We studied creation last night, as we are starting an overview or a survey of the Old Testament in our home group.
When preparing for the study, I looked in depth at some arguments for an old earth in Genesis 1.
One of the interesting threads I looked at was this one. I have no intention of doing a point by point critique of the arguments, but in preparing for the study I came up with some reasons why I don’t buy the old earth hypothesis.
Firstly some background.
The book of Genesis was written by Moses sometime during the period of Israel’s wanderings. This gives us some important insights into the purpose of the book. The book of Genesis was intended to explain the origin of the Hebrew people and their God including an explanation of the origin of the universe (primarily that it was created by and subject to the Hebrew God), how it got to be the way it was and why, as well as where the nation of Israel had come from and the origin of the nations around them.
Given this, the book was written to be easily understood, which indeed it is – even to children today.
With this in mind here are my 10 reasons why I don’t believe the Bible supports an old earth.
1. The old earth hypothesis is based on evidence that is interpreted through uniformitarian philosophies. What I mean by this is that if you took all the "evidence" out of the picture and read Genesis 1, you would come naturally to the conclusion that the earth was made in six 24 hour days. The only reason to put an old earth into the creation account is to support current scientific theory.
2. It assumes that current scientific theory is correct and complete. Scientists suppose that the earth is old because of certain data that suggests this, however, not all the data is available yet (there is much we don’t know), and much of what is available is only hypothesis to support atheism. Theories such as this one are interesting as they demonstrate that there are hypotheses that are yet to be explored, but yet hold up well to scrutiny while upholding the laws of relativity, etc.
3. The old earth hypothesis opposes the apparent intention of the author who as we saw above wrote an account to give understanding. This is not to say that it explains every aspect of creation, however, the intention of the author seems to be clearly to present a six day creation. If this were not intention of the author, he would have used different words to get his point across – words that gave the intended message.
4. It sets about reconciling scripture with scientific theory rather than pushing back on science and saying the science is wrong. In this way it marginalizes the authority of scripture
5. If the days were not literal 24 hour days but long periods of perhaps millions or billions of years, and given Adam lived through part of the sixth day and the seventh day, he must have been millions of years old, yet Gen 5 states that he was 930 years old when he died, therefore it introduces significant discrepancies into the word of God.
6. Unless you throw out the consecutive order of the days (which you have to do) then much of the plant life would not have survived the millions of years without birds and bees (and other insets) to pollinate them.
7. Similarly to point 5, it requires interpreting other passages of scripture differently to their historical and natural translation. The example on the page I linked to above did this with Rom 5:12 to make it say that mans sin only brought death to man as animals are not explicitly mentioned. However this particular example plays roulette with the redeeming work of Christ not to mention that it flies in the face of verses like Rom 8:20-21 and Isa 24:5-7.
8. Given the argument I just mentioned and that the primary purpose of old earth thinking is to account for the fossil record – it marginalizes the effects of sin. If sin only affects man then sin is not as bad as we have been led to believe. This has huge implications as we will see in a moment.
9. It marginalizes the wisdom of scripture by elevating the wisdom of man.
10. It is designed to make Christianity more palatable and acceptable to unbelievers rather than accepting that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who reject it.
It is also mooted by old earthers that the age of the earth does not affect any of the major doctrines of the Bible, so it is harmless to hold this view. True it does not completely oppose the major doctrines, but it is more insidious than it first appears:
- It marginalizes the authority of scripture. Rather than opposing false science, false science is elevated to at least as much authority as the bible. Both scripture and science must be seen to be true or there would be no attempt to align their conflicts. However, scripture is the inspired yardstick by which science is to be measured.
- By accommodating the fossil record before the fall, it marginalizes the consequences of sin and therefore the seriousness of sin
- This in turn marginalizes the seriousness of Gods judgement as judgement is based on the weight of the individuals sin
- It marginalizes the work of Christ on the cross. If sin is not so bad then Christ’s death is not as significant.
- It marginalizes the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit – as sin is not as significant to overcome
- It marginalizes the supernatural nature of creation by replacing it with natural process
- It marginalizes the glory of God as seen in His creation – this is the most serious issue
- It marginalizes the role of faith by trying to rationalize what cannot be rationalized. Heb 11:3 says "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible". If everything can be rationalised intellectually, then we have no need for faith.
On this last point I have much more to say, but that will have to wait until another day.
For what do we do all this damage? Just to accommodate current scientific theory that is incomplete and in many cases incorrect.
Interestingly Peter wrote about this and cites uniformitarianism: "…knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” (2 Pe 3:3-4 emphasis added). Now, here we are in the 21st century defending the word of God against even evangelical Christians who uphold this error.
It would be interesting to see what scientific theories they are trying to shoe-horn into the Bible in 200 years time…
A good, concise article Darryl. I regret that my defense of the young earth position was very poor in the thread which you reference; particularly since I chose a more exegetical approach, and my exegesis was weak. I’m glad that you’ve taken the approach you have of presenting principles rather than exegesis. Have you had any response from Phil with regard to this issue? I know he is a participant in your study?
