Nope. Sorry. I don't agree with your explanation. I believe the reason Genesis presents creation as having occurred the way it is described is because it happened that way. Not over millions of years, but in a very short time.
That's fine. I'm not asking you to accept it. I'm just stating how many Christians that accept an ancient universe and evolutionary mechanisms treat the Genesis story.
And be careful not to confuse categories and Christians. There are young earthers who take the days of Genesis as literal 24-hour days. There are different types of old earthers. Those who believe the earth and universe are old but reject macro evolution and believe Adam was a direct creation of God and there are Christians that believe in macro evolution. Not all old earthers agree on some important issues.
That's because you're a literal Westerner and that's what literal Westerners tend to believe. And if the Bible was a literal Westerner book, you would be correct. But it's not.
To be accurate, the Bible says God created 6 yom(s). It's a word with multiple time usages. So we must consider various options. Can it be six 24-hour days? Maybe. Maybe not. It's a possibility. It's not the only. Grace and humility are all the more necessary because of that.
I remember back in the day of (German) youth group being told that Genesis is actually a conglomeration of several manuscripts that were authored by (at least 2) different people ("Yahwist" and "Elohist") and pieced together as best as possible to give it some sort of continuity. Scholars are still busy figuring it all out. Who am I to say that I know what it actually means? The important thing (to me) is that people took great pains, over centuries upon centuries, to faithfully preserve and copy those documents so we have them available today to help us connect with and worship our Creator. I'm not really a fan of straining gnats and missing the big picture, personally. There's a lot of things we don't know. The earth holds a lot of secrets that are yet to be uncovered. Scientists and creationists and old earthers and young earthers all going round and round arguing over stuff. Why? Believe what you can reasonably believe, considering all the evidence and knowledge we now have, understand you don't know everything, and don't try to get too hung up on getting it "perfectly right". God alone knows what actually happened, in detail. We can only ever know what we're given permission to know. That's enough for me. Which means I can let go and don't have to try to hard to make it all "fit". It doesn't need to fit. At least I don't think so. I 100% agree with grace and humility being necessary. The matter of fully understanding Genesis and its many nuances isn't anything that will make or break anyone's faith, as far as I'm concerned.
If the "Creation" didn't occur in the way as it is presented in Genesis, then why did God inspire the author of Genesis to present it that way? Why be dishonest and intentionally present it in a fashion other than how it really happened? And if we can't believe that something as basic as how we got here is accurately presented and is to be taken at face value, then how do we know we can take anything else in the Bible at face value? Maybe it's all open to various "interpretations?" Maybe none of it's even real. ???
Because it ISN'T what actually happened (according to some people). But it's presented as if it IS. Why would God need to tell us a fairytale about our origins? Is the actual method God used to create the universe and life too scary or complex for us and the "allegorical" Creation event, Garden of Eden scenario, etc. needed to be given to us instead?
Before we start throwing out 'fairy-tale' and 'lying' and all that, let's just revisit just when and where Genesis was put to papyrus, so to speak. From that point we can start thinking about how we can reconcile it with, especially in the light of out 21st century eyes. The following is pretty much where I am at, but it's not necessarily everything. And I'm not telling you what to believe. I think we all agree that Moses was the author, or perhaps collated various stories from oral traditions (I won't get into the JEPD thing) . What was Moses doing at the time? Wandering or camping in the desert with the new nation of Israel. They have recently left Egypt where they lived for many generations. It's pretty safe to assume that most are fully indoctrinated with the Egyptian pantheon and the stories of their gods. God had mightily dealt with the Egyptian gods in the plagues to reinforce he was the one true God. But still, how are we going to sort out this nation of people who believe in multiple gods. Well, why not use elements of the known stories of the time? So Egypt had their creation myth of course (and there was commonality of the other creation myths). God meets us where we are, and using such stories to retell (redeem) these false stories into the true story. The Genesis creation story does that - except it was created by God (and only one god), it was created 'very good', not as some accident or out of some battle between the gods (although the battle idea has been noted by some), and people are image-bearers of God, a radical departure from the relatively unimportant and almost unintended place of people in the contemporary creation myths. There are other things we can glean too. Some, of course, have noted the connection of the days of creation (1-4, 2-5, 3-6). Some have called the early parts of Genesis a preamble of a contemporary covenant document (the convenant of God and Israel later in Exodus is certainly in the style). None of this is at all relevant to modern scientific discoveries of the universe and out earth. This is transcendant (historically) story that is relevant even to us, because the truths are still the truths. We are still image bearers of God, the creation is still very good and still belongs to God (though now tainted by sin). At the heart of this we can say the God is sovereign and the (only) agent behind creation. The method of how He worked it out was left up to us by God, using our God-given minds to discover and follow our God-given command to subdue the earth.
