Exodus 20:9-11 (Creation)

[Queller]

What do you mean and what would the allegory represent?

That "day" represents a symbolic time in reference to concepts with which no Bronze age citizen would be familiar, namely the idea of hundreds of millions of years of past time.

Can you suggest examples from Genesis 1 (especially) and 2, particularly ones with ancient parallels, particularly ones within the Pentateuch? Granted there are ancient "literary devices" in the Pentateuch, but there should be some specificity and controls behind your implied proposal.

No, probably not with the Pentateuch. But I'm curious as to why that should matter? The Bible is full of allegory, wouldn't you agree?

(See my posts # 45 and # 59 on this thread for some context about my own thoughts, the latter of which attempts an initial responsive to the "created mature" argument of Thir7ySev3n.)

See my posts above regarding the difference between "created mature" and "created with history".

Schroeder's idea of God switching His frame of reference at the creation of Adam is an interesting thought experiment, but nothing more.

Xalith has given us one example (the Sabbath in creation and in the Exodus Decalogue account) linking the creation with God's intent for His people (rest like God did). Did you have something like this in mind?

I see no reason why an allegory in Genesis 1 would not be repeated in Exodus 20, nor again in Luke 13, especially given that they all refer to the same idea; namely six days of work and one of rest.

 

[Kenny'sID]

The concept of hundreds of millions of years of elapsed time.

So you are saying Moses couldn't count high enough so God just quickly threw the 6 day explanation at him instead of say at the very least telling him it entailed "a lot of time" or the more in depth truth? And that's at the least, I'd guess Moses was perfectly capable of understanding massive amounts of time/years

You can't be serious. I mean for God to sum it up like that if the truth was other than 6 days, would be ridiculous.

 

[Queller]

No, the bible doesn't say. God knows. A great comfort to the believer.

The earth's foundation is far older than life, which is why its not a huge ball of mud yet as my dad used to say. Bob asked, could God create "old" life? God can do anything, new or old. But He doesn't need anyone's understanding to do it a certain way either.

What life God created on the third day required sunlight to thrive as He commanded it. So having forming the Sun, etc. on the fourth day? Something is screwy there to human understanding. It's our understanding that cannot grasp the process of creation, not God's. No problem. I don't have to understand why my eyelids blink automatically, just that they do.

Nor do you have to understand how an internal combustion engine works to be able to drive to the store to get a gallon of milk.

However, just because we may not understand how something works, does not mean that they are forever more, unknowable. That is one of the biggest things that cause knowledge to advance, the attempt to understand the unknown.

Some YECs seem to believe that since we don't understand something right now means we will never understand it.

 

[Queller]

So...it would appear.

But in order to believe that, one must reduce God to something less than all powerful and fully capable of making fools out of the wise, while saving the lost and the faithful.

Oh - that's right - He said that!

Of course God can do something, but that something (lying to mankind) is against God's nature. Or do you believe that God routinely lies to us?

And what of the faithful and wise? Both concepts can exist in the same person.

 

[Queller]

So you are saying Moses couldn't count high enough so God just quickly threw the 6 day explanation at him instead of say at the very least telling him it entailed "a lot of time" or the more in depth truth?

I'm saying that God had no need to explain concepts that Moses wouldn't understand when He already at hand a concept Moses would understand.

And that's at the least, I'd guess Moses was perfectly capable of understanding massive amounts of time/years

On what do you base that opinion?

You can't be serious. I mean for God to sum it up like that if the truth was other than 6 days, would be ridiculous.

Why? When you speak to your children of complicated processes they don't have the knowledge or experience to understand, do you not couch it in terms that they will understand and/or are familiar with?

Heck, lots of intelligent, educated people today have a problem understanding the concept of millions (not to mention billions) of years.

 

[Kenny'sID]

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[ScottA]

Of course God can do something, but that something (lying to mankind) is against God's nature. Or do you believe that God routinely lies to us?

And what of the faithful and wise? Both concepts can exist in the same person.

You misunderstand. God has not lied by creating in the way that He has, saying "Follow me." If they do not follow when given a choice to follow their own understanding or God's understanding - then the illusion is fools gold, and they more foolish than faithful.

So then, who is faithful as well as wise (in his own sight) - no one. The truly wise, do not trust in their own understanding, knowing that it is a snare to catch the unfaithful.

