attempts to pound its own version of events in with a mallet. Now there are some that see me making what appears, no doubt, to be a bit of a tautological argument here and it makes them want to pound their head against the wall, but let's be honest with one another. Either the Bible is telling the truth or it is not. If God meant for us to believe that things happened over a much longer period of time then He would have said something about it. There are Hebrew words available that specify time frames longer than the word "day".

Which just leads us full circle back to the beginning of the argument, which is why these discussions on evolution vs. creationism never really go far beyond 2-3 pages before everyone throws up their hands in frustration and walks away, or they change the subject.

As I must assert, Genesis is not just an explanation about the beginning of the world, the flood, Abraham and the Israelite place in it. It is very much a rebuttal of the polytheistic notions of the Assyrians and Babylonians. It is also a more coherent writing than what the ancients of the time believed. And in writing so coherently, and with such organisation, Genesis 1, especially, can be taken as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as far as the Ancient prophets, knew. And yes, that does imply that the processes of evolution are included. But a lot depends on what you mean by a day.

That's very interesting! Considering that nearly all other ancient religions seem to divvy up the forces of nature, giving power over fire to one fellow and dominion over water to another, a text that tells of a creation where one Entity was the source and master of everything must have been pretty remarkable in that day and age. It seems likely to me that those who read and heard it were probably a good deal more preoccupied with the clear indication of monotheism than they were with anything else that the first chapter of Genesis might convey.

In regards to this discussion in general....

Being curious about possible allegorical approaches to Genesis, I ran across this Wikipedia article: Allegorical interpretations of Genesis. It's a very interesting collection of information, and it does a good job showing how Christians have been divided on the interpretation of Genesis and the so-called "clash" between science and Bible since the days of the early church fathers.

I liked this quote from Pope John Paul II about it, in a letter to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences:

Cosmogony and cosmology have always aroused great interest among peoples and religions. The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The Sacred Book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven.

Again, I don't have a particular stance regarding evolution vs. young earth creationism. It wouldn't surprise me at all if truth lies somewhere in between, and will never be fully unearthed by humans in this epoch of our existence.

What I do feel fairly certain about, though, is that the primary objective of the Bible is to teach us about the nature of God, as well as His relationship with mankind and what He requires of those He calls His children. That's not to say that it does not teach us anything about our earthly environment and its history as well, but I think the essential revelation of the Bible is in teaching us about our existence, about the truth of God and the facets of His Love—about our place as the children of the Lord and how far we have fallen from it—and about the means by which we may have salvation and return to the arms of the Heavenly Father.

That's very interesting! Considering that nearly all other ancient religions seem to divy up the forces of nature, giving power over fire to one guy and dominion over water to another, a text that tells of a creation where one Entity was the source and master of everything must have been pretty remarkable in that day and age. It seems likely to me that those who read and heard it were probably a good deal more preoccupied with the clear indication of monotheism than they were with anything else that the first chapter of Genesis might convey.

Exactly! The BAR article* I read about Daniel being a Babylonian official recounts the story of Belshazzar and the writing on the wall, among other things. The article wanted to assert that Daniel was not just writing about the events. He was an eye-witness as well. The Ancient Assyrians and Babylonians were inclined to think that if they were victorious in battle, then their gods were triumphant over the gods of defeated peoples, who were then expected to obey and worship Assyrian and Babylonian gods. And there is plenty in the stories of Daniel, in particular, to support what exactly you are saying about monotheism. Remember Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego.

As a historian of sorts, I am quite fascinated by those Medes that played such a tremendous role in that particular time frame between 722 BC, when the Assyrians 'came down (to Israel) like wolves on the fold" and 500 BC, which ushered in the Greek/Persian rivalry. Who were these people to whom the Israelites were sent by the Assyrians (II Kings, 17: 6)? How was it the Medes, who helped the Babylonians defeat the Assyrians at Carchemish, became later collaborators of the Persians who overran Babylon? And isn't it interesting that about 600 BC that an almost monotheistic religion - Zoroastrianism - started among the Medes and Persians, less than a century before the Persian takeover of Babylon & the return to Jerusalem? As far as I can find out, these Medes were the predecessors of the Kurdish people of today.

Indeed. Some people define day as "the space of time between one night and the next". Now, of course, that's a 24 hour period, due to the earth's movement and the sun. But during the first few "days" of creation, there was no sun. Light came from somewhere else; perhaps from God Himself, or perhaps from some temporary source. In that case, a "day" could be much longer than 24 hours. Perhaps even years. Centuries. Who knows?

