answersincreation.org (Literal Genesis AND Old Earth Creationism?)

It suggests to me that the creation story is a fable, not an historic record. The sun had to be there before the earth could have formed.The authors of that fable obviously thought that light came from the sky, and did not understand that the light from the daytime sky was diffused light that originated in the sun. Thus in the genesis account we see light created before the sun was created, and we see night and day existing before there was a sun.This is clearly a pre-scientific account. It shows that genesis cannot be taken as a literal account. It has to be understood as the writings of man, not the word of God. It may have been inspired, but it cannot be infallible truth.

I see the creation story from Genesis 1 as a pre-scientific attempt to explain the world and its origins.A person with no scientific knowledge can easily see that much of the light comes from the skies, whether the blue sky or the clouds. Without scientific knowledge, there is no reason that you would assume this light to be scattered or reflected light that originated in the sun.The light from Genesis 1:3-1:5 was simply this background of light, presumed to be independent of the sun.The firmament of 1:6-1:8 surely refers to apparent appearance of the sky as a dome over the earth. It was taken to be some kind of ceiling, and "Heaven" was the name given to this ceiling. Thus "heaven" means the same thing as "sky", the apparent domed ceiling above the earth.The sun and moon obviously had to come later (1:14-1:19). For they were lights to be mounted in the ceiling, and God could not do that until after the ceiling had been installed.This is the quite obvious literal reading of Genesis 1. In the light of modern day science, it is nonsense. In the light of modern day Christianity it is nonsense, for the modern notion of "heaven" is of a spiritual realm, not of a domed ceiling over the earth.It makes you wonder about modern day people who consider themselves literalists.My own conclusion, when I was a teenage evangelical, was that one had to understand the Bible as the writings of men (and women), not as the direct word of God. These men and women may well have been inspired, but what they wrote was not inerrant.The authors of Genesis may well have done the best possible, given what was known to them at the time. It would be unrealistic for us to fault them, simply because what they wrote is inconsistent with our modern understanding of science, and our modern understanding of heavan. But it ought to be clear that modern literalism is foolish, as is the idea that the Bible is the inerrant direct word of God.

I agree with that. I think they did not quite know what to make of the stars. They could see that they were illuminated, but they did not produce enough light on earth to be useful to them.I take verses 17 and 18 to be referring mainly to the sun and moon, but incidently to the stars. Verse 14 was where the sun and moon were created, verse 17 is where they were installed in place, and verse 18 is their purpose. I would say that's about right.People can find the word of God in Billy Graham's sermons, but that doesn't make Billy Graham inerrant.The Genesis account was for people of that time, and had to be understandable to them. It was not written directly for us. It is not reasonable to expect it to describe things so as to be compatible with modern physics, for then the people of the time could not have understood it.