creation and evolution

[kod]

Recently our church had a presentation from Answers in Genesis [www.answersingenesis.org] which believes that God created the world literally in six 24 hour days.   I certainly believe that God created the earth and all that is on it, but I find it difficult to reconcile scientific knowledge with this interpretation. 

One argument that I found interesting was that death came through sin so there could have been no dead animals (eg dinosaur fossils) before Adam and Eve.  I wonder what others think.

 

 

[paulewog]

That is true - no death before sin. The Bible is in total agreement to TRUE science. The origin/making of the world, however, is not science... it can't be, by the very definition of science.

/me debates whether or not to move this to the Creation/Evolution forum...

 

[seebs]

God said that, *in the day* that Adam and Eve ate from that tree, they would die.

Did their bodies become corpses within twenty-four hours?

Either God is lying, or a day isn't always 24 hours, or "death" is sometimes a spiritual question, not a physical one.

I'd like to point out that I've been told that there's a clear demarcation in human history, where suddenly the idea of ritual burial swept across the world.

I tend to think that that's the point described; the point at which spiritual death came to us, and it started to *matter* what happened to bodies that weren't moving anymore.

BTW, paulewog, I'm pretty sure that origin/making of the world could be perfectly good science; after all, if we wait around, we occasionally get to see other planets forming, and if we give it a billion years or two, we might get to see life start on another world.

 

[paulewog]

Ok, so who has documented that new origin, seebs? Who observed it?

Death merely means "separation." Yes, in that case it meant spiritual death. That can be seen through the context.

 

[seebs]

Well, if death merely means separation, then we have no problem at all finding fossils long before Adam and Eve existed, because animals don't have the problem of joining with God, or separation from God.

It amazes me how quickly certain words are given meanings totally unlike their normal meanings, and other words are expected to be held to precisely according to the most common dictionary definition. Seems to me like the entire exercise is irrelevant, at that point; we can just pick and choose which words are "interpreted differently because of context" and which ones are "clearly literal", and we can get anything from evolution to Last Tuesdayism.

 

[Andrew]

Hebrew for "day"

The Hebrew word for "day" in Genesis 1 is "yome" (Strong's 03117). It can mean a 24-hour day or the daylight portion of it (day as distinct from the night).

Without exception, in the Hebrew Old Testament, the word "yome" is never used to refer to a long period of time, as in thousands or millions of years.

In Hebrew, should the word "yome" be used in an indefinite sense, it will be clearly indicated by the context that the literal meaning is not intended.

First-time use not symbolic

Some people say that the word "day" in Genesis is used symbolically.

This is impossible as a word cannot be symbolic the first time it is used. It can only be used symbolically if it first has a literal meaning.

For example, we are told that Jesus is the "bread of life". We know what this means because we understand the literal meaning of "bread", and are able to apply it symbolically to Jesus. The word "bread" cannot be used in this sense unless it first has a literal meaning.

Likewise, the word "day" cannot be used symbolically the first time it appears in Genesis, as this is where God introduced the word "day" and defined it as He created it.

Some might argue that this point is flawed because Job is an earlier book, in the sense that Job lived before the time of Moses. But this is to imply that the Holy Spirit was outdated when He inspired Moses to write Genesis, and that He made a mistake when He put Genesis as the first book of the Bible.

The Bible itself defines "day"

Many Christians forget that the Holy Spirit himself has defined the word "day" the first time it appears in the Bible. A basic rule of thumb in Bible study is to let the Bible interpret the Bible.

* Genesis 1:5
5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day.

The first time the word "day" is used, it is defined as "the light" to distinguish it from "the darkness" called "night".

The phrase, "and there was evening, and there was morning", is used for each of the other five days of creation. This shows that there was a clearly established cycle of days and nights (periods of light and periods of darkness).

Incidentally, those who argue that the word "day" in the above verse means millions of years must answer the question, "What is a night?"