Are the days of creation real or are they periods?

As someone who buys into any number of silly conspiracy theories, it is a bit ironic that you are not among those who bought into this one:

When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’” Matthew 28:12-12

 


1 (If I had noticed that earlier, I might not have had to ask if you believed in a flat earth.)

I actually read it in a quote from a geologist who was also an avid evolutionist many years ago. Niles Eldridge? Stephen Jay Gould? I can’t remember now, and can’t imagine what search terms I could use to even come close to finding it again. But you’re welcome to try if you want.

The point is that fossils are the product of formerly living things being buried in sediments which were laid down rapidly by water. They are not the product of something dying on a plain, and laying their without being scavenged or decaying for millions of years as dust ever so slowly piles up on top of it.

But if you want to imagine billions of years of different local massive flooding events, then go for it. A worldwide flood 4000 years ago also fits the bill very nicely.

But I’m afraid I’ve strayed from the topic of this thread. Can you offer a scriptural reason that the days of creation can’t possibly be literal days?

As much as I’d love to, I’m not allowed to go into that on this site. I am allowed to say that I believe the Bible concerning the age and shape of our world.

Read the thread you linked. Maybe you’ll see something that gets you thinking for yourself. :wink:

You’re so subtle, like I’m the one who is gullible and foolish. Someone who used to be a dear friend fell into the echo chamber pot you that frequent.

Really? Your point was that a day mentioned in a parable is not a day we could locate on a calendar?

I am so sorry that you cannot connect the dots. Most people who claim that they can follow the evidence could.

I don’t suspect that this will sway you, since it is difficult to sway when you are in a rut, but sensible Christians have noted this in the past:

The most regrettable thing about vocal YECs and flat earthers, conspiracists all, is that they make the name of God a mockery. Do you know what the first petition in the Lord’s Prayer is?

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Let me add to my statement then… I SUSPECT (not KNOW) that this one is new, because I have posted for hours on end in the past without ever seeing this notice before - and it seems unlikely to me that every one of those hours long sessions involved someone else posting at just the right time for me to keep going without ever seeing that message.

If I’m wrong, then I have indeed experienced many incredibly unlikely events happen at just the right time, numerous times, on numerous different occasions.

By the way, “Wrong again” implies that you have PROVEN me to have been wrong before. When have you done that?

It is too bad that you will not amend the rest of your seriously flawed thinking.

Wrong again. I said nothing about proving anything to you. It is just that it is obvious to the most casual observer who is not a conspiracist.

I would ask if you’re serious with this question, but then again you did just make a point of explaining to me how a made up day in a made up parable isn’t a real day one can locate on a calendar. What’s next? Are you going to educate me on the fact that I won’t be able to locate the fictional vineyard workers in any ancient genealogy?

You mention reasons - plural. Give me just one scriptural reason.

The truth that God reveals in his creation is no less true than the truth revealed in scripture. Truth comes from reality, whether it be physical reality or scriptural reality. If there appears to be a conflict, then our interpretation of one or the other or both is in error. Unfortunately, the latter of those applies to you. Sorry, your gotcha question is itself flawed

(And then there was the YEC who wanted me to give him chapter and verse in the Bible where it said that, that truth comes from reality. :grin:)

Dale, do you seriously believe that ridicule or crying, “conspiracy theorist!” constitutes an actual argument/rebuttal to someone else’s comment? If not, please try to do better in the future. Thanks.

No, but it speaks to the validity of your epistemology.

There is a verse in Proverbs that comes to mind, but I will let this suffice:

In other words, in some cases silence is the best reply. I will try to do better.

As those scholars noted, there is no way to judge how long a period is without someone present to measure it, and the only one present at that point was God – thus by definition those were divine days. How long did light shine before He made a division between light and dark? We don’t know; only God was there to measure; how long did the light last until H permitted darkness? We don’t know, so it was a divine period.

What sun? It wasn’t around yet.
What “governs a ‘divine day’”? God does.

