Creation vs. Evolution

[TxHockeyGuy]

Why not? It becomes clear at the very beginning of Genesis that God is not talking with modern people who understand what an epoch is. To these naive individuals, God laid out how the Universe came to be. Not in terms of precise times and places but in "baby talk", so to speak, so that his people would understand just one thing: God is in control. I talk completely differently to my son now that he is 17 than when he was an infant. Holding Genesis to the same standards of clarity and precision as we would hold Matthew is taking it out of it's historical context. In fact Hebrews opens up with this very thought:

Hebrews 1:1 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. NIV

Like any good Father, God speaks to us differently as we mature. The same can be said for us individually as we listen to His Spirit.

BTW, a good word study of the Hebrew shows that the word "day" used in Genesis really means a "warm period" or a "working period". It had nothing to do with a 24 hour time span. We really have no clue how long these "working periods" lasted, and just how active God was in the process.

II Peter 3:8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. NIV

I have been in this debate many times with many people and have always taken a view very similar to that of NetDoc. How could you possibly explain something like evolution to the people of times past? I like the passages you quoted and was not aware of the actual original Hebrew and its meaning. I'm going to have to research that further.

 

[AXL72]

ahhh, so u mean evolution is like god creating the millstone and humans evolving it into a gun?

so if the bible were rewritten to account for all that we have evolved to, we would see the change from, "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea", to , "yo yo yo, check it out...anyone who even thinks of dissing my peeps who believe in God would be begging to get their @$$ capped than dealing with the wrath of the almighty homeboy, God"

I get it...creationism and evolution hand in hand...WORD UP

 

[Thalassamania]

ahhh, so u mean evolution is like god creating the millstone and humans evolving it into a gun?

so if the bible were rewritten to account for all that we have evolved to, we would see the change from, "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea", to , "yo yo yo, check it out...anyone who even thinks of dissing my peeps who believe in God would be begging to get their @$$ capped than dealing with the wrath of the almighty homeboy, God"

Now that really IS funny!

 

[MikeFerrara]

Why not? It becomes clear at the very beginning of Genesis that God is not talking with modern people who understand what an epoch is. To these naive individuals, God laid out how the Universe came to be. Not in terms of precise times and places but in "baby talk", so to speak, so that his people would understand just one thing: God is in control. I talk completely differently to my son now that he is 17 than when he was an infant. Holding Genesis to the same standards of clarity and precision as we would hold Matthew is taking it out of it's historical context. In fact Hebrews opens up with this very thought:

Hebrews 1:1 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. NIV

Like any good Father, God speaks to us differently as we mature. The same can be said for us individually as we listen to His Spirit.

BTW, a good word study of the Hebrew shows that the word "day" used in Genesis really means a "warm period" or a "working period". It had nothing to do with a 24 hour time span. We really have no clue how long these "working periods" lasted, and just how active God was in the process.

II Peter 3:8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. NIV

Gee thanks Pete. I must have read about 15 papers on the subject and my head hurts.

I can't claim any expertise in the hebrew language so all I could do is sift through all the articles and try to make sense of them. Based on what I think were the most complete analysis of the text, I think the author clearly meant a day to mean a day and not an epoch.

I certainly did find articles that claimed an age or epoch type meaning but they all seem based on how long it should take for those things to be created based on what we think science tells us about creation rather than on a self contained meaning of the text within the Bible. ie apply what we know scientifically and the text must mean this. That's the only way it seems to work. Without that injection of the outside source, I don't think one would ever conclude that "yom" in this useage means anything but a plain old day.

Speaking for myself, I don't want to get into the habit of playing with what seems to be the clear meaning of scriptural text to make it fit what I think I know about the world.

Anyway, I included a link to what seems a pretty thourough treatment of the subject and the "conclusions" but a quick google search yields dozens of articles on the subject.


