Some of the best advice I've come across:
"Why should we tamper with the plain teaching of the Bible in this fashion? Are we naive enough to believe that if Christians push back the creation of the stars to the first day, making them co-temporal with the earth, modern evolutionists in the fields of astronomy and cosmology are going to think Christianity might just be plausible after all? Are we trying to buy a little academic respectability by means of this sort of exegesis? Modern science holds that the earth is a relatively late development, possibly only five billion years old, in a universe at least ten billion years old. What good do we think we will accomplish by ignoring the words of Genesis 1. . .? If we are inevitably going to be looked at as fools for holding to biblical revelation, which is unquestionably the case (I Cor. 1:19-21), then why not at least be consistent, straightforward, more offensive fools fools thoroughly committed to this foolish revelational faith, fools untarnished by the pseudo-wisdom of the world? Would anyone have bothered to invent a veil or cloud cover for the sun, moon, and stars on days one through three, had he not been confronted with some version of evolution, which he then decided to conform to, at least partially, in order not to appear unrespectable? Let us side with biblical language and cease our pathetic, unrealizable quest for academic respectability within the world of secular humanistic scholarship.
. . .
The third, and by far the most important reason why it is useless and counterproductive to modify the plain teaching of Genesis 1 concerning the sequence of creation, is that the heart of modern science's opposition to this account is not the chronology as such. The reason why modern science has adopted the ancient Greek accounts of cosmologynot the details, of course, but the basic outlines is that modern scientists, like the ancient Greeks, are attempting to escape from the concept of God-ordained purpose. What is most offensive to modern science is the idea of cosmological purpose prior to the evolutionary advent of man. The heart of the Bible's account of the creation is God and His purposeful word, while the heart of modern evolution is the denial of purpose, whichever of the secular cosmologies a man decides to accept. Apparently this fact has not been understood by conservative Bible expositors who have chosen to rewrite Genesis 1. What we must bear in mind is that it was Darwin's insistence on the unplanned, purposeless nature of geological and biological change that won him instant success in the world of secular humanism. Darwin denied all the old arguments for divine purpose as a cause of the orderliness of nature. Natural order proves no such thing, he insisted; natural selection of randomly produced mutations, not supernatural design, accounts for nature's orderliness. Evolutionary scientists accepted Darwin's denial of cosmic purpose long before there was any idea that the universe might be ten billion years old. The heart of the Darwinian intellectual revolution was not evolution. The central factor was Darwin's hypothetical explanation of undesigned order. It was his denial of final purpose, of the universe's ends-orientation, of teleology."
Dr. Gary North, 1982, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis, Institute for Christian Economics, Tyler, TX, pg. 13, 16
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Striving for academic respectability to the humanists is always in vain, because the great offense of Christianity is not science but morality; ethical not metaphysical. The unregenerate person thinks the Christian a complete fool for believing in "that man Jesus" and the nonsense of "that old book." They simply cannot understand true faith to the True God because they do not have it, and it is for that reason that they think us fools. It isn't science, or history, or economics. The unregenerate person desires to escape from the command to "believe on Jesus," and escape the Judgement for disobeying and being born under wrath.
So: if they are going to think us fools anyway, we might as well be consistant ones and be undeserving of their mockery than inconsistant in order to gain some respectability and have them lose all respect for us completely. Let us be consistant; let us be six-day creationists.
"Why should we tamper with the plain teaching of the Bible in this fashion? Are we naive enough to believe that if Christians push back the creation of the stars to the first day, making them co-temporal with the earth, modern evolutionists in the fields of astronomy and cosmology are going to think Christianity might just be plausible after all? Are we trying to buy a little academic respectability by means of this sort of exegesis? Modern science holds that the earth is a relatively late development, possibly only five billion years old, in a universe at least ten billion years old. What good do we think we will accomplish by ignoring the words of Genesis 1. . .? If we are inevitably going to be looked at as fools for holding to biblical revelation, which is unquestionably the case (I Cor. 1:19-21), then why not at least be consistent, straightforward, more offensive fools fools thoroughly committed to this foolish revelational faith, fools untarnished by the pseudo-wisdom of the world? Would anyone have bothered to invent a veil or cloud cover for the sun, moon, and stars on days one through three, had he not been confronted with some version of evolution, which he then decided to conform to, at least partially, in order not to appear unrespectable? Let us side with biblical language and cease our pathetic, unrealizable quest for academic respectability within the world of secular humanistic scholarship.
. . .
The third, and by far the most important reason why it is useless and counterproductive to modify the plain teaching of Genesis 1 concerning the sequence of creation, is that the heart of modern science's opposition to this account is not the chronology as such. The reason why modern science has adopted the ancient Greek accounts of cosmologynot the details, of course, but the basic outlines is that modern scientists, like the ancient Greeks, are attempting to escape from the concept of God-ordained purpose. What is most offensive to modern science is the idea of cosmological purpose prior to the evolutionary advent of man. The heart of the Bible's account of the creation is God and His purposeful word, while the heart of modern evolution is the denial of purpose, whichever of the secular cosmologies a man decides to accept. Apparently this fact has not been understood by conservative Bible expositors who have chosen to rewrite Genesis 1. What we must bear in mind is that it was Darwin's insistence on the unplanned, purposeless nature of geological and biological change that won him instant success in the world of secular humanism. Darwin denied all the old arguments for divine purpose as a cause of the orderliness of nature. Natural order proves no such thing, he insisted; natural selection of randomly produced mutations, not supernatural design, accounts for nature's orderliness. Evolutionary scientists accepted Darwin's denial of cosmic purpose long before there was any idea that the universe might be ten billion years old. The heart of the Darwinian intellectual revolution was not evolution. The central factor was Darwin's hypothetical explanation of undesigned order. It was his denial of final purpose, of the universe's ends-orientation, of teleology."
Dr. Gary North, 1982, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis, Institute for Christian Economics, Tyler, TX, pg. 13, 16
-----------------
Striving for academic respectability to the humanists is always in vain, because the great offense of Christianity is not science but morality; ethical not metaphysical. The unregenerate person thinks the Christian a complete fool for believing in "that man Jesus" and the nonsense of "that old book." They simply cannot understand true faith to the True God because they do not have it, and it is for that reason that they think us fools. It isn't science, or history, or economics. The unregenerate person desires to escape from the command to "believe on Jesus," and escape the Judgement for disobeying and being born under wrath.
So: if they are going to think us fools anyway, we might as well be consistant ones and be undeserving of their mockery than inconsistant in order to gain some respectability and have them lose all respect for us completely. Let us be consistant; let us be six-day creationists.
