Interpretation Of The Apparent Age Theorists

Properly dating the book of Genesis would allow us to build a timeline of creation which we can be used to trace back to day one of creation. However, this is extremely difficult to determine for two fundamental reasons: (1) the Bible provides no controllable statis- tical data that apply to the problem of absolute chronology; (2) most of the events took place in the preliterate period for which we have no extrabiblical written documents. (Ch. 1 Pg. 28)

Mikhail Lomonosov, a Russian naturalist in the 1700s, believed that the earth was several hundred thousand years old. Such estimate was then improved when the earth was dated at 75,000 years old by Comte du Buffon, a French scientist. He established this from the rapid caliber of cooling in the rocks that he had calculated. The father of contemporary geology, Charles Lyell, attacked the idea of catastrophism and popularized the law of uniformitarianism, which is that, since the beginning of the earth, the current processes of the earth have been transpiring. Such principle resulted in more ancient estimates of the earth's age. Many scientists, around the time of Darwin, assumed an age around four hundred million years old, give or take one million years. The most widely acknowledged assessment of the earth's age today is nearly four and a half billion years old. Following these assertions, humans did not exist on the earth until about three million years ago ("What Does the Fossil Record Show?"). Therefore, because of these ancient estimates, rooted in science, the Bible is in conflict with science and should not be accepted as truth, since it advertises the creation of the world in one week, and the creation of humans within that

“Young-earth creationists believe that the creation days of Genesis 1 were six (24 hour) days, which occurred 6,000-12,000 years ago. They also believe that about 2,300-3,300 years before Christ, the surface of the earth was radically rearranged by Noah’s Flood.”

Theistic evolution and old-earth Creationism is supported by scientific discoveries, and then focuses on using the Bible as historical evidence. Many believe that scientific information proves that the earth is billions of years old, and that the days in Genesis should not be interpreted as literal twenty-four hour days. Scientific evidence of fossils and evolution are merely humanistic estimations of time. Evolutionists and old-earth creationism seek to justify the days of creation in Genesis through 2 Peter 3:8; “…with the Lord one day is like a thousand years . . ..” (NASB). This passage is misleading to the length of days needed for creation; God’s day is not stated as a thousand years. The context of this

In the article, “The Bible, Science, and Creation”, Ernest Lucas writes about the biblical and nonbiblical beliefs of the Genesis creation. Throughout his article he talks about how there is one thing that the ‘new atheists’ and fundamentalist Christians agree on; this being that Genesis 1-3 should be read as a scientific account of the origin of the cosmos and of the humans. He states that it leads new atheist to reject the biblical account as a piece of outmoded pre-scientific speculation. And it leads the Christians to reject modern scientific theories of origins. In the article he proposes that Genesis 1-3 should be read as a figurative theological account of the nature and purpose of God’s creation. The article goes on about how we should

Under the same idea, the “Old Earth” train of thought is that the “days” mentioned in Genesis were actually up to many millions of years each. This is one of many “theories” that justifies the actual age of the Earth being around 4.5 billion years old. The third view states that the story of creation contained in Genesis is not a literal or even a chronological account of happenings. It is instead a guide promoting a six-day workweek with the seventh day a day of worship to God. The last view is much like the second, in that it considers the “days” to be God’s workdays, which may or may not be equal to an Earth calendar day. Each day represents a period of time that God performed a major task. Each view has the same underlying concept that God created everything, and the way it is today, it the way it was when it was created.