From http://www.grisda.org/origins/21005.htm

VI. CONCLUSIONS

This paper investigated the meaning of creation "days." It has considered key arguments in favor of a figurative, non-literal meaning of the creation "days." It found them to be wanting on the basis of genre investigation, literary considerations, grammatical study, syntactical usages, and semantic connections. The cumulative evidence, based on comparative, literary, linguistic and other considerations, converges on every level, leading to the singular conclusion that the designation yôm, "day," in Genesis 1 means consistently a literal 24-hour day.
The author of Genesis 1 could not have produced more comprehensive and all-inclusive ways to express the idea of a literal "day" than the ones that were chosen. There is a complete lack of indicators from prepositions, qualifying expressions, construct phrases, semantic-syntactical connections, and so on, on the basis of which the designation "day" in the creation week could be taken to be anything different than a regular 24-hour day. The combinations of the factors of articular usage, singular gender, semantic-syntactical constructions, time boundaries, and so on, corroborated by the divine promulgations in such Pentateuchal passages as Exodus 20:8-11 and Exodus 31:12-17, suggest uniquely and consistently that the creation "day" is meant to be literal, sequential, and chronological in nature.

 

[H2Andy]

Mike:

certainly, while literally saying "a day" (which is what that paper shows, i believe, correctly) the author could mean something else. that paper, by the way, is not impressive. dude just concludes that "day" means "day." well, doh ... that's what it says...

but it could be a metaphor. for example, while he is literally saying "a day passed, and then God did X" he might be using the term "day" figuratively.

OR

he might not be aware that a day wasn't a day. he just didn't understand the concept of eons and eons of millions of years, and is expressing a concept (God created the world in a set amount of time) in terms he understands (days)

so, what that story says to me, is that a divine precense (God) created everything, and he did it in an orderly and logical way.

how long He took is not really the focus of the story here. the focus is the orderly creation leading up to man, the apex of creation.

to me, reading this story to mean God created the world in so many days is the worst kind of literal interpretation of ancient wisdom scriptures

 

[MikeFerrara]

Mike:

certainly, while literally saying "a day" (which is what that paper shows, i believe, correctly) the author could mean something else

it could be a metaphor. for example, while he is literally saying "a day passed, and then God did X" he might be using the term day figuratively.

for example, in the following statement:

I will love you a thousand days, and a thousand more

the meaning is not the literal meaning (i'll love you 2,000 days) but rather the implication of a long amount of time, almost "for ever" is implied

likewise, "day" could be used in this way (a set amount of time).

you need to parse two issues here:

1. what the writer wrote; and

2. what the writer

just a thought

I understand and there are plenty of folks who propose exactly that but I don't think that's the case here. It's long but if you get a chance read the article. And like I said there are many others too.

 

[H2Andy]

dang i revised my entry while you were responding

 

[lamont]

“The Old Testament was written by my people, the Jewish people. But that book wasn’t good enough for you Christians. You guys said, ‘We got a better book and a great new character. You’re going to love it.’ And yet you are constantly interpreting our book. It’s not your book! A lot of the problems we have in the country is that you Christians interpret the Old Testament. You don’t see rabbis going on TV interpreting the New Testament.” -- Lewis Black

 

[fire_diver]

Like any good Father, God speaks to us differently as we mature. The same can be said for us individually as we listen to His Spirit.

Then we as a human race, must be teenagers. Most everyone thinks they, individually, know what is best and don't care for, or even want, to hear what the father has to say.

FD

 

[Tassie_Rohan]

I know quite a few Christian geologists.

Their take on things is that that the 6 days of creation is metaphorical: a ‘day’ refers to an epoch and/or an orderly sequence of events. A ‘day’ in the work of god could be to us a billion years. By studying the billions of years recorded in the geological record they are studying His complex work of creation.

I have no problem with this view. It’s the ‘6000 year old’ crowd and the belief that men walked with dinosaurs/Tertiary megafauna/everything else preserved in the fossil record that I fine tiring.

Cheers,
Rohan.