Interesting example. I have thought that if we wanted to find cases like this, we would look in anoxic / anaerobic environments (maybe in deep sea vents). Or in parasites or symbionts.
As you say, mitochondria don’t just supply energy through O2 respiration. They can also be sources of metabolic intermediates. So, a cell could lose parts of the respiratory chain in its mitochondria but still require the organelle for other areas of metabolism.
God did not create all the plants there were on the third day. He told the land to produce vegetation; not plants or grass, but something much more frail. That was the start of plant life on earth. The rest is described; but certainly you needn’t read it as though God created all the plants, then created all the fish, then all the animals. These things were begun on the specified days, but they continued for millions of years (from out point of view).
The word for birds in Gen 1 is the same word used later in the OT (in Leviticus?) about what can be eaten to mean flying insects. So the creation of birds is not mentioned. All the translations of Gen 1 that I have seen are simply wrong. Translators have their opinions about things. Who cares about non-flying insects; they are not specifically mentioned so far as I know.
Yes the common interpretation of Gen1 puts off atheists and seekers and even believers. That’s why it’s time to drop the old time encrusted interpretations we have all learned.
I am missing the feedback I normally get from @St.Roymond. Hopefully he is doing well!
The genius of the Garden of Eden story is that it says multiple things at the same time. We just need to be careful in not mixing them up. I am sharing an evolutionary perspective, and don’t intend it to supersede previous/concurrent interpretations. If you are reading it as an allegory of ‘hunter-gatherer to agriculture’ lifestyle, then yes, you could say that Adam does not till the ground until after he leaves the garden. It is worded so that it can be interpreted either way.
This verse suggest that the reason that God had not planted the Garden yet was because there was no man to till the ground. He then makes mankind, plants the garden and puts him in the Garden. It is implied that Adam is going to till the ground, if not then, eventually he will because that was God’s plan.
I am seeing Adam as the first single celled organism here. He is still “mankind” at this point because he is on the path of mankind, and we have come so far (physically and spiritually) from being “rock eaters”. Breaking down rock into soil is “tilling”. This is the livelihood of chemolithotrophs because there is nothing else for the first living cells to gain nutrition from. But we have a higher calling than eating dust all the days of our life like the serpent.
The serpent sinned and diverged off the path of mankind, and every other living organism that is not human has done the same. We have all been set on the path of mankind that leads to life in Christ Jesus. He is the Son of Man and the future direction of mankind is in following Him.
I’m certainly not claiming that Gen1 is a science text. A science text is a special breed of book, far below the sort of thing we should want to find in scripture. But scripture doesn’t say that cats live in the water, or that stars are holes in a blanket. It reports what is there when it reports history.
The sun, moon and stars were made, not created, the heavenly bodies, after the plants had provided enough oxygen to make the air clear enough to see through.
Certainly the YEC interpretation needs to be dropped. But there are still a number of allegorical interpretations that have value. Like I said to Roy: “The genius of the Garden of Eden story is that it says multiple things at the same time. We just need to be careful in not mixing them up.”
2 Peter 3:8 says a day is “as” a thousand years. I don’t think this is meant to be a precise conversion factor. Just that time is not the same for us as it is for God. Nor do we have to count hours in a day or days in a year for each past year. Nothing that precise is intended.
What was blocking the light that could be eliminated by oxygen? What blocks light now is either dust/dirt or water in some form.
While “as” is often used in metaphor and does not always mean equal, it can. A couple examples:
The word “like” here is the same greek word for “as”. You can see that it could very well mean equal to. It could be worded that a disciple is not above his teacher but it’s enough that he is (or can become) his equal.
Another one:
“the size of” (same size being equal) is the same word as “as”
And yet it lines up very well when we look at our common decent within those time periods. To have the beginning of Day 1 line up almost exactly with when the Earth formed 4.5 bya is quite precise. God told us when it happened and a few thousand years later we measured it. Bacteria, eukaryotes and fungi are a matter of interpretation for Days 1, 2 and 4, but plants are clearly defined on Day 3, fish and flying insects on Day 5 (I agree in translating “birds” as insects), and land animals on Day 6.