He warned of it, and foretold it, and it has come to pass just as He said.

 

[Kenny'sID]

I'm saying that God had no need to explain concepts that Moses wouldn't understand when He already at hand a concept Moses would understand.

On what do you base that opinion?

Why? When you speak to your children of complicated processes they don't have the knowledge or experience to understand, do you not couch it in terms that they will understand and/or are familiar with?

Heck, lots of intelligent, educated people today have a problem understanding the concept of millions (not to mention billions) of years.

I was going to go into depth but the concept is too absurd to spend any more time on. Suffice to say, still not buying that God couldn't have done a little better than that even if it were somewhat complicated.

 

[Hoghead1]

Just for consideration, Peter was supposed to have said, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Is this a limitation of God (why not 10,000 years as one day), or is it that it is a moot point to God who declares the end from the beginning, or is there a connection to to the days of the week, or the hours that are in a day, or beyond?

If I say what does the word dog mean to you? The answer you give will be according to what your present understanding of this word means to you; the word time, or the even the word God is no different.

Yu are in fact following a man-made religious ideology, that constructed by religious fundamentalists, the Bible Belt. I think your major problem here is you fail to realize that, fail to appreciate the fact your ideology is just one small part of Christianity.

 

[Queller]

You misunderstand. God has not lied by creating in the way that He has, saying "Follow me."

The problem arises when we have to make a choice, the words of fallible though inspired men 4,000 years ago or the fingerprints God left in the world that we see today?

If they do not follow when given a choice to follow their own understanding or God's understanding - then the illusion is fools gold, and they more foolish than faithful.

Every understanding of God is man's understanding of God.

So then, who is faithful as well as wise (in his own sight) - no one. The truly wise, do not trust in their own understanding, knowing that it is a snare to catch the unfaithful.

Does that apply as much to to "wise" Biblical literalists as it does to scientists?

He warned of it, and foretold it, and it has come to pass just as He said.

 

[Hoghead1]

I don't know that ancient earth would drive anyone to or from Christianity. Most folks don't give their lives to Christ because they think the earth is young. They do it because they realise they need him. The age of the earth is irrelevant to that choice.

But what is relevant to faith is the Word of God as a whole. Do we believe it or don't we. If we choose what we believe and don't believe then that puts us as humans in the position of judging the truthfulness of God's word. That's a very bad plan. We become the final arbiter of truth and not the Word of God.

God is very clear in Genesis and Exodus that he creates the heavens and earth in six days. Fully formed and ready to go. It didn't grow from an ameoba or whatever. Which is he created it aged. He wasn't deceptive or lying as he said what he did. Its man's faulty science and faulty methods that questionable.



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Judge not, that you be not judged. You are setting up the fundamentalist version of the Bible as the final arbitrator of truth here. Not the Bible per se and alone, but how fundamentalism interprets it. OK, may be that works for you here. But others of us feel the need to question how accurate fundamentalist ideology is here and seek more viable explorations and understandings of Scripture.

 

[Queller]

I was going to go into depth but the concept is too absurd to spend any more time on.

Using allegory to teach something is an absurd concept?

Suffice to say, still not buying that God couldn't have done a little better than that even if it were somewhat complicated.

Well, that's your opinion. We all have one.

 

[AFrazier]

I personally choose to believe that it is real but perceptual. I don't really care to argue the point, but just to throw it out there as food for thought ... God lives outside of time. Peter makes the statement that a day to God is like a thousand years, and likely not in a literal sense but in a perceptual one, meaning that a day to God can be a long time to us, despite any exact definitions of the evening and the morning being one day. That's how we perceive time, but not God. And so I don't have any issue with a literal creation in a literal three days, and a science that matches the events stretched out over a period of time, when we're all looking at the whole thing according to a defined linear timeline ... while God is outside of time and perceives days differently as far as Peter's testimony allows.