Regards,
Bnonn
PS. On a completely unrelated note, you may wish to run a spell-checker through your tag cloud 🙂
Fixed the tag cloud – spotted it the other day, and forgot to fix it.
Phil was there on Tuesday, but I didn’t really give him the opportunity to debate it at the time.
However, I am not unwilling to debate it in this forum. Not sure if he reads this though… 🙂
I agree Darryl.
I read briefly through the thread and note one major presupposition that old earth believers make
– as you note "uniformitarian"
Yes the assumption that if we were to carbon date or use a simlar dating mechanism everything has stayed the same since the beginning of creation and that the actual date of the earth started at zero in regards to mineral deposits in the earth. God is the creator, no Christian should dispute this, so it is my assumption that he created the earth as it is now, obviously with changes relating to the flood, to be an operating ecosystem. Hence, if the earth were dated by means used today on day seven of creation it would have come up being several million… or even billion years old. A simple thought but hardly ever raised in discussions.
Scientists, men and women, make mistakes, we all do, and they’ll try everything to stay away from acknowledging that God is the creator (read on from Rom 1:20).
In short the bible is truth (2 Tim 3:16) and I have no problem believing that God is the creator.
Good post, Darryl. I heartily concur.
As a christian, it is imperative that I believe in the complete and absolute infallibility and inerrancy of the Word of God.
And I do so because of the faith that God has given and placed in me.
The Word of God is indeed the yardstick (as you have already mentioned) in which everything else is measured, and that ‘everything’ is fallible.
The start point must be God and His revelation.
Quite frankly, I am concerned with the mind-set of some ‘christians’ who attempt to measure God’s perfect revelation against the fallible, humanistic idealogies and in doing so they try to justify the merit of these idealogies.
I am happy to take God at His Word and if anything else does not fit with what He says, I will gladly disregard it.
Some may say that I am narrow-minded and may see narrow view as a weakness, but as Paul famously said, then I boast in my weaknesses.
Amen Mark.
God’s Word is infallible, man’s word is fallible.
Boast in Christ.
Darryl
Based on your posting I wonder how extensively you actually looked at the arguments for an old earth in Genesis 1.
Did you actually read right through the linked discussion thread? Did you you consult any old earth creationist sources to see what their actual arguments are or did you just read the denunciations (and misrepresentations) from young earth creationist sites.
A few general points –
Perhaps the biggest issue with your assessment is that you Frequently equate your interpretation of the Bible with being God’s infalliable word rather than the Bible itself. The Bible does not explicitly state that the earth (and rest of the universe) was created in six 24 hour periods approximately 6000 years ago and to get to this conclusion from the Biblical text involves a number of significant and questionable assumptions which you seem to brush over.
You state "Given this, the book was written to be easily understood, which indeed it is – even to children today." While Genesis, along with the rest of the Bible was written to be understood it does not mean that understanding the content of it will always be easy and that the most simplistic interpetation will always be correct. In 2 Peter 3:16 Peter says regarding Paul’s Epistles "He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.". With four Gospels there are often multiple accounts of particular events of Jesus’s life and ministry such as the resurrection with different details included. With careful comparison it can be seen how these multiple accounts reconcile, however taking the most ‘obvious’ meaning of one passage may result in the contradiction with another. This can also be seen in the creation accounts by comparing the events of day 6 of the creation with chapter 2 which shows that the events were actually rather more complicated than would be ‘obvious’ from the account in Chapter 1 (e.g. that Adam and Eve were not created simultaneously). Care must be taken to find the correct interpretation of scripture not just the obvious one that might be easy to teach to children.
It should be noted that old earth creationists affirm that God can and has supernaturally intervened in the universe, and thus are not absolute uniformitarians. However what most old earth creationists would affirm is that the fundamental laws of nature don’t just change at random and that God won’t change the laws simply to deceive humans into thinking the age of the earth is different from what it is. In Genesis 8:22 God promised at least some uniformity in nature.
What is often dismissively referred to "uniformitarian philosophies" by young earth creationists is in most cases basic common sense – it is simply because they have not taken the time to examine the indicators of age that they think they can dismiss it as just a ‘philosophy’. Take for instance dendrochronology (tree ring dating) where continuous sequences from a single site of over 11,000 years have been obtained and these show the climatic effects of major volcanic eruptions, the more recent of which can be historically dated (including some over 3000 years old) confirming the accuracy of the technique. It is commonsense to assume that the process of tree rings forming annually didn’t only start when there were other recorded events to compare them with. The same is true of ice core samples from polar ice caps where the snow laid down in summer and winter can be distinguished chemically in layers. Ice cores showing over 100,000 years of layers and as for tree rings the more recent ones can be compared with historical volcanic eruptions (through trapped ash and other chemical indicators). Again it is common sense (not just some obscure philosophy) to think that there weren’t dozens of winters and summers per year just prior to when the technique can be validated against historical events. Radiometric dating techniques are usually used for dating things millions and billions of years old and young earth creationists regularly speculate that the rate of radioactive decay could have been faster in the past to give this appearance of age. However if the rates of radioactive decay had been great enough to have changed the age by a factor of over a thousand, it would have turned the earth into a radioactive inferno. Of course it could be argued that God miraculously changed the laws of nature to prevent this extra heat output from occuring, however with all the other factors that would have needed to have been changed to compensate, one is unavoidably left with the alternatives of either the radiometric data indicate that the earth is a lot more than a few thousand years old or that God has deliberately set things up to give that appearance (including some very subtle ways).
Looking at your 10 reasons against an Old Earth:
"1. The old earth hypothesis is based on evidence that is interpreted through uniformitarian philosophies. What I mean by this is that if you took all the "evidence" out of the picture and read Genesis 1, you would come naturally to the conclusion that the earth was made in six 24 hour days. The only reason to put an old earth into the creation account is to support current scientific theory."
Long before the discovery of scientific evidence for an old earth, the reading of Genesis 1 has been recognised as problematic (and some early writers suggesting that the creation took longer than six 24 days). The issue of trying to fit the events of Genesis 2 into day 6 of Genesis 1 has long been known to be a problem such that some jewish writers concluded that Eve was not the woman created on day 6 and that Adam must have had a wife before Eve (‘Lillith’). The events between the creation of Adam and Eve (including God planting the garden of Eden which trees grew and Adam naming all the animals and birds and realise that he was laking a suitable mate) are not easy to compressed into a few hours. While the growing scientific evidence for an old earth prompted many Christians to re-examine their interpretation of the creation account, it is incorrect to think that earlier young-earth interpretations were undisputed and problem free.
"2. It assumes that current scientific theory is correct and complete. Scientists suppose that the earth is old because of certain data that suggests this, however, not all the data is available yet (there is much we don’t know), and much of what is available is only hypothesis to support atheism. Theories such as this one are interesting as they demonstrate that there are hypotheses that are yet to be explored, but yet hold up well to scrutiny while upholding the laws of relativity, etc."
The evidence for the earth being more than a few thousand years old comes from numerous sources in geology, physics and biology. While undoubtably there will be changes to some aspects in the future, to overturn all the evidence would involve refutation of numerous well established areas of these sciences. It is rediculous to assert that the evidence as "only hypothesis to support atheism" the basis of the various dating techniques were usually developed in areas of science not particularly associated with the age of the earth or atheism (and frequently the discoverer was a committed Christian) and it was only later that it was realised that the discoveries could be applied to the question of the earth. When the sciences of thermodynamics and radioactivity were discovered I very much doubt the scientists were thinking they had better fiddle the equations so that later on they could use them to prove that the earth was old enough for evolution to occur, in fact the first person to scientifically give an age for the earth in 1862 was William Thomson (‘Lord Kelvin’) who was the discoverer of much thermodynamics and electrodynamics (and was a committed Christian). Thomson’s motivation in doing the calculation (based on the temperature profile of the earth) was to show that the earth was not indefinitely old, (as was assumed by early evolutionists) and hence show that Darwinian evolution was implausible.
"3. The old earth hypothesis opposes the apparent intention of the author who as we saw above wrote an account to give understanding. This is not to say that it explains every aspect of creation, however, the intention of the author seems to be clearly to present a six day creation. If this were not intention of the author, he would have used different words to get his point across – words that gave the intended message."
This assumes that it was the intention of the author to specify exactly how long the creationion occurred over. Considering the ambiguity overs what reference frame the creation account is written from (is it from God’s perspective or some other hypothetical observer?) makes the issue of time far from straight forward (particarly if it is written from God’s perspective, what does it mean for a day of time for have passed for God?) and it is quite possible that the author did not intend to address this issue. It is dangerous to assume that Biblical authors intended to answer all the questions we have on the topics they wrote about. In the case of the four gospels the order of events varies, hence it was evidently not the intention of the authors (at least three of them) to provide a chronology of events even though that might seem an obvious thing to do from our modern point of view.
"4. It sets about reconciling scripture with scientific theory rather than pushing back on science and saying the science is wrong. In this way it marginalizes the authority of scripture"
"9. It marginalizes the wisdom of scripture by elevating the wisdom of man."
Remember the issue is about interpreting scripture not the authority or wisdom of scripture. I am suggesting that certain young-earth interpretations are incorrect and neither authoratitive nor wise, not that there is any fault with scripture. When you reject a particular interpretation of a piece of scripture as being nonsensical or self contradictory do you are putting human reason above the wisdom of scripture? The goal of interpreting scripture is to determine and convey the intended meaning, and where appropriate other sources of information should be used to help determine that meaning including history, science and geography. Other examples of using science to help interpret scripture include the various verses which imply that the earth is fixed and the sun rotates around it. When the scientific evidence that the earth was rotating and orbitting around the sun became known most Christians realised that these passages were either poetical or discriptive of appearances only (though some made complaints similar to yours about people putting the ‘wisdom of man’ above scripture). Another example is the interpretation of the ‘firmament’ in Genesis 1:6-8 many early scholars interpreted this as referring to a solid barrier or dome above the earth holding back the upper waters (some childrens bible story books still illustrate it in this way), however we know from science that this is not the case and the ‘firmament’ should better be translated as ‘expanse’ and probably refers to the earths atmosphere. Of course science can be misused in interpreting scripture but this does not negate its appropriate use.