“Huge discrepancy” is a modern concept. Ancient people would have no trouble thinking that God wants our schedule to resonate with His schedule even if His units of time were immensely longer than our units of time – in fact they would have found it quite odd if God’s days were the same length as our days.

You’re trying to force the scriptures to speak on modern terms rather than allowing the scriptures to speak as they were written.

It’s interesting that the only place I can find this with the word “because” in it is something by Ken Ham – which totally discredits the idea.

What there’s absolutely no scriptural reason for is your effort to force Genesis to be about science. The ancient writers had no concept of science and would be baffled if you tried to explain it to them. And there is solid reason “to assume that these six day periods are different” because the opening of Genesis was not written as history; it’s the wrong kind of literature for that.

Sorry, but what’s clear is that you think you know more about something written in ancient Hebrew than scholars who grew up speaking that language! What they were doing was analyzing the text as it stands and drawing conclusions.

Just for the record here, other ancient scholars noted the grammar of the first Creation account and pointed out that not only were the days divine days, they were probably not one right after the other, because the first one says “the first day” while the rest say, “a second day”, “a third day”, and so on, and nothing in the text says they followed one after the former.

Still others, also just on the basis of the Hebrew, held that from the text the universe plainly started out as something smaller than a grain of mustard (which is smaller than a mustard seed and is an idiom for “the smallest possible thing”); that it expanded extremely rapidly, faster than humans can grasp; that it was all filled with fluid such that light could not pass until God ordered, “Light – BE!” and then light could flow; and that the Earth is unimaginably old.

The point is that scholars who knew far more about the text than either of us ever will did not read the opening story in Genesis in a literal sense the way modern devotees to scientific materialism do – unwitting devotees, but devotees nevertheless because the entire idea of forcing Genesis to fit science (and then turning around to try to force science to fit that mangled version of Genesis) does not come from scripture, it comes from that human philosophy called scientific materialism, a philosophy that is inherently atheist. So Ken Ham and his ilk are interpreting the scriptures on the basis of an atheistic worldview whether they realize it or not.

So when you insist on literal days and such, everyone knows it’s an opinion, and a rather uninfromed opinion at that.

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I don’t know who Phil McCUrdy is, but if he’s saying we should read the scriptures as the literature the writers intended, he is 100% correct. Reducing it to the false dichotomy of either it’s all historically literal or none of it is, is just offering two choices neither of which is faithful to the scriptures.

Of course the worldview of the writer comes into play – the other option is God behaving like a demon and possessing the writers. Not everything in there is quotes – and calling them “quotes” in the first place assumes that God spoke in human language.

And your juvenile false dichotomy is just that – juvenile. Most people learn by about eighth grade that there are rarely situations when there are just two choices. It’s also juvenile because it assumes that only two positions can be possible: your opinion and the worst contrast you can think of.

Well, you do believe that a pressurized atmosphere can exist directly adjacent to a 1 x 10 -11 torr vacuum without a physical barrier, right?

Fantastic! More and more independent thinkers every day. And as is evident from your words, “used to be a dear friend”, every last one of us used to be just like you - not only blindly believing the most nonsensical crap one could imagine, but also proudly parroting that crap to others so we could sound smart and up to date on all the new “science”. Then we became “used to be friends” by trying to share the new and exciting things we discovered with our friends.

That’s been the case ever since I’ve been here. I don’t know if it’s universal, or if the ability to post more than three in a row can be earned; what I do know is that the suggestion to combine several replies into one makes conversation clumsy and posts overburdened with multiple ideas (my suspicion is that it comes from software coders who think in binary and so assume that all posts in a certain thread obviously are all about the same thing).

And since I think I just made three posts…

Yeah, first time I ran into it my reaction was, “Huh – does that apply to everyone?”
Then I probably forgot to ask about it.

Exactly, like parables were not given as history. The dots are connected, even though some cannot read the little numbers to get them right. :grin:

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