Now this is where even Genesis 1 gets tricky, but there is still a way around it without denying the role of God in creation. Remember that the Earth, when it was first formed, according to geology, astronomy and much else, did so as a by product of the birth of the Sun. Since the Sun is mainly hydrogen and helium, with all other elements being created from derivatives of hydrogen and helium, including gold and uranium, the rocks ejected by the Sun in its formation, or captured from passing space debris, can be considerably older than the Sun, itself, measured by the amounts of varying elements in the rocks, and released by previous Supernovas. Or, being no expert, that is my amateurish understanding of what I have been reading about chemistry and the Sun.

The Rio Tinto display, which described the Earth as nothing more than a snowball initially, did say at the time it was a snowball that the Earth had no atmosphere as we know it now. So where did the Atmosphere come from? And by what process was it formed? Without the atmosphere we would not be able to see anything, even if there was anything with eyes to see with. And an entirely snow covered ball of rock would be too dark to see anything, anyway. So from a contemporary of the ancient Chaldean point of view, putting the creation of the Sun where it is in Chapter 1 makes eminent good sense. We are seeing individuals and we know best what we can see. And yes, there has to be light before we can see.

I've also read in the news and at other places, that the Sun in its origin, was considerably dimmer than it is now, putting out less energy. Somehow or other, the Sun became hotter, and the Earth changed as well. So Genesis' order of creation isn't quite as contrary to science as what was made out by the Catholic Church, this time, in the time of Galiliei Galileo, when people thought the Earth was flat, and that the Sun revolved around the Earth. By the way, the Vatican has one of the best scientific libraries in the world.

However, neither Nicholas Copernicus, nor Galileo, would for one second have denied that God made the world, however He made it. Neither would any of their contemporaries who happened to think they were on to something. Even today, it would only be a small group of odd-balls who insist the Earth is flat, let alone that the Sun revolves around the Earth. So why do we today get our knickers in a knot (to use a proverbial expression), in this day and age, over Evolutionary theory?

The Chaldeans, who had no hesitation in using Jewish captives to assist their pursuits, were such marvellous mathematicians and astronomers that they have been credited with the original idea of dividing a day into 24 hours, 60 minutes per hour and 60 seconds per minute. As you say, Ithilwen, before that, a day was simply sunrise to sunset, or from nightfall to nightfall. But it took Nicholas Copernicus then Galileo, to show that the Earth revolved around the Sun for yearly measurements, not the Chaldeans. And even by that time we had first the Julian calendar, authorised by Julius Caesar, then the later Gregorian calendar, and we are all still living as a Christian faith, with the consequences of that change in time measurement in the times we celebrate Christmas and Easter.

EDIT (Jan 26th, 2014, 7.06 pm): *The BAR (Biblical Archaeological Review) article I referred to was actually from Archaeological Diggings Vol. 20 no. 6 2013, i.e Dec 2013/Jan 2014, published by Adventist Media Network (Wahroonga, NSW? ISSN: 1322-6525). The article is Archaeology and a Sixth century book of Daniel by Gary Webster, on pp.8-14.

I'm not going to get too involved in this creation vs. evolution debate, but i think it's worth noting that in the Mosaic Law, God considered keeping the Sabbath day holy a very serious duty, and He more than once based it on "for in six days the LORD God created the heavens and the Earth, and on the seventh day He rested".

But if you can believe in God without having the proof they had, I'd say you're the one with the stronger faith. Sometimes I wonder if God just gives deep spiritual experiences to the weak, because He knows they could never believe in Him otherwise.

I’m not sure I agree with Ithilwen’s comment. I know it’s meant to be encouraging to those (like me) who haven’t had any real sense of God’s presence, but it doesn’t seem to sit right. A popular analogy often used to describe what faith is, describes a tightrope walker who fastens a high wire above the Niagara Falls and asks the assembled crowd, “Do you think I can walk across this wire to the other side?” and the crowd answers, “Yeah, yeah.” So he does so and then asks, “Do you think I can do it while pushing a wheelbarrow?” and the crowd answers, “Yeah, yeah.” So he does so and then asks, “Do you think I can do it with someone sitting in the wheelbarrow?” and the crowd answers, “Yeah, yeah.” “Right. Any volunteers?” and the crowd is silent. Then a little boy volunteers, and the tightrope walker pushes him across in the wheelbarrow and back again. The boy, of course, is the tightrope walker’s son. The point is, that the boy trusts his father because he knows him; his father is always around to protect him. If he were a distant father whom he’d never seen and who never spoke to him (except perhaps by second-hand messages), he wouldn’t have that level of trust.

