Although intelligent design is about willful intent, information is generated by falling raindrops, by crystal growth, by gravity, and every other unintelligent process. The Bible sees all processes as ultimately directed by God; however, ID claims often assert that processes that follow natural laws without additional intelligent direction can’t produce information. That is untrue. Likewise, both YEC and ID often fall into the error of promoting atheism by claiming that natural law processes imply a lack of God’s direction. For example, “you are either created by God or by mindless molecular processes” is a catchy slogan but terrible theology. You are individually created by molecular processes, whether we think about the processes of conception and growth or the constant ongoing processes of metabolism. None of those molecules has a mind. The reality is that God created us, making however much use of mindless molecular processes that He wished to. We can use science to examine the evidence of what physical processes were used in creation.
Don’t forget Leviticus 25 with the sabbath year. By your reasoning, the days of Genesis 1 must have each been a year. But then you get to Lev. 25:8, where the Hebrew describes the year of jubilee as following a “day” of 49 years. Seven symbolizes perfection and completion. Saying that God created in 13 days would convey the message that creation was cocked up. But the form of Genesis 1 strongly matches other ancient Near Eastern writing that describes perfect completion and isn’t really talking about chronology at all.
It is not the designer who cocked up His revelation, but rather the flawed interpreters who are at fault. “Enlightenment” deism to atheism put excessive reliance on human wisdom and on “scientific” approaches (which often were not actually well-rooted in data but instead represented an imposition of an assumed pattern on the evidence). William Miller, having been a deist, took the “I can figure it all out for myself” approach to the bible and popularized it in both the US and England in the first half of the 1800’s, which led to the “Great Disappointment” when his predictions of the second coming failed to occur. However, some of his followers continued the disregard for the wisdom of others while developing interpretations to claim that something big theologically did happen in 1844, or to develop alternative dating systems. One of those developing another interpretation was Ellen White. Thus, the Seventh-day Adventist approach builds on the errors of deism. Of course, you can’t remain in the SDA if you question White’s claims, but you should recognize that others are likely to not accept that her interpretations are inerrant.
It is the insistence that Genesis 1 must be interpreted as a literalistic and scientific account that supports naturalism and discredits the Bible. Reading the passage in light of its ancient Near Eastern context gives both theological insights and the understanding that everything is under God’s control and part of His design. The sea and its great beasts are chaos monsters, rivals to the gods, in the surrounding cultures. Who knows what might happen if one of the gods gets cranky or oversleeps? But Genesis 1 affirms that the sea, the great beasts, the sun and moon, all are just stuff that God made, with no plans or goals or rivalries of their own. Thus, we can expect the creation to behave in an orderly manner. Likewise, humans are given a special role as caretakers of creation. We can’t do that unless we can understand how it behaves and the effects our actions are going to have. Thus, Genesis 1 gives excellent reason to believe that science works and that we should indeed pursue it.
In turn, science helps us to understand the Bible and to choose between possible interpretations. We can recognize figurative statements based on whether or not they match with our knowledge of the world. Just as understanding the Bible requires an understanding of the language it is written in (including good translations), it also requires an understanding of the basic workings of the world. We recognize the resurrection as significant because we know that it is not the normal outcome for someone to be alive again a few days after being killed. We can figure out how to apply the principles of the Law to modern situations such as traffic by using our knowledge of the physical processes coupled with the ethical principles of the Bible. The Bible is one of the most important sources for history of the ancient Near East, but its focus is on providing theological lessons, not on giving all the details that a historian would want to know. It uses various figures of speech and selects illustrative examples, passing over other information that did not serve its purpose. In other words, it is reliable, but careless interpretations are easily mistaken.