"5. If the days were not literal 24 hour days but long periods of perhaps millions or billions of years, and given Adam lived through part of the sixth day and the seventh day, he must have been millions of years old, yet Gen 5 states that he was 930 years old when he died, therefore it introduces significant discrepancies into the word of God."
"6. Unless you throw out the consecutive order of the days (which you have to do) then much of the plant life would not have survived the millions of years without birds and bees (and other insets) to pollinate them."
The notion that old earth creationists in general believe that each of the days were of equal length in millions or billions of years is a "straw man" argument. Even amongst day-age theorists most regard the days as being periods of time of indeterminate length and for the intermittent day and fiat-parenthesis theory the length of the day is not an issue.
"7. Similarly to point 5, it requires interpreting other passages of scripture differently to their historical and natural translation. The example on the page I linked to above did this with Rom 5:12 to make it say that mans sin only brought death to man as animals are not explicitly mentioned. However this particular example plays roulette with the redeeming work of Christ not to mention that it flies in the face of verses like Rom 8:20-21 and Isa 24:5-7."
Romans 5:12 specifically refers to death coming to all men (‘anthropos’) which is reinforced in verse 18 – "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men." Not only are animals not mentioned but to include them would imply that animals can be saved in the same way as humans.
To regard Romans 8:19-23 as teaching that animals did not die before the fall is pushing it a bit as not only is animals dying (or not dying) not mentioned but the passage is only indirectly concerned with the fall, but rather that the eschatological hope of Christians of coming glory is shared by all creation (verses 18,19). The the word ‘mataiotes’ in verse 20 variously translated ‘vanity’, ‘confused’, ‘futility’, ‘frustration’ has the meaning of ‘seeking without finding’. The passage would indicate that creations fulfillment is awaiting the eschatologial event of ‘revealing of the sons of God’. In Roman 8:21 ‘phthora’ (translated ‘corruption’ or ‘decay’) can either mean physical destruction (perhaps in the case of 1 Cor. 15:42, 50) or moral corruption (e.g. 2 Peter 1:4, 2 Peter 2:19). While you might assume that ‘bondage to corruption’ means subject to physical decay, it could also mean being subject to the consequences of moral corruption of humanity, which would fit in well with the context of the removal of the bondage occuring with the "freedom of the glory of the children of God". In Genesis 1:28 man was given dominion over ther earth and when when man became corrupt creation would suffer from his mismanagement. The allusion is made with the labor pains of childbirth in Romans 8:22 which implies going to a new and better state rather than going back to a pre-existing state.
What are you trying to prove with Isaiah 24:5-7? You seem to be using it quite out of context. Isaiah 24 is a prophecy of God’s upcoming judgement of sin and note that the word usually translated as ‘earth’ (‘eretz’) could equally be translated ‘land’.
"8. Given the argument I just mentioned and that the primary purpose of old earth thinking is to account for the fossil record – it marginalizes the effects of sin. If sin only affects man then sin is not as bad as we have been led to believe. This has huge implications as we will see in a moment."
As noted above you are adding to what the Bible says about the effects of sin. The Bible does not say that animal death was the consequence of sin (presumeably many people include animals in the fall for aesthetic rather than scriptual reasons). More on this later.
"10. It is designed to make Christianity more palatable and acceptable to unbelievers rather than accepting that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who reject it."
Actually I think the biggest motivation is the belief that the Bible is true and actually applies to the real world which we live and observe (i.e. God’s revelation in creation matches that in scripture). Old earth creationists reject the Darwinian evolution explanation for life and as such they are still branded as ‘creationists’ or ‘fundamentalists’ and criticised by most secular scientists and the media. There is usually little benefit of being popular or acceptable to non-Christians by holding to an old-earth rather than a young-earth position.
While the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Cor.1:18), this is no excuse for adding extra stumbling blocks through faulty interpretation (or blind adherence to non-Biblical traditions and doctrines). Some Christians have a perverse attraction to making Christian doctrines harder or more unpalitable than what the Bible suggests, perhaps through a desire to appear theologically ‘hard core’ or some sort of theological masochism. For whatever reason, it is certainly not a noble thing to add extra unbiblical impediments to prevent people receiving the Gospel.
Whenever Christians dissagree with one another over points of doctrine there is the temptation to exaggerate the significance of the issue from peripheral to central to the gospel to justify the dogmatism. This is particularly prevalent amongst creationist ministries where in addition to issues of personal pride at stake there is competition over financial support for the ministry leading to a tendency to try to portray ‘rival’ ministries as a bunch of heretics (unworthy of receiving financial support). This has lead to particular importance being placed on doctrine based on questionable Biblical interpretation and some that are not in the Bible at all.
