Does the Bible say the Earth was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago?

Hi Integral and welcome to EvC, Whilst it is tempting to encourage you in that idea that a young Earth is integral to creationism, that isn't really true. To be as fair as possible to creationism, there is no reason why an old Earth or an old cosmos could not have been created by an intelligence. The earth could be both old and created.What an old Earth contradicts is any version of creationism that is based on a literal interpretation of Genesis or the 6000 year chronology. Curiously, your interpretation is not literal. There is no literal reference to a gap of millions of years. Interpreting verses 1 and 2 as involving such gaps seems a bit tenuous, a bit of a stretch. Note that in Genesis 1:5 it says;

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And the evening and the morning were the first day.

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which pretty clearly implies a literal day.Why would God even leave a gap? It makes no sense. It is merely a rationalisation, concocted after the fact, to explain why the Bible appears to disagree with modern discoveries about the age of the Earth. "Gap Creationism" is not about explaining the age of the Earth, it's about explaining away the fact that science has shown the world to be much, much older than the Bible authors dreamed.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Thanks for your reply Integral, To be clear, a literal reading of "day" would be "day". Inserting a gap that is not mentioned in the text is not a literal reading. Why not? God is omnipotent isn't he? If he wants to create instant desolation, he can. Perhaps it was perfectly desolate. Isaiah was written by someone else completely. Also, you seem to be assuming that the Bible cannot contradict itself. That is a doomed argument. The Bible contradicts itself many times. Even if we accept the "became" translation, this does not imply a long period of time. Something can "become" in a short period of time. You are trying to stretch the text to say more than it really does. To me, this sounds like exactly the sort of thing that someone might have thought 4000 years ago. The creation of the Earth is described in terms of magical events and the actions of fantastical beings.If a 4000 year old man had written that the Earth was created by the action of gravity upon rocky debris that orbited a star, now that would be impressive.This is exactly the kind of information that the the Bible does not provide. Gap creationism is just a post hoc way of explaining away all the the problems created by the Genesis authors lack of a true understanding of the universe.Mutate and survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Hi jaywill, That's interesting. It's not especially relevant though.Modern Gap Creationism is not an extension of the beliefs of a group of 2nd century rabbis. There is no continuity between the two. For the best part of two millennia Christians have been content to believe in a literal creation week. Today however, pesky reality has interfered with this cosy belief.Gap Theory Creationism has only emerged in the modern age because some Christians feel it can rationalise away the discrepancies that exist between modern scientific discoveries and the Genesis account. It is entirely post hoc and frankly, pretty desperate.Mutate and Survive.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Hi Peg,Are you seriously claiming that the order of events in Genesis mirrors modern scientific thought? Really? God creates light and there is evening and morning; all before creating the sun. Plants too come before the sun exists to drive their photosynthesis. The sun itself seems to be made separately from the stars. Flowering plants come before insects. Whales are the first mammals mentioned.All of that is wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, but big time wrong.In no way does any of that "sit well with" modern ideas of cosmology or biology. No it's not. Genesis is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any planets living or dead is purely co-incidental.You should look into Hindu myth. Some of their creation stories bear a marked resemblance to modern ideas of evolution. Is this proof that they had access to special knowledge? Nope. They just lucked out. They got a lot of other things wrong. The same goes for Genesis. Not "he". "They". Genesis is written by at least two hands.Besides, which bit of Eve's creation from Adam's rib sounds sane and scientific to you?You are trying to turn Genesis is not something it is not. It is not a scientific treatise. It is an ancient religious text, written by people whose understanding of their universe was very, very limited. They did the best they could to make sense of their world, but they got it pretty badly wrong for the most part. Of course, the text may not even have been intended to be taken literally.No matter how much you torture it, Genesis is never going to turn into a modern physics or biology text. Why not approach it as the myth that it is? Genesis is very valuable as mythology, but useless as a science primer.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Hi Brian, I thought that Genesis was attributed to "J" and "P", with the odd bit from the redactor. Is there a fourth source?Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

That isn't the point. The point is that Genesis gets the order of creation wrong. You don't have an evening or morning before you have the sun and the Earth. The concepts don't even make sense without reference to the sun and the earth. I'm not saying that plants couldn't have survived a day without sun. I'm saying that the order is wrong. The Bible has places plants before the creation of the sun. That's wrong. The sun is billions of years older than plant life.You said; It doesn't. It's flat-out wrong (even Genesis puts vegetation before flying creatures by the way).Insects enter the fossil record millions of years before flowering plants. Genesis has flowering plants existing before insects (or "creeping things" if you prefer).Whales evolved from land animals, they didn't precede them. The Bible gets this backwards(whales on the fifth day, land mammals on the sixth).It's just wrong. Claiming that Genesis gives an accurate chronology of the Earth which is in agreement with modern science is completely bogus.All this talk of "thicker atmosphere" is just more over-reaching and rationalisation. Instead of twisting the text to fit a model of the world it was never intended for, why not accept the obvious truth of the matter? The authors of Genesis didn't know much about cosmology and what they thought they knew was wrong.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Hi Peg, Why then does it refer to evening and morning? Indeed, and this disagrees with Genesis and its six-day time-scale. Have you considered that the cause for the discrepancy might simply be that Genesis is wrong? That way you need not twist the text in the painful way you are doing.The Bible authors got it wrong that's all. You can't blame them. They didn't have radio telescopes and mass spectrometers. They just had to make the best explanation they could. They got it wrong is all.You seem insistent that they got it right, if only we could interpret the text properly and that seems like an unwarranted assumption to me. Peg, have you actually read the Bible that you're so keen on? You certainly don't seem to check it before posting.Sea monsters would have been created on day 5 (Gen 1:20-23). Land animals come on day 6, just before man (Gen 1:24-25). This isn't simply a translation problem. it is a problem of two incompatible accounts; Genesis and reality. You are not going to force Genesis to comply with reality by re-translating it.Please note my signature. Stop torturing the poor Bible. It's suffered enough!Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Thanks for your reply Peg, So let me get this straight. To help people understand that creation took place over a period of time that could have involved millions of years, Moses (Who did not write Genesis, but we'll leave that for now) used a word that can mean "day" or alternatively can mean "period of time". Just to help make absolutely clear that he meant "period of time" and not "day", he then repeatedly used the phrase "the evening and the morning", just to clear things up. And this was supposed to help people understand?Is that what your telling me?I'm sorry, but that is the polar opposite of sense. Using the phrase "the evening and the morning" gives a very clear indication of a literal 24 hour day. If the intent of the author/s was to describe a longer period of time, describing evenings and mornings can only obfuscate matters, by encouraging an interpretation as "day". Which translation has that version? Also, please note this, from Gen 2:1-2

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2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made;

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Paul was not omniscient , nor was he in a position to know for sure what the original intent of Genesis was. His interpretation of Genesis is as suspect as yours, mine or anyone else's. You cannot prove the intent of the authors of Genesis by reference to the interpretation of a man who lived centuries later. It doesn't prove anything. All it demonstrates is that people have been interpreting scripture to suit their own ideas and purposes for a very long time.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Good point cavediver! I sometimes make the mistake of assuming that Christians might know their Bible. Stupid of me I know...Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade