In six days
blestwithsons, my übertalented sister, is excited about the Creation Museum being built in northern Kentucky by Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis organization. Her post is enthusiastic about the museum, but critical of some aspects of the FoxNews article that mentions it. Among her objections is the choice of a pastor in nearby Cincinnati who denounces AiG’s young-Earth creationism as “silly.”
Says blest, “Hmmm. Of all the pastors available in the country, or at least in Kentucky or Ohio, the reporter chose a Reverend from the United Church of Christ, which is not exactly known for their faithful handling of the scriptures.”
That’s certainly true. My opinion is that Christians of his stripe are simply afraid of being embarrassed in the eyes of the world by their “simpler” brethren.
That, in itself, isn’t so hard to understand. After all, I’ve been known to cringe myself when some Bible-believing brothers or sisters call in to radio shows and cast reasoned arguments to the wind as they grossly distort or misapply the Scriptures in which they, to their credit, place their trust.
The difference is that this pastor and countless others are firmly nestled into their creche as the matrix program provides them an illusion of reality that they’ve not allowed Scripture to peel back for them. They, many of them anyway, honestly believe that the evolutionary pronouncements of Science are founded in objective, empirical, reproducible evidence.
They haven’t grasped, apparently, that the conclusions of Evolutionary science are necessitated by the naturalistic presuppositions with which their investigations begin.
All that said, here is my view (at this point anyway) on Genesis and length of days. First, I utterly reject the premise of macro-evolution; that all living things are the process of chance mutation and natural selection, gradually causing one species to change to another, beginning with so-called “simple” organisms and culminating with humanity in our present time, until another leap produces some new type of humanity. I believe all types of creatures were created by God and that their genetic codes contain the information that has allowed their original progenitors to variate within their species in adaptation to various environmental conditions.
Second, I have absolutely no problem with the idea that God can do this in six days or six hours. I freely admit that I don’t know the ins and outs of how scientists derive their numbers for ages, but since I know that any method that produced a young-earth age would be dismissed out of hand I’m not too troubled by that.
Third, I do believe that there is some legitimate wiggle room in the language of Genesis that could allow for an age of the universe and/or the earth itself much older than humanity, and possibly even for day lengths that don’t correspond to our 24-hour cycles, at least for the first two days.
The first detail in the account that leads me to keep an open mind is the fact that the six days of creation seem to begin with the heavens and earth already in place. It could be argued that the very first verse stating that “God created the heavens and the earth” is meant to be included in the first day. I don’t have a problem with that view, but I don’t necessarily think it’s unfaithful to Scripture to see it as a starting point. That leaves the prospect of any conceivable amount of time prior to God saying “Let there be light.”
Which brings me to the second detail; why are our days twenty-four hours long? Because that’s how long it takes the earth to rotate on its axis creating the visual effects of sunrise and sunset as that celestial body appears to pass across the sky. But while God created light, separating it from darkness and establishing the concepts of day and night, He hadn’t yet created the sun. In fact, God did not create the sun until the fourth day when He established it along with the moon and all of the other heavenly bodies to give light on the earth.
Where did the light come from prior to the advent of the sun? I have no idea. Perhaps it came somehow from the effect of an expanding universe. Regardless, I have to consider the possibility that at least the three days prior to the creation of the sun could have been of some duration other than the standard day that we know.
I agree with blest that attempts to reconcile naturalistic evolutionary science with Scripture are misguided at best, so if I haven’t made it clear, that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I’m just giving my reasons for not slamming the door on the possibility of an older universe than most young-earth creationist views allow for.
4 Comments
July 7th, 2005 at 6:33 am
Well, the light could’ve come from God himself as it will in the New Jerusalem…
I was thinking about this last night myself. I’m with you about the possibility for more time for the earth BEFORE the days of creation begin. Though I am firmly committed the the six days all being literal days. But how long was the earth formless and void before the six days started? Dunno – don’t really care. After all – even if the earth itself were a Gajillion years old – wouldn’t change the fact that God didn’t create animals until a literal day 6 – which means a big whopping Nope to evolution – theistic or otherwise!
July 7th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
The funniest thing about that FNC article, to me at least, is this quote:
“Critics such as the Rev. Mendle Adams, pastor of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in nearby Cincinnati, say museum leaders are twisting Bible verses to support an *agenda*.”
Hmm, and what is that agenda? Oh yeah, to trust the Bible. That apparently offends Mr. Adams.
I have a kind of dualistic approach toward cosmology. I believe in the whole hog literal six days and such, but I also don’t think the physical evidence we have right now points to it. I think if scientists follow the evidence where it most naturally (naturalistically?) leads, I have faith that science will eventually self-correct itself to correspond to scripture. I believe scientists really are trying to find the truth, and the smartest scientist Christians that I know firmly believe in evolution and an old Earth, so I don’t think evolution can be explained away by saying that scientists want to corrupt the world’s youth or whatever.
One of the more novel ideas I’ve heard is that, since time is actually relative to gravity, there’s some sort of absolute “God Time” in existence, and that the days get shorter as the universe expands. So, the first day lasted billions of years, the second lasted half of that, the third was half of the second, and so on, and that we’re currently in the seventh day (the seventh day is the only day that doesn’t end, by the way.) Of course, I don’t really see how you could have vegetation (third day) for a few million years before you have a sun (fourth day), but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.
July 8th, 2005 at 9:44 am
I think we can all agree that the UCC is not a great deal different, practically speaking, from the Unitarians. They’ve abandoned pretty much any objective authority in favor of “feelgood faith.”
Regarding science, I wouldn’t put too much faith in that much touted quality of self-correction. Not that I don’t agree with your assumption on the general motivation of the vast majority of scientists. It’s just that they can only correct within the bounds of what they believe is reasonable.
I started a long reply on this, but decided to put it in a new post.
I also came across something similar to the time/gravity/expansion idea that you mentioned… it may actually be what you’re referring to, but it’s a little different in that it’s focused on relativity in that time is perceived normally on earth (presumed in this theory as being the center of a bounded universe) while being greatly accelerated in the rapidly expanding matter of the universe. This is purported to allow the vast amounts of astronomical time to pass required for the light from these distant stars to reach us while still allowing for a literal reading of Genesis.
One review of the book on Amazon.com seemed to refute the idea fairly authoritatively, but I grant I’m in no position to evaluate either the theory or its refutation based on the physics or the math!
You can read about it here.
July 11th, 2005 at 10:47 am
SCPanther, if you’re talking about _Starlight and Time_ by Dr. Russell Humphreys, I’ve got that book. Read it through. Even Dr. Humphreys himself will tell you he isn’t certain about it. But that it fits the Bible and so far he hasn’t found anything that made it definitely NOT true. If you go around the net you can see his responses to criticisms such as those in the amazon.com comments (a VERY bad place, I might mention, to argue such things) Unfortunately, it has been a LONG time since I was in college and I can’t follow all the technical details
I know the theory of how time works at event horizons is certainly sound. And it comes down to a basis of whose interpretation of facts do you trust — the one who starts with a grounding in the Scriptures and is willing to say they might be wrong or the one who is trying to twist the meaning of Scripture and who I DON’T necessarily trust — and from that standpoint it’s clear.
I would MUCH prefer a “changing speed of c” to this theory. But I also trust those who have said that is essentially off the table.
What I DO know is that the state of astronomy science is not NEAR as clearcut, when you start reading books in it, as the media, etc would like you to think. There are those who believe in evolution, long ages, etc, that are standing up and saying the Big Bang -doesn’t work- the big problem being: there isn’t a theory to replace it with. Science is very reluctant to discard a theory without having something to replace it with.
If you have more interest, you might want to check out _Uncommon Dissent: intellectuals who find Darwinism unconvincing_ ed. by William Dembski.