Further, someone made a point that I think has merit, and is an argument I've brought up before myself. God doesn't waste time explaining things like physics and geology to people in the Bible. It's not impossible that what we were told is just a condensed version of what we needed to know. It's a history being given to people who were still in awe of the iron chariot of the Hittites. They were barely out of the bronze age, if they were, indeed, out of the bronze age and not still in it as the iron age was coming upon them. To them the idea of paper was animal skin or dried out reeds of papyrus. We're not exactly dealing with rocket scientists just yet. So I don't find it out of the way for God to explain it as though he were explaining it to simpletons. We all do very similar things with our own children when they want to know things that we can't possibly explain without the information going so far over their heads that it seeds the clouds for a thunderstorm.

Again, I'm not really looking to argue this. It's not a topic that has any real value for me. But I have thought on it in the past and spent a bit of time looking into it and considering it from multiple perspectives, and I don't see anything contrary to the Bible in accepting the possibility of a duality of meaning.

And please, keep comments of blasphemy and heresy to yourself, which seem to be thrown around with abandon on this specific thread. We don't all have to agree with literal creationism. Alternate points of view are academically acceptable in mainstream Christianity, no matter how strongly you feel that the earth was made in six days, that it's flat, etc.

 

[KWCrazy]

How can you have a solar day with no sun?

Light existed on day one.
A rotation of the earth relative to a single point of light creates an evening and morning.
We don't have a point in our universe called light. Now we have the sun, moon and stars which came from the light and became the universe we see around us.

Then why is it still expanding?

Why wouldn't it continue?

 

[KWCrazy]

The length of creation week does not date the earth.
They are seperate concepts.

No, the genealogies from Adam to Christ date the earth.

 

[ScottA]

The problem arises when we have to make a choice, the words of fallible though inspired men 4,000 years ago or the fingerprints God left in the world that we see today?

Every understanding of God is man's understanding of God.

Does that apply as much to to "wise" Biblical literalists as it does to scientists?

1. It is only a problem for those who begin to trust in themselves instead of God. The end of the scientific experiment, never comes until it is too late...leaving science only to have proven a multitude of steps on a path they could not prove, a path going where they knew not.
2. Not every understanding of God is man's understanding. And yet...your comment does indeed explain your understanding...as simply being your own.
3. There is wise, and then there is wise. The wisdom of men is not the wisdom of God. But we have the mind of Christ (God).

 

[KWCrazy]

Light, darkness, day, night, void, as, is, became, are, etc. are very specific in Hebrew contextually. Light isn't extrapolated to some future concept (like a sun or moon,) it means illumination in every sense of the word. That includes enlightenment from God, or those enlightened by God. Something serious happened in the first AGE. The apocryphal is very clear about this first AGE/DAY.

No, that's something you're reading into it. It isn't that complicated.
In the beginning means our beginning. God always was. God will always be.
God created the heavens and the earth in six days. Get used to it. Nothing evolved. Speciation came from creation to the flood, and then from the flood to present day. Traits were lost or accentuated, but new traits never popped into being.

If it said light and darkness was separated on the first day before a sun or moon, it MEANS IT.

I've never said otherwise. There was light. The light became the sun, moon and stars on day 4.

Yom does NOT always mean a day or specified period of time.

When used with the qualifiers of numbered days or a morning and night, it means a single solar day 100% of the time.

Moses was not sinless (perfect) in his generations, he was BLAMELESS - having not defiled his DNA.

On the contrary. he was a murderer, and for that he could not enter the promised land.

 

[Queller]

A rotation of the earth relative to a single point of light creates an evening and morning.

Until Day 4 there is no "single point of light"

My question remains, how can you have a solar day with no sun"

Why wouldn't it continue?

So God designed it to keep expanding and, through that continuing expansion, appear to have been expanding for 13+ billion years when it is only 6,000 years old?

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

No, the genealogies from Adam to Christ date the earth.

The numbers of the ages of the Patriarchs are honerific numbers, stated as such so that we are in sufficient awe of their importance to us. The geneologies we have are incomplete.

 

[KWCrazy]

Man did not evolve. Those who claim man evolved are lying as proven by the clear text of the Scriptures.
Fish did not evolve. Those who claim fish evolved are lying as proven by the clear text of the Scriptures.
Whales did not evolve. Those who claim whales evolved are lying as proven by the clear text of the Scriptures.
Trees did not evolve. Those who claim trees evolved are lying as proven by the clear text of the Scriptures.
The great flood happened. Those who claim it did not happen are lying as proven by the clear text of the Scriptures.
Case closed.