Day range and common decent:
Day 1 (4.5-2.3 bya) - Bacteria about 3 bya with first life may be as far back as 4.1 bya
Day 2 (2.3-1.8 bya) - Eukaryotes about 2 bya
Day 3 (1.8-1.3 bya) - Plants about 1.6 bya
Day 4 (1.3-0.87 bya) - Ameba about 1.2 bya, Fungi about 1.0 bya
Day 5 (872-411 mya) - Sponges about 800 mya, Protostomes (Insects) 630 mya, Fish 550 mya
Day 6 (411-0 mya) - Amphibians about 355 mya, Reptiles/Birds 325 mya, Mammals 175 mya, Humans 350 kya
Additionally I have lined up the meaning of all the patriarchs names and when they begot children using this same formula for their ages in this topic. You can jump to this post: Skipped Generations of Genesis - #31 by graft2vine
Hydrocarbons/greenhouse gasses causing a haze… a couple articles I found:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0608561103
The early climate is often compared with that on present-day Titan. The sunlight on Titan is much dimmer than on the current Earth, partly because of its distance from the Sun but also because of the haze layer. The light is diffuse, due to scattering by the haze, and the color of the sky is orange (36). As on Titan, the light available to the early Earth’s surface would be strongly influenced by attenuation of the haze layer.
Looking at this some more there is also the “Second Great Oxidation Event” which would line up a bit more closely to the timeline I have for Day 4.
This chart shows a lot more buildup of oxygen in the atmosphere starting just under 1 billion years ago:
Per the article you linked, it isn’t the increase in oxygen that clears the atmosphere, it is the reduction in methane generating microbes. To use this event you will need to find a source that indicates the methane generating microbes were able to return. Of course, now we have plenty of methane generating cows. 
Hmm… it seems they would just be competing for air space. All the dang cows are going to cause the stars to fall from the sky and the heavens to shrivel up.
The atmosphere was full of CO2 and very warm and held a lot of water. That makes for clouds and overcast skies. Oxygen changes the mix and the atmosphere cools, less water stays in the air.
The times I would choose for the beginning of each of the days of creation follow. I chose them based on when the first of the creatures mentioned in the Gen days first appeared on earth. Some of these first appearances, but not all, I took from the article Timeline of the evolution of life on Earth | New Scientist
Day 1…13.8 billion years ago
Day 2…6.9 bya
Day 3…3.5 bya
Day 4…1.7 bya
Day 5…0.9 bya
Day 6… 0.4 bya
These dates could be argued about, (especially Day 2, which really has no beginning in natural history, the universe expands continually and gradually), but they work.
The origin of the information in Genesis 1 is unknown. It is reasonably thought to have a human writer and it is assumed to have an omniscient author. That creates problems. Regardless of who the writer may have been, it is reasonable to think that the book of Genesis and the entire Torah was assembled by one or several redactors around the time of Moses. That would explain the consistency and the recognized ‘majesty’ of literary themes contained in Genesis 1. It was designed to fit with the need for an authoritative source for ‘The Law’. It needed to establish that God’s words have authority, that God is not bound by time and space as we know it, and a seven day pattern to life that includes one day of focus on God after six days of focus on work. It is brilliant at doing that. In the meantime, it also describes the formation of the universe and life on earth as a sequential process that we now refer to as evolution. The Bible tells us that it is impossible to know the mind or intent of God, the author, so the effort to do so is futile. Our inspiration for the idea of God is found in the sense of awe that people feel for many different aspects of life when we contemplate the complexity of our existence.
Which makes for cooler air and therefore less clouds. Exactly how long are you expecting clouds to form a solid overcast? The normal atmospheric circulation is going to prevent long periods of time.
No it doesn’t
Evolution has nothing to do with Scripture, and little to do with God.
Richard
Interestingly, as you mentioned earlier, each day appears to be half of the previous day. It looks like you just took the scientific estimate of 13.8 bya and divided by two for each day. Is there any particular reason for doing this? Your Days 5 and 6 line up pretty well with mine.
This is where multicellularity and true plants appear about 1.6 bya. Your Day 4 spans both Days 3 and 4 of my timeline.
First single celled organism appear here but no plants yet. Cyanobacteria that are called “blue green algae” are not really plants, and looking more at it they are actually toxic to humans and other animals. The plants that God made on the 3rd Day were made for food.
This appears very arbitrary.
I believe Day 1 begins with the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters which is the surface of the Earth. The unformed Earth from verse 2 is being shaped into a sphere. The day night cycle cannot begin until the Earth is formed and rotating on its axis. So Day 1 begins 4.5 bya and the beginning of the universe is covered in verse 1.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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