.
• Gen 1:5b . . And there was evening and there was morning, a first Day.
* There are two primary kinds of Days in the first chapter of Genesis. One is
a creation day and the other is a natural day. It's very important to keep
those two kinds of days distinct and separate in our thinking because they
are as unalike in size as stones and gravel.
According to Gen 1:24-31, God created humans and all terra critters on the
sixth Day; which has to include dinosaurs because on no other Day did God
create beasts but the sixth.
However; the sciences of geology and paleontology, in combination with
radiometric dating, strongly suggest that dinosaurs preceded humans by
several million years. So then, in my estimation, the Days of creation should
be taken to represent eras rather than 24-hour events. That's not an
unreasonable estimation; for example:
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were
created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven." (Gen 2:4)
The Hebrew word for "day" in that verse is yowm (yome) which is the very
same word for each of the six Days of God's creation labors. Since yowm in
Gen 2:4 refers to a period of time obviously much longer than a 24-hour
natural day; it justifies suggesting that each of the six Days of creation
were longer than 24 hours apiece too. In other words: yowm is ambiguous
and not all that easy to interpret sometimes.
Anyway; this "day" thing has been a stone in the shoe for just about
everybody who takes Genesis seriously. It's typically assumed that the Days
of creation consisted of twenty-four hours apiece; so Bible students end up
stumped when trying to figure out how to cope with the 4.5 billion-year age
of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic, Jurassic, Mesozoic,
Cenozoic, Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass extinction events.
_
• Gen 1:5b . . And there was evening and there was morning, a first Day.
* There are two primary kinds of Days in the first chapter of Genesis. One is
a creation day and the other is a natural day. It's very important to keep
those two kinds of days distinct and separate in our thinking because they
are as unalike in size as stones and gravel.
According to Gen 1:24-31, God created humans and all terra critters on the
sixth Day; which has to include dinosaurs because on no other Day did God
create beasts but the sixth.
However; the sciences of geology and paleontology, in combination with
radiometric dating, strongly suggest that dinosaurs preceded humans by
several million years. So then, in my estimation, the Days of creation should
be taken to represent eras rather than 24-hour events. That's not an
unreasonable estimation; for example:
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were
created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven." (Gen 2:4)
The Hebrew word for "day" in that verse is yowm (yome) which is the very
same word for each of the six Days of God's creation labors. Since yowm in
Gen 2:4 refers to a period of time obviously much longer than a 24-hour
natural day; it justifies suggesting that each of the six Days of creation
were longer than 24 hours apiece too. In other words: yowm is ambiguous
and not all that easy to interpret sometimes.
Anyway; this "day" thing has been a stone in the shoe for just about
everybody who takes Genesis seriously. It's typically assumed that the Days
of creation consisted of twenty-four hours apiece; so Bible students end up
stumped when trying to figure out how to cope with the 4.5 billion-year age
of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic, Jurassic, Mesozoic,
Cenozoic, Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass extinction events.
_
The age of the earth is a vexed and unproveable number. For example, the moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of about 50mm a year. If the moon, as some scientists believe, was a part of the earth billions of years ago, it should be far enough away so as not to affect tides. There would still be some tidal action due to the sun's gravity, but not as much as at present.
The problem with science is that it makes a great many assumptions. God's word simply makes statements of fact. We may not understand God's word, but we should accept its authority rather than the vain speculations of godless men.
Some examples of such assumptions:
Dark matter/dark energy. Far from proven and still nothing has been detected. Yet it supposedly accounts for 85% of all matter/energy
Evolution. Don't get me started.........
"Scientific" dietary recommendations. Since fat was made public enemy no 1, obesity has become a huge problem (pun intended)
The surface of the moon was supposedly 10 ft deep in dust. The lunar landing disproved that
Atomic theory bore little resemblance to reality as now known.
When I was a child, my science teacher told me that science knew everything there was to know and would solve all the problems of the world. That was over 60 years ago. Less is known for sure now than then and the world is headed to destruction. Science is not God.
- 4
- 1
- Show all