The bible uses metaphors and creative narratives as well as autobiography and historical narrative.
What I'd love to ask Creationists, is just how literally do they actually take Genesis? From a lecturer at Moore Bible College, Sydney.
Creation Science wants to claim that it takes the Bible literally and alternative approaches don’t (they don’t take literally things that disagree with science), and so it can claim to be the right position fairly easily.
The problem is that, as far as I can see, Creation Science doesn’t take things literally, but shies away from literal readings of things that disagree with those bits of science that they accept.
The most well known example is probably the second day of creation:
Genesis 1:6-8 Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." And God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. And God called the expanse heaven.
A literal reading of this isn’t hard to see. The cosmos is full of water, and to create the space for land to appear God first creates an expanse (or firmament, the word suggests a
physical barrier) that separates the waters that were below from the waters above. This physical barrier is called heaven.
Then dry land appears on the third day when God gathers the waters under the expanse and locks them into fixed locations—oceans, seas, lakes etc, and so dry land appears.
So the
literal picture is of a universe full of water where God creates a space for earth to exist. One suspects that that fits neatly with the fact that we see blue when we look up—we’re looking at the water on the other side of the barrier, heaven.
If, however, science calls the shots, then that is nonsense. And so Creation Scientists will, when pushed, read this
non-literally. It is a metaphor (or ‘poetic’). The most common suggestion I’ve heard is that pre-Flood the earth was covered in a permanent blanket of thick clouds. It’s a strained reading (and is strange science. Unless they think physical laws changed with the Flood, why wouldn’t this cloud cover build up again after the Flood?) Their exegesis at this point is hard to understand, unless they draw back from readings of Scripture that they are fairly sure don’t square with the world as they know it. In fact, 2 Peter seems fairly straightforwardly to read Genesis the way I've suggested:
2 Peter 3:5-7 For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water...
The earth was formed
out of water and
by water. This suggests water being more significant to Genesis 1’s picture of creation than the idea of a thick cloud cover above the earth.
And this world in the midst of water makes much better sense of the Flood:
Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.
The barriers that made a division between water above and water below and water below and dry land and are taken away. The water pours in and covers the land:
Genesis 7:18-20 And the water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the surface of the water. And the water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered.
Two things I want to point out here. First, the amount of water involved in covering every mountain on the earth is far in excess of the amount of water that we are, pretty sure, exists on the planet. Speculations (such as I’ve heard by Creation Scientists) that what happened was a lot of water coming together into a series of large tidal wave-like phenomena are not what the text is saying, it’s another fudge. The text is painting a picture of constant rain and water coming out of the depths of the earth
covering the land, not of a periodic wave smashing everything to bits. That’s why the waters subside over a
long period of time rather than waves just ceasing. And how the ark would survive waves like that is beyond me—at that point you’d have to leave science behind again and suggest another miracle to preserve the wooden ship (which then raises the question of why a ship at all?).
http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com.au/2007/11/problems-with-creation-science-ii-on_21.html