Looking at your doctrinal reasons for opposing old-earth creationism –
"# It marginalizes the authority of scripture. Rather than opposing false science, false science is elevated to at least as much authority as the bible. Both scripture and science must be seen to be true or there would be no attempt to align their conflicts. However, scripture is the inspired yardstick by which science is to be measured."
Again you are missing that it is the interpration of scripture at issue not scripture itself.
"# By accommodating the fossil record before the fall, it marginalizes the consequences of sin and therefore the seriousness of sin "
"# This in turn marginalizes the seriousness of Gods judgement as judgement is based on the weight of the individuals sin."
The Bible does not attribute animal death to the fall. Also are you claiming from these points that animals sin? A case might be made that if animals already die as a consequence of sin then it would have invalidated the point of old testament animal sacrifices.
"# It marginalizes the work of Christ on the cross. If sin is not so bad then Christ’s death is not as significant."
"# It marginalizes the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit – as sin is not as significant to overcome "
If animal death is to be included in the fall but animals are not included in salvation (as is typically believed by young earth creationists) then this might be considered to marginalises the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit though not reversing what would have been one of the biggest effects of the fall.
"# It marginalizes the supernatural nature of creation by replacing it with natural process"
"# It marginalizes the glory of God as seen in His creation – this is the most serious issue"
Old earth creationists believe that God has performed supernatural acts of creation at various points in the history of the universe and that God has also used his sovereign control of "natural" processes in bringing about the creation we can see today. If God is only glorified by sudden "supernatural" acts then there would be very little in creation that we can see today that glorifies God since all the people, animals and plants were born and grew by "natural" processes and the rivers, mountains etc. that we see were formed by geological processes. On the contrary, the Bible affirms that we can see God’s attributes and glorify him (e.g. Romans 1:20,21, Psalm 104). If God is glorified by his sovereign control of "natural" processes today why does it not glorify him that he used it (as well as supernatural intervention) in the past? One particular danger of common young earth interpretations is that they attribute much if not most of nature not to God’s creation but to the effects of sin following the fall e.g. the features relating to carnivorous animals such as Cheetah’s running fast to catch their prey, spiders building webs etc. (note that in Job 38:39, God glories in His ability to hunt prey for the lion, see also Psalm 104:21) and according to some young earth creationist descriptions, prior to Noah’s flood the world was a relatively flat and uniformly tropical and that high mountains, glaciers, fiords etc. (which we often consider some of the highlights of God’s creation) only came after God’s judgement of the flood.
"# It marginalizes the role of faith by trying to rationalize what cannot be rationalized. Heb 11:3 says "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible". If everything can be rationalised intellectually, then we have no need for faith."
You are making a false dichotomy between faith and rational understanding. The level of faith a person has is marked by their level of trust (and hence obedience) they have, not their level of ignorance. Paul would often pray that people receive understanding (e.g. Col. 1:9, 2 Thess. 3:5, Philemon 1:6) and evidently he did not think that understanding would remove their faith. Often much of what we pray about is for God to exercise his sovereign control over "natural" processes rather than specifically "supernatural" events yet this does not prevent us from having faith in God even though we might have some awareness of the physical mechanism God uses. Regardless of the time frame of creation it still requires faith to know that it was done "by the word of God".
Your use of 2 Peter 3:3-4 is misleading as in context this passage it is referring to people who were denying the return of Christ and God’s impending judgement. Peter points out that God has intervened in the past in judgement (the flood) and will do so again (with fire). Denial of Christs return and judgement is not a specific feature of old earth creationism, which affirms God’s supernatural intervention in the universe. It is quite misleading to think that when the scoffers said "Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." they had in mind such thuch things as the constancy of the speed of light or the rate of radioactive decay. It is rather more likely that it refers to a claimed non-intervention by God (such that they felt that they could live their lives without fear of God’s intervention or judgement).
In mid 2005 you blogged: "Yom certainly means a day in the way that you and I refer to a day. There is no other way to interpret this word honestly. The current usage of the word is a clear 24 hour day, and that is the way the old testament has been interpreted since it was written and interpreted."
While the issue of the length of the days is not actually an issue for the intermittent day and fiat-parenthesis theories of creation some points can be made regarding the assertion that the ‘days’ (‘Yom’) of Genesis 1 must be 24 hour periods. 24 hours was certainly not the only meaning of ‘Yom’ in the old testament, even in the creation account other meanings are evident. In 1:16,18 it is used to mean daylight as opposed to night. In 2:4 it is used to refer to the whole period of creation. The use of ‘yom’ for other extended periods of time is common in the old testament, with well known examples being the references to the ‘day of the Lord’.
It is sometimes argued that the references to evening (‘ereb’) and morning (‘boker’) in context with the days proves that they are 24 hours. Both ‘ereb’ and ‘boker’ had figurative meaning in the old testment, sometimes referring to ‘early’ and ‘late’ or ‘spring’ and ‘autumn’. Furthermore the peculiar way in which ‘ereb’ and ‘boker’ are matched together has parallels elsewhere in the old testament (e.g. Exodus 27:21, Leviticus 24:3, Daniel 8:26) where it has the idea of being ongoing or coninuous. The use of ‘ereb’ and ‘boker’ in Genesis 1 does not prove that 24 hour ‘Yom’s are intended.
