Gap Theorists, question:

~WildRoseCowgirl~ said:

How do you interprit Genesis 1:5? Genesis 1:5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

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"And the evening and the morning were the first day" means there was dark hours then light hours, which compose day one. The fact that God uses this formula to state the time shows that the days being spoken of are literal-24-hour-days. If, as evolutionists suppose, the days in Genesis are each a 1000-years, then we would have 500 dark years followed by 500 light years, and that would make up one "day." The earth would freeze and then burn! No life would be able to exist, and therefore no evolution could take place. Obviously evolution is wrong. In fact, you should check out this article at http COLON SLASH SLASH www DOT icr DOT org SLASH pubs SLASH imp SLASH imp-164 DOT htm (I can't post links yet, so just piece that url back together) which shows that evolution is racist and was the chief inspiration for the holocaust.

JohnJones said:

"And the evening and the morning were the first day" means there was dark hours then light hours, which compose day one. The fact that God uses this formula to state the time shows that the days being spoken of are literal-24-hour-days. If, as evolutionists suppose, the days in Genesis are each a 1000-years, then we would have 500 dark years followed by 500 light years, and that would make up one "day." The earth would freeze and then burn! No life would be able to exist, and therefore no evolution could take place. Obviously evolution is wrong.

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Oh, the persistance of a literalist mindset. You can grasp that TEs do not agree the Genesis days are literal, but still think they must literally stretch the days and nights into only 6 of them through a span of 4.5 billion years? It never occurs to you that if one is not taking the "days" literally one is not taking the "6" literally either?

In fact, you should check out this article at http COLON SLASH SLASH www DOT icr DOT org SLASH pubs SLASH imp SLASH imp-164 DOT htm (I can't post links yet, so just piece that url back together) which shows that evolution is racist and was the chief inspiration for the holocaust.

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Actually the chief inspiration for the holocaust was a long history of Christian anti-semitism. Same goes for racism. Many racist groups explicitly call themselves Christian and use the bible to support their beliefs. And many are literalists who support creationism and deny evolution.

You may (and I hope you do) deny that this is a valid representation of biblical truth and denounce it as a distortion of legitimate Christian teaching.

And the same goes for evolution. The fact that it has been misused to justify such evils no more makes evolution untrue than it makes the bible untrue.

JohnJones said:

evolution is racist and was the chief inspiration for the holocaust.

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~WildRoseCowgirl~ said:

But the Bible says that God made the earth in 6 days.

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yes, it does

~WildRoseCowgirl~ said:

I might be wrong but I believe that in Darwins book The Origin of Species says that there is "higher" races that have evolved more (whites) and those who have not evolved as much which are "lower" races. I know that hitler was "inspired: by I believe it was the communist mannefasto which also teaches the same concept, so in a way you can say that the holocaust perhaps came from that. But its more from just similar thinking in my mind.

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Here's Darwin's tretise on the races from chapter VII of the Descent of Man, where he goes into great lengths to show that any differences beteen races is comparatively minimial
Tommy
http://www.public.asu.edu/~jacquies/darwin-races.htm

~WildRoseCowgirl~ said:

But the Bible says that God made the earth in 6 days.

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Yes, and at the end of Revelations, He'll make it NEW again. I'm gonna guess in 6 days.

~WildRoseCowgirl~ said:

And later on in Chapter 2 verse 18 God says that it is not good for man to be alone, but if the Gap theory would be true, wouldn't there be thousands of years in between when He said that and when Eve was made?

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The "Gap" Theory says, between verses 1 and 2 there is an undisclosed amount of time, and possibly another creation which God completely destroyed.

I believe, everything pertaning to this creation (the one we live in) was done in 6 literal days. But i also believe God has not been sitting alone on His porch for all eternity... i.e. there was a previous creation (Gen 1:1); this creation (Gen 1:2+); just as there will be another (Rev 21:1) - and so on....

~WildRoseCowgirl~ said:

But the Bible says that God made the earth in 6 days.