The old-Earth secular viewpoint on the original creation of the earth nebular hypothesis vs. six-day creation is described as God’s creation of the universe through the “big bang” event, by which God created all matter and energy and ultimately all heavenly bodies including the earth, sun, moon and stars. According to Jon W. Greene (2012) old-earth views are God miraculously created the universe from nothing (ex nihilo), created life from non-life, and progressively intervened in history to supernaturally create new species of life. The age of the earth has no bearing on the creation of life. God created Adam and Eve, humanity’s historical parents, who were new distinct creatures from whom humanity’s sin originated. Earth’s geologic features

For this interpretation, the Creation Account has been overlooked. With the universe already created in Genesis 1:1, the six creative days refer not to the establishment of the universe, but rather, God's preparation of Eden for His people. Most recently proposed by John H. Sailhamer, Ph.D., the view of Historical Creationism hinges on medieval Hebrew interpretations of the Genesis text. Because "heavens" and "earth" should be translated as "sky" and "land," and "formless and void" is better rendered "unihabitable wasteland," the Creation Account presents God's preparation of the Promised Land in the midst of an unyielding wilderness — a land prepared special for His people (Sailhamer, John). Similar to the Gap theory, Genesis 1:1 indicates

As stated previously stated old earth creationism is a form of creationism that is based off of the contents of Genesis and does use scientific theories to support itself. The main idea of old earth creationism is that just about everything that happened in Genesis from the Bible is true, but while it is true it is not completely accurate or even in the correct order. What this means is that while Genesis does say everything happens over the course of a week or a seven day period, it does not specify how long a day is. This means that a day could be anywhere from one hundred and sixty eight hours to a few million years. If each day in Genesis is a few million years then that would mean that the bible does partially agree with the big bang theory.

The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the apparent similarities and differences of geologic time billions of years vs. thousands of years. No exact dating technique currently exist that can accurately date the age of the Earth and the universe. The irony of this is that it takes a known time to set as a baseline and any results from computations that necessarily include making postulations about the past. The beginning time of a clock must be predictable, and the speed of the clock can change after some time. There is no independent characteristic measurement against which these presumptions can be verified. Depending on one's faith, education and intuition we are left with mere speculation as to the actual starting point of

3] We teach that the only sane and proper way to interpret the Scriptures is according to the literal, grammatical-historical method of interpretation under the divine guidance and illumination of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, in relation to the above method of hermeneutics which is called the golden method of the "Art and Science of Biblical Interpretation." thus when this hermeneutic method is put into practice it will naturally affirm the belief that the opening chapters of Genesis present creation in six literal days (Genesis 1:31; Exodus 31:17).

Initially, it is necessary to know what God created in six literal days. The first day God created the heaven and earth. The word “day” referred to a twenty-four hours day appeared with “morning and evening”.It was decided by God from the first day to the sixth day. Then God created light and existed day and night.

There are four main views on how our planet Earth was created. The first view is the Young Earth View, which states that planet Earth was created in literal days. God created everything within a seven 24 hour periods. The second view on how the Earth was created is The Day Age (Old Earth) theory. This theory suggests that God created the world in different ages, because one large chunk of time to us might merely mean a day to God. This explains why people believe that the Earth could be billions of years old. The third view of creation is the Restoration View (Gap Theory). This theory suggests that God created the Earth but there was a long gap between each stage that it allowed the Earth to form into what it is today. And last but not least is the Literary Framework which says that each of the other theories are wrong because they all miss the point of what the book of Genesis is trying to explain to us. Me, personally, I believe in the first theory, Young Earth View. That is how I have always looked at it and the other ways just do not seem to make any sense to me. Now that being said, I started considering The Day Age (Old Earth) theory because it seems like it could explain so much of what science has found and it could tie into the book of Genesis. But after reading “The Genesis Debate” a chapter in a book titled “Across the Spectrum Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology” written by Boyd and Eddy, I noticed that they had some scripture

This is one of the mot debated topics for Christians today. That is why it is important for one to be able to defend a literal six day creation. A majority of people believe in Evolution and attempt to mix it with the Bible by placing millions of years between different creation days. This “Gap Theory” is not Scriptural, and defies Romans 12:2, which says, “Do not be conformed to this world….” This verse confirms that we should not conform to modern “science” but instead we should rely on Scripture.

I can say that there was a time in my life where I believe that God had created heaven and earth in six literal days. During this time, I also believed that the world was approximately six thousand years old. And I believed that every word from Genesis was correct.