It is also often claimed that the comparison between the creation and the week of six work days and a sabbath in Exodus 20:9-11 proves that the days of creation must be 24 hours, however this assumes that the comparison is one of identity rather than analogy. Humans do not work in the same way that God works nor do we rest in the same way that God rests, so it is rather more likely that normal weeks are analagous to the creation week rather than identical to the creation week and we cannot assume that the length of the days will be identical. God also instigated a pattern of six years followed by a sabbath year (Leviticus 25:1-7) which appears to also be based on the creation analogy (though not explicitly stated).
Does BBcode to work here? Earlier attempts didn’t show up in the live preview.
Phil, thanks for your comment. It is very long, so I’ll come back to some parts of it later, but yess BB code (or a subset thereof) works, but does not show up in the preview. Yes I read the entire thread that I linked to, and yes I looked at young earth sites too – to get both perspectives. Did you read the article I linked to on AiG?
[quote]to get to this conclusion from the Biblical text involves a number of significant and questionable assumptions which you seem to brush over.[/quote]
Perhaps, but this doesn’t make my assumptions wrong or unreasonable.
[quote]In 2 Peter 3:16 Peter says regarding Paul’s Epistles "He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."[/quote]
The ignorant and unstable referred to here are unsaved (probably jewish writers) and thus don’t have the Holy Spirit to help them understand scripture – hence it is to their destruction. Thus, we can understand scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit.
[quote]This can also be seen in the creation accounts by comparing the events of day 6 of the creation with chapter 2 which shows that the events were actually rather more complicated than would be ‘obvious’ from the account in Chapter 1 (e.g. that Adam and Eve were not created simultaneously). Care must be taken to find the correct interpretation of scripture not just the obvious one that might be easy to teach to children.[/quote]
Yes, but the only reason to use any other interpretation is to align scripture with science which is based on a uniformity, which scripture clearly throws into question if not debunks altogether e.g. Adam, Eve and many of their decendants lived significantly longer than we do today, which contradicts uniformitarian views.
Furthermore with regards to your references to the gospel accounts being difficult to align with a cursory glance, I agree, but we are dealing with a single text (Genesis) which seems abundantly clear to any casual reader – not with the gospels, so it would be unfair to impose challenges associated with these (all accurate) accounts on this single account.
As to dating, it has been shown that dating techniques are far from accurate. Rocks that were created by molten lava by the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980 have been dated as millions of years old. My understanding of dating is that it is also based on uniformitarian principles about the build up of carbon and other materials, presupposing that the build up of these things is uniform over time, not accounting for events such as the flood, etc which could easily account for many of these long periods. Personally, I am far more inclined to believe the straight forward understanding of Genesis than that of science which is based on theory.
Next you go through my points. I will deal with your rebuttals in the order they come.
[b]Regarding point 1[/b]
[quote]Long before the discovery of scientific evidence for an old earth, the reading of Genesis 1 has been recognised as problematic (and some early writers suggesting that the creation took longer than six 24 days). The issue of trying to fit the events of Genesis 2 into day 6 of Genesis 1 has long been known to be a problem such that some jewish writers concluded that Eve was not the woman created on day 6 and that Adam must have had a wife before Eve (‘Lillith’). [/quote]
Presumably these would be the same Jewish writers that Peter was referring to in 2 Peter 3:16 – the passage above who were not saved?
I don’t see that the events on day two are a problem. If Adam was looking for a helper (which seems from the staight forward reading of scripture to be what he was doing), he would probably not look among the centipedes, insects, birds or fish, so it would not necessitate naming every single species , but rather more generally or even speciofically just mammals or land animals. I don’t buy the Lillith theory at all.
[quote]it is incorrect to think that earlier young-earth interpretations were undisputed and problem free.[/quote]
I don’t think I suggested that it was without challenges, however, orthodoxy has been largely consistent.
[b]Regarding point 2[/b]
[quote]It is rediculous to assert that the evidence as "only hypothesis to support atheism" [/quote]
Modern science starts with an assumption and then sets about to prove or disprove that assumption. These assumptions are largely humanistic or darwinian in nature.
However, even if the dating techniques are correct (see above), it at best establishes that the earth looks old, not necessarily requiring that the earth is old.
[b]Regarding point 3[/b]
[quote]This assumes that it was the intention of the author to specify exactly how long the creationion occurred over. Considering the ambiguity overs what reference frame the creation account is written from (is it from God’s perspective or some other hypothetical observer?) makes the issue of time far from straight forward (particarly if it is written from God’s perspective, what does it mean for a day of time for have passed for God?) and it is quite possible that the author did not intend to address this issue.[/quote]
This reads like you don’t think scripture can have any objective truth… – that is that it is unknowable, however, I know this is not your sandpoint, therefore, I must assume that you are just throwing a spanner in the works here.
