Is there a standpoint from which the creation days in Genesis 1 are described as 24 hours per day?

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@karma

The thing which I don’t understand is, when the “them” is the current Young Earth Creationist.
Didn’t they (the current YEC) know that the earth is spherical, rotate, day and night occur simultaneously on different part of the earth?

They do indeed, and they even acknowledge that they need to set aside their literal “plain reading” of Genesis 1 in favour of a more literary and figurative approach in order to accommodate it. In fact they will even quite rightly tell you that to insist on a strict, literal approach in this matter is to make a mockery of the Bible. Danny Faulkner of Answers in Genesis explained this quite clearly:

Reflections on the Flat-Earth Movement

Here’s the thing though. The arguments that he makes against the flat earth movement’s approach to the Bible are exactly the same as the arguments that young earthists denounce as “compromise” or “unbelief” when they are made against a young Earth. Basically, young earthists have one set of rules for Biblical exegesis when discussing the shape of the earth, and the exact opposite set of rules for Biblical exegesis when discussing the age of the earth.

You can see this by doing a simple find and replace on Faulkner’s article: “flat” → “young”; “shape” → “age”, "a sphere” → “old”, “a globe” → “old”, and “astronomy” → “geology”:

AiG picks at specks in Flat-Earth cosomology

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the log in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a log in your own eye?" Answers in Genesis ran an interesting article critiquing the Flat-Earth Movement back in June. I missed @Laura’s thread (Young-Earth and Flat-Earth views using similar rhetoric) on it the first time around, but I didn’t want to re-open it just for this. As Laura an…

Basically, either the Bible demands an Earth that is both young and flat, or else it can accommodate an Earth that is both spherical and old. To suggest that it demands one but not the other is to apply two different and contradictory standards of exegesis to the early chapters of Genesis.

@karma

Thanks for the answer and explanation, Jon.
Thanks also for the youtube link.

But I’m sorry, the youtube video doesn’t cover about day & night happen simultaneously on earth

Thanks for watching the YouTube video for us. You’ve saved each of us a whole hour. For some reason, young earthists love to post hour-long videos and then accuse anyone who doesn’t watch them in their entirety of “not listening.” When they could easily have gotten their point across much more succinctly by summarising said video and providing time stamps to the relevant places.

I’m not surprised that the video doesn’t answer your question. The issue of time zones is a massive spanner in the works for their argument that “and there was evening, and there was morning” would tie down the days of creation to being 24 hour days of Earth’s time. It’s an argument that only works if the Earth is flat, and it’s one that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a young earthist even attempt to address.

@Burrawang

Why do you set yourself up as judge over Christians who believe the clearly stated reality of Genesis as history, and accuse those Christians of changing “the meaning to be convenient to the people of (His) [the present] day.”

Judge not lest you yourself be judged.

There are a couple of observations worth making here.

First of all, young earthism is not “the clearly stated reality of Genesis as history.” It is a cartoon caricature of “the clearly stated reality of Genesis as history” with a thick layer of science fiction slathered on top of it. Genesis 1-11 has a lot of powerful and important things to say to us, but the idea that The Flintstones is a documentary is not one of them.

Secondly, this comment illustrates just how hostile young earth zealots are towards correction. One thing they like to do in particular is to quote mine the voice of the serpent, taking the words “Did God really say…?” out of context to try and shut down any challenges to their dogma. This approach is totally contradicted by other verses of Scripture such as 1 John 4:1:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Or 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21:

Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.

The Bible commands us to test everything that we are told. Scepticism, when applied properly, is an important weapon in every Christian’s armoury in the battle against deception. Not everybody who claims to be speaking the Word of God actually is speaking the Word of God. Quote mining Genesis 3:1 and Matthew 7:1 in that way to try to shut down critique and scrutiny is the exact polar opposite of what the Bible commands. There is no end to the number of cults and heresies that you could introduce in that way.

Finally, @Burrawang has on more than one occasion accused the entire scientific community of flat-out lying about the age of the earth and evolution. Given that such an accusation must extend to hundreds of thousands if not millions of scientists, over a period of more than two hundred years, acting in tight coordination with each other, it’s a bit rich to say “Judge not lest you yourself be judged” while proposing conspiracy theories on that scale.

@Burrawang

Those Bible believing Christians see through the false materialist, naturalist worldview for what it is, an untruthful stranglehold on most of academia to toe the line, to only interpret science within
the false materialist, naturalist worldview that intentionally excludes God by decree, despite the fact that modern science was born from highly intelligent men and women who understood the one and only Living God is a God of order, not confusion, thus making modern science possible to understand how the things that He created operate.

It is not a “materialist, naturalist worldview,” nor is it any kind of “untruthful stranglehold on most of academia to toe the line” that tells us that the Earth is far older than six thousand years. It is measurement. Measurement whose interpretation is constrained by strict rules and protocols that are exactly the same whether you are a Christian or an atheist, whether God is at work or not. And it doesn’t just come from academia either. Deep geological time plays a crucial role in searching for oil. Deep geological time even plays a crucial role in improving safety in coal mines. See for example W John Nelson, Geological Disturbances in Illinois Coal Seams, Illinois State Geological Survey, 1983:

Coal miners always face obstacles in their struggle to win coal from the earth. Coal beds—normally thick, level, and continuous—sometimes pitch sharply up or down, split into layers too thin t o follow, fill with veins of clay or masses of stone, or end abruptly against solid rock. Unexpectedly, the roof may become almost impossible to support. Volumes of water or deadly gases may rush in a t the face. The risks and the costs, especially in lives, are great for miners, mine owners, and mining communities.

Locating, predicting, and controlling geologic hazards in coal seams depend upon knowing how they formed: What combination of climate, landscape, and vegetation produced coal seams and the disturbances associated with them, such as channels, splits, rolls, limestone bosses, clay and igneous dikes, and coal balls?

This is a situation where geologists have to be scrupulously honest about their findings and their models of the history of the formations they are studying. They can’t afford to adjust their geology to fit their ideology, for the simple reason that doing so would kill people.