Given the background of what Teddy just explained ... at the time the creation story in Genesis was penned, it was "good enough" to refute and clear up other creation stories that were being believed. At that time. When it was written. In the framework and context of the understanding and traditions people knew back then, the cultures they were interacting with, and the other faiths they had encountered, with their stories and traditions. If Genesis was written today, in our current age and based upon our current context and within our current framework, it would be written very, very differently, obviously. What was "good enough" then would not be "good enough" now. We're dealing with manuscripts that are thousands of years old. You cannot retroactively cram our 21st century framework, context, knowledge and understanding into those ancient documents and expect them to still hold up in detail. That's not ever going to happen, no matter what kinds of mental gymnastics you perform. You would have to at least try to put yourself into the mindset of a Jew circa 1000 BC, in order to understand it properly (if that's even possible). Genesis was written a very long time ago for a specific audience of people who lived at that time, and it fit perfectly well into their framework and context. The truths and stories contained in the Pentateuch were plenty good enough for that audience, at that time, and contained plenty of truth for them to go "ah ha!", accept that truth, be encouraged in their beliefs, know how to live, know what God expected from them, and go about their merry way, back then in like 1000 BC or whatever. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's too complex for us or too scary for us. Nothing whatsoever. Because Genesis wasn't written for us!!! We get to of course benefit from it and study it and let it encourage us in our faith and help us in our understanding of a God who never changes, but a lot of the details are always going to be lost on us, because we were not the intended audience. Unnastand?? It would be the same as going back in time and giving a 1000 BC Jew a copy of the Encylopedia Brittanica. The book is true, it contains facts, there are no lies in it -- but that poor fella would sit there scratching his noggin, unable to understand much of it at all, because his framework is so different from ours, it would seem like aliens dropped it in his lap. Which is exactly why certain passages of the Bible seem so alien to us. Is the Bible true? Yes! Did God inspire it? Yes! Are certain passages and concepts timeless and accurate for us also? Of course!! But, God did not inspire those scriptures in every single detail specifically for us. He inspired them for the people they were written for and delivered to at the time. Because that was what they needed, and He gave it to them. Context matters. Audience matters. Always. The Bible is not a universal book. Sorry. It's just not. Although it does contain universal truth. And we know enough truth from it to understand how we need to be living our own lives today, and always. Even though we may never be able to understand every single detail.
So, if the events described in Genesis are merely allegory, the "truth" is what? Evolution? We evolved, er, um, I mean we were "created" from primordial slime containing various proteins that got zapped by lightning millions of years ago? :
I don't think they are "merely allegory". I'm not a Jew circa 1500 BC so I don't know how to understand it. Some understand it as allegory, others try and understand it literally, historically and scientifically. The right application is probably somewhere between those two options. It's perfectly okay to say "I don't really know" when it comes to the true interpretation of certain passages. And to be perfectly honest with you, I don't really know. That was so long ago, does it really matter now? The people who would have understood it perfectly are long dead. Some of what I do understand: - God created everything. - People were a deliberate creation of God, not a product of some random evolutionary process. - Adam and Eve may or may not have been the first actual, literal people. Although that doesn't really make sense, because their names aren't really names. Adam means "man" and Eve means "to live". They're descriptive titles, not given names. They may have been the first of their kind of some kind of ancestral clan or people groups. They may represent the first people God created for a specific time, reason, and purpose, while actually not being those people. If they were the actual first people ever, God would be guilty of approving incest, because how else would earth have been populated initially? I highly doubt that. - God created our bodies from the same stuff the earth is made out of. - God breathed something else into our bodies "the breath of life" that is something more than physical, that comes from Him, that gives us some sort of divine essence or whatever, that gives His life to our bodies. - God was very systematic in His creation. - Whoever or whatever Adam and Eve actually were, they enjoyed some sort of connection to God that was innocent and pure. - Something happened to that connection. Whether there was a literal fruit on a literal tree and a literal snake, we don't really know. What we do know is they lost that innocence because of some choice, or string of choices, that were made by whoever Adam and Eve represent. - After the connection was severed, things changed drastically, although God never stopped watching over them or guiding them or lowering His standards for them. - People used to live a lot longer than they do now, and that's because they made bad choices for themselves and things got corrupted, so God decreased our life span in order to protect us from ourselves and one another (can you imagine evildoers getting to live for 1000 years? *shudder* Nope!). And so on and so forth. Even though a literal and detailed interpretation may not be appropriate or possible, we can easily understand the general gist of what the stories convey and the truths they deliver.
For myself, I don't think I really implied any allegory. I think it could be the case in the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree, but I would echo what Dani already said. At the end of the day, my education and experience certainly leads me to a conclusion that we, at very minimum, live on a very old planet in a very old universe. The physical evidence in that regard is simply too strong to ignore. I'm not a biologist trained in evolutionary theory, but the evidence has certainly pointed in that direction for some time now.
Indeed... if such a being advertised its existence as being *obvious* (as Christianity's seemed to), why would it not dedicate into writing deep scientific truths that would have been unknown to its chosen authors? But instead of insights into infectious diseases, properties of matter, or cosmological truths impossible to see with the naked eye, we're told what type of bird to sacrifice when our house is moldy. Indeed... why *would* a God demand its adherents retain a literalist interpretation of a narrative that is plainly observable to be false across multiple disparate disciplines of observation. Astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, botany... all these disciplines independently verify a very, very old earth. The question you need to ask yourself, is why your God demands you subject the rest of humanity to a contemptible LIE
Nonono... I think we should embrace the accusations of "fairy-tale" and "lying" as exactly the kind of poppycockery I was hinting at earlier in the thread. Christians who work in STEM are natural prey for their predatory non-STEM "brethren". I can't remember who, but someone nailed it quite nicely over on the other forum: "Science is the God of the Atheist" That isn't an outlier view. Its the most common by a mile.
It's common in branches of evangelical Christianity which is but one part of Christendom (and makes up the bulk of place like BF). RCC, EO, Lutheran and many Reformed denominations are no where making these type of statements.
AiG isn't the definition of being Evangelical. They are a loud voice, that is definitely true. But outside of AiG books on my shelves (I keep up with Ken Ham and co. to know what they are saying) most of the authors of the books on my shelves don't agree with them. AiG is not the historical position of the church.
Assuming this was a reference to my post, sure, there are many evangelicals that do not agree with AiG (I was never even specifically referring to AiG). But the bulk of YEC doctrine (be it AiG's brand, or something else) seems to me to be mainly rooted in the evangelical world. That may be misplaced on my part, but it's been my experience.