When interpreting scripture we are looking for the intended meaning of the author in writing the text. To be clear, the author here is God who is moving the man (Moses) to write His inspired words – not thoughts but words.
It is fair to expect that God would a)know how to make something clear to us and b) is writing it for the benefit of the human reader and so c) wrote so that the human reader can clearly understand the text. The nature of the text is historical, not poetic, and thus we can assume that the intended purpose was to convey an intended level of understanding of the events. The Bible is not written to reveal everything about the natural world to us, so I don’t pretend that the record is complete, however, it was intended to tell us how the world came about, so my point about natural reading stands.
[quote]It is dangerous to assume that Biblical authors intended to answer all the questions we have on the topics they wrote about. In the case of the four gospels the order of events varies, hence it was evidently not the intention of the authors (at least three of them) to provide a chronology of events even though that might seem an obvious thing to do from our modern point of view.[/quote]
It is more dangerous to assume that science is at least as accurate as the Bible.
And as discussed before, we are not dealing with the gospels here but the writings of Moses which seem to have a clear purpose.
[b]Regarding points 4 and 9[/b]
[quote]The goal of interpreting scripture is to determine and convey the intended meaning, and where appropriate other sources of information should be used to help determine that meaning including history, science and geography.[/quote]
There is a big difference between using these things to interpret scripture and reading them into scripture. Furthermore, the standard hermenutic tools include context, grammer, semantics (word meanings) and historic and cultural backgrounds (which includes geography). However, most hermeneutics books (at least all the ones I have) don’t consider science to be a valid rule of interpretation (i.e. hermeneutic) and don’t even mention it in any significant way.
[b]Regarding sections five and six[/b]
[quote]The notion that old earth creationists in general believe that each of the days were of equal length in millions or billions of years is a "straw man" argument. Even amongst day-age theorists most regard the days as being periods of time of indeterminate length and for the intermittent day and fiat-parenthesis theory the length of the day is not an issue.
[/quote]
So how old was Adam given he lived through part of day six and all of day seven? If day 7 was a literal day why not day 6 or the others? How do inconsistently lengthed days make more sense than consistent ones? There is no rationale for inconsistent lengths of days at all – less than for non-literal 24 hour days, and certainly less than literal 24 hour days.
I will leave the rest for now as my brain is tired as it is almost 3am.
Phil, (and Darryl)
I haven’t read your comments – only scanned and note it is very long.
Why is it that you have to use so many words to explain your point?
I pray you spend as much, if not more time writing about your daily findings in God’s Word for your own mind to meditate on and grow on.
This is something I need to do more and realise how little I spend on reading, prayer and meditation in comparison to other things in my life.
For the cross and and only for the cross!
Phil,
A thought:
Have you ever considered that when God created this world he created it so that it was operational from the word go – say at the close of day six being six normal 24hr days?
So if it were carbon dated at this point in time it may come up being 100 million years old but in fact only be six days old.
Something to think about.
Has this been considered in your thinking or perhaps in the old earth creation thinkers?
Darryl
I did read the article you linked to at AIG. I had come across Humphrey’s theory a while back. Based on my limited knowledge of General relativity I don’t think it would work (at least not in a way that will produce what we see in the universe), though I am no expert on the topic (but there have been a number of critics of the theory who are rather more familiar with it). The theory doesn’t seem to to have gained much support over the last 13 years and there have been some quite major developments in cosmology over this time.
[quote]Yes I read the entire thread that I linked to, and yes I looked at young earth sites too – to get both perspectives.[/quote]
Did you look at any old earth sites? (I don’t think the discussion thread really qualifies as an indepth look at the arguements for an old earth.)
[quote]The ignorant and unstable referred to here are unsaved (probably jewish writers) and thus don’t have the Holy Spirit to help them understand scripture – hence it is to their destruction. Thus, we can understand scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit.[/quote]
Christians are certainly capable of misunderstanding and distorting scripture as is evidenced by the varieties of views on various theological issues on various issues amongst Christians. I certainly would not regard all those who have differing theological views based upon differing (and in my opinion faulty) Bible interpretations as being without the Holy Spirit and unsaved. The fact that that there is the ministry of teacher in the church (1 Co.12:28, Eph.4:11) indicates that Bible is not always easy to be understood.
[quote]As to dating, it has been shown that dating techniques are far from accurate. Rocks that were created by molten lava by the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980 have been dated as millions of years old. My understanding of dating is that it is also based on uniformitarian principles about the build up of carbon and other materials, presupposing that the build up of these things is uniform over time, not accounting for events such as the flood, etc which could easily account for many of these long periods. Personally, I am far more inclined to believe the straight forward understanding of Genesis than that of science which is based on theory.[/quote]
The invalid dating from the Mt St Helen’s eruption deposit came as a result of using a particular technique on an incompatible sample (not all rocks are suitale for all techniques). Based on your comment, you presumably aren’t very familiar with Radiometric dating techniques If you like some background there is an article written from a Christian perspective at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/wiens2002.pdf with part 14 of the appendix addressing the particular example you gave.