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The Bible says in the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then the earth was without form & void & darkness was everywhere. Then God said "Let there be light". God restored the earth in 6 days from whatever catastraphe caused it to be without form & darkness everywhere. I don't believe in evolution, no way. God created the earth, and the restoration of the earth took 6 days then God created man within those 6 days. So whatever went on before the 6 day restoration did not involve mankind because God didn't create man until the 6 day restoration. Mankind did not evolve we were created within 6 normal days.

~WildRoseCowgirl~ said:

I might be wrong but I believe that in Darwins book The Origin of Species says that there is "higher" races that have evolved more (whites) and those who have not evolved as much which are "lower" races. I know that hitler was "inspired: by I believe it was the communist mannefasto which also teaches the same concept, so in a way you can say that the holocaust perhaps came from that. But its more from just similar thinking in my mind.

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Darwin was a man of his time and shared the prejudices of a white, Victorian, upper-class male about non-white peoples, even though he was, by the standards of the time a liberal. He opposed slavery, for example, and did believe that all people of every race came from the same ancestry.

Some scientists of the time (e.g. Louis Agassiz) believed there was not just one human creation, but several separate creations. Much as breeders of the time believed each breed of pigeon or sheep or apple tree was a separate creation.

However, further investigation into human evolution has erased the false concept that people with different physical characteristics have separate origins, or that one group is more "evolved" than another. We are all the same number of generations from our common ancestor and we are all "evolved" to the same degree, just in different directions.

It's important to remember that Origen of Species and other works by Darwin are not a "sacred scripture" of evolution. Darwin's main premise (natural selection) was correct, but not all of his ideas were. In science, even the originator of a new theory does not have any authority over the evidence. When the evidence says Darwin is right, it shows he had a true insight. When the evidence says Darwin is wrong, it shows he was mistaken. The evidence always takes precedence over anyone's opinion no matter how crucial their work was 150 years ago.

So anyone who thinks or thought that evolution supports white (or any other colour) supremacism is or was mistaken. And that includes Darwin himself to the extent he thought Europeans were superior to other human populations.

Hitler, btw, was very much anti-communist. He and Stalin were bitter, bitter enemies. And both racists and communists have mis-appropriated and perverted the theory of evolution to their purposes, just as racists have mis-appropriated and perverted the bible to their purposes.

herev said:

Here's Darwin's tretise on the races from chapter VII of the Descent of Man, where he goes into great lengths to show that any differences beteen races is comparatively minimial
Tommy
http://www.public.asu.edu/~jacquies/darwin-races.htm

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Thanks for that link, Tommy.

You can see as you go through that chapter, that the question of the relationship among different human races was a very live topic at the time. The notion that there was evidence of reduced fertility when those of different races mated seems far-fetched to us, but seemed very plausible at the time, and would support a racist view. Yet here Darwin is debunking it.

We should remember as well that in his day the term "race" did not apply only to humans, but was a synonym of "breed", so that spaniels and terriers and collies were considered to be "races" of dogs. That sets the whole discussion on human races into context. Darwin's purpose was to show that the races, whether of dogs or finches or humans, were related by common descent, not separate creations. So he discusses the human races in the same way as he discusses the varieties and breeds of non-human species.

We have to remember that slavery had been abolished in the British Empire less than 30 years earlier, and was still legal in most countries including the US. For many whites of the time, the notion of a black slave being of the same species as themselves was just as (maybe more) repulsive as being related to an ape.

I understand the biblical reasons for subscribing to Gap theory.

One thing puzzles me though. I have never heard Gap theorists mention science.

YECs not only base their beliefs on the bible as they understand it; most of them also believe that science supports their interpretation--and so they promote "creationism" aka "creation science" or "Intelligent Design" and "flood geology".

In a different way Day/Age OECs also try to combine a biblical interpretation with science.

But I have never heard how Gap theory tries to relate to science, or even IF it tries to. Is it strictly a biblically based idea, and one just ignores science? Or is there a supposed scientific element to it as well?

No, not all Gap Theorists believe in evolution.