Or, since this is a Narnia fans’ website, look at how Aslan is depicted in the stories. In The Horse And His Boy, for instance, Shasta hasn’t heard of Narnia until Bree tells him about it. Bree never talks about Aslan, interestingly enough, except as an exclamation: “By the Lion’s Mane” etc. Aslan, of course, is manipulating events behind the scenes; but eventually Shasta gets to meet him for real. Throughout the Narnia series the most “successful” characters are the ones who get to know Aslan the best. Jill starts her Narnian adventure by speaking with Aslan face to face. All sorts of things in Lewis’ writing (not just Narnia) lead me to believe that he thought being a Christian meant that you “knew” God in some way, not merely believed in his existence.

Unless all these analogies are way off beam, I think they point to a relationship which is active and personal. So I don’t think that believing in God when you have never had any sense that your belief is real indicates a stronger faith; I think it means something is wrong.

Note: The following does not necessarily contain my view on the subject but someone brought it up on another forum.

Basically god is not obeying the golden rule:

If you were destined to hell (traditionally defined as a place of everlasting torment), would you prefer to not exist at all? I think most of us would not want to exist if that was the outcome. If you had the choice of creating somebody who could only be created as destined to go to hell, would you create that person? I doubt you would.

Does God not have empathy? Creating people who can only go to hell is a violation of "do others has you would have them do unto you."

I'm not going to get too involved in this creation vs. evolution debate, but i think it's worth noting that in the Mosaic Law, God considered keeping the Sabbath day holy a very serious duty, and He more than once based it on "for in six days the LORD God created the heavens and the Earth, and on the seventh day He rested".

Fair point! The Mosaic law is also part of the most ancient bits of the Bible, and it is not only in Exodus but also in Numbers or Deuteronomy. Again there are two parallel traditions, such as of the making of the Ark of the Covenant, slightly different, as in the Creation story of Genesis, but the Mosaic law, itself, is the same for both traditions. This particular law may well have been set down in writing, along with the other 9 commandments, well before the time of the Judges, or anything written in Jerusalem. But it isn't the oldest part of even Exodus. That honour belongs to the Song of Miriam after the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea. Since it was a song, it may well have been older than even the 10 Commandments.

Again, it matters not how you measure what a day is, or if you are speaking poetically, in sevens, or in seven x sevens, in jubilees, in eons or in weeks. The most important message of the Mosaic law, is that God made the world, that God is the only God to worship, setting aside other Gods, that His name is not to be taken in vain, that His people are not to make graven images, and that His people must make a regular, key and specifically weekly time for Him so that you can worship him, undistracted from other pursuits. This is much easier in a society which sets a particular day of the working week aside for that purpose, and which respects the worshippers' rights to do so.

But, as Christ, himself, said: The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath. And isn't it interesting that the people given this Mosaic law were workers, artisans, slaves, themselves, even? This law is so important that it also applied to slaves within a Hebrew household, thus uniquely giving the poor slaves a day off slaving for the Master. People who work 7 days a week without a break can run themselves into the ground until they can't work at all.

Does God not have empathy? Creating people who can only go to hell is a violation of "do others has you would have them do unto you."

I think this argument ignores that nobody really knows anything about Hell or Heaven, and that both excite a good bit of imagination amongst living people. Some people think of a Last Judgement, where we are judged by the good and evil things we have chosen to do in the world. Others seem to think this happens when we die. C.S.Lewis, in The Last Battle, portrayed a different sort of scenario where the most important bit was how the Narnians who entered through the door felt about Aslan, and what they had chosen to believe. But that of course is fictitional.

My personal belief is that Man has done quite a bit to make sure that Hell is alive, palpable and very present on this Earth without his worrying about Hell in the hereafter, who is destined for it and who is not. When I went overseas in 2012, I visited France, UK, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria. Anyone who tours through Poland cannot avoid visiting Auschwitz, a truly terrible place, even though many of the huts in Birkenau have either been demolished or have fallen to bits. What happened to the poor, mainly innocent, people who went there, was truly terrible. But that was Man's doing, not God's.