[quote]Presumably these would be the same Jewish writers that Peter was referring to in 2 Peter 3:16 – the passage above who were not saved?[/quote]
The first known mention of the legend that Lillith was Adam’s first wife was in the ‘Alphabet of Ben-Sira’ (circa. A.D. 700-1000) though when it first originated is not known. While I don’t believe the legend either, its mere existance shows that some commentators saw that there was a problem fitting all the events of Genesis Chapter 2 into a 24 hour period long before the scientific evidence for an old-earth was known.
[quote]I don’t see that the events on day two are a problem. If Adam was looking for a helper (which seems from the staight forward reading of scripture to be what he was doing), he would probably not look among the centipedes, insects, birds or fish, so it would not necessitate naming every single species , but rather more generally or even speciofically just mammals or land animals.[/quote]
Should I take it you don’t interpret "all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field" (Ge.2:20) in a strictly literal/ "plain meaning" sense?
[quote]Modern science starts with an assumption and then sets about to prove or disprove that assumption. These assumptions are largely humanistic or darwinian in nature.[/quote]
What do you actually mean by this? Is radioactive decay humanistic? Are Ice core layers Darwinian? This appears to be a major mischaracterisation of science. Though obviously many atheists would wish to portray it in this way, rather than concede that science relies upon some inherently assumptions (which makes attempts to prove atheism by science philosophically shooting themselves in the foot). A lot could be said on this.
[quote]However, even if the dating techniques are correct (see above), it at best establishes that the earth looks old, not necessarily requiring that the earth is old.[/quote]
see below
[quote]This reads like you don’t think scripture can have any objective truth… – that is that it is unknowable, however, I know this is not your sandpoint, therefore, I must assume that you are just throwing a spanner in the works here.[/quote]
Actually on the issue of the time of Genesis 1, I think that there really is something fundamentally far from straightforward and perhaps uncomprehendable to finite humans confined by time. If Genesis 1 only gave a list of physical events that occurred during the creation it might be straightforward to give a specific time length period of creation. However Genesis 1 does not just report what physical events occurred but also what God did, being based around a series of declarations (‘fiats’) by God. God transcends time (and would have actually created time) and his perspective on time is not confined in the same way as our own. The Bible indicates this differing perspective on time e.g. "For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night" (Psalm 90:4) and "Now, dear friends, do not let this one thing escape your notice, that a single day is like a thousand years with the Lord and a thousand years are like a single day." (2 Peter 3:8). It may not be a sensible question to try to define how long it takes for things to happen from God’s perspective.
[quote]It is more dangerous to assume that science is at least as accurate as the Bible. [/quote]
Again you are forgetting that the issue is Biblical interpretation not the Bible itself.
[quote]However, most hermeneutics books (at least all the ones I have) don’t consider science to be a valid rule of interpretation (i.e. hermeneutic) and don’t even mention it in any significant way.[/quote]
That might be a feature of the authors you read.
[quote]So how old was Adam given he lived through part of day six and all of day seven? If day 7 was a literal day why not day 6 or the others?[/quote]
From the day-age theory perspective there is no inconsistency in saying that Adam lived through part of one period of time and into another period of time and lived to be 930 years old. It can be noted that the seventh has not necessarily ended, the Genesis account does not record its end and the discussion of God’s rest in Hebrews 4:1-13 seems to imply that it is either continuing or perhaps yet to come.
[quote]I will leave the rest for now as my brain is tired as it is almost 3am. [/quote]Sorry to keep you up so late.
Simon
[quote]Why is it that you have to use so many words to explain your point?[/quote]
It is big topic and a lot of acussations needed to be addressed.
[quote]Have you ever considered that when God created this world he created it so that it was operational from the word go – say at the close of day six being six normal 24hr days?
So if it were carbon dated at this point in time it may come up being 100 million years old but in fact only be six days old.[/quote]
The technical name for the position that God created an appearance of age is Gossism after Phillip Henry Gosse who proposed the idea in his 1857 book Omphalos (‘Omphalos’ being the greek word for navel – Gosse argued that Adam would have had one despite not being born). Most of the indicators of long age are quite subtle (such as particular rocks having specific ratios of different isotopes) not required for the normal functionality of the world and hence would only serve the purpose of leading us to believe that the earth really was that old. It is for this reason that most Christians (who have looked into the issue) reject the appearance of age arguement as it implies that God is deliberately deceiving people (though I suppose for some Christians, particularly those with an anti-intellectual bias this would actually be an attraction). One interesting point coming from this is that would it really be any more difficult for God to have ‘recently’ created an universe that really was billions of years old rather than one that just appeared to be billions of years old? The idea of a ‘recently’ created old earth is not as nonsensical as might first be thought as even without considering that God transcends time, it is generally accepted (based on relativity theory) that time is not absolute but based on the reference frame. The idea that God creatwsd time as well as space recently is a possibility, but this would not satisfy all young earth creationists as they would still have issues such as the death of animals prior to the fall (though this is not issue on which the Bible states a view).