Why is Evolution and the time frame of a day, inconsistent in religious teachings, but not in the bible?

Question

In the Holy Bible, it is clear that Adam and Eve "died within the day", while they really lived for nearly a thousand years. It is clear that a day can also mean 2,520 years: Eze 4:6; Nu 14:34

All this, and people still consider the "6 days" of creation to be 6 24 hour periods? Why? I dont understand this. It is so inconsistent. I give all the glory to God for creating our world, and our universe, but I also believe that even God can be the greatest SCIENTIST of all time, creating the evolutionary process.
Furthermore, God created the heavens and the earth on the FIRST day, BEFORE the sun was created, or beginning to be made, whatever.
It makes absolutely ZERO sense to say that there was even such thing as a solar day (a 24 hour period) when the earth was created. It also says it was formless and that it was made of mostly liquid.
The earth heavens and sun, and all "came to be".

Maybe to God, who has no beginning and no ending- a day can be a million years. Agree? Why?

Answer 1

I think you're right. I highly doubt God's version of a day is 24 hours. After all, every other planet in our solar system has a day of a different length. I believe he named his work periods "days", no matter how long they took in actual Earth time.

Answer 2

Sure, I'll grant you, a "day" could mean something other than 24 hours. However, um, the earth did not come into existence before the sun did, so it sort of puts the kibosh on your theory anyway.

Besides that, we've pretty much established that there was no global flood (although of course "world" could have meant something other than the entire globe), but there are just too many inconsistencies in the bible to try and argue that it's compatible with science.

Answer 3

No I do not agree, I'm sorry. The holy bible scripture that refers to a day being like a thousand years is speaking of an eternal God who is highr than we are and whos sense of time is much different than ours, (this is obvious to me). And i believe that he most definately did create the world in six days.
But that is just my belief, but, according to the Bible the world is 6008 years old and there have been men who have devoted their lives in studying this topic.
And according to evolution where the earth is apparently 50,000,000. or so, years old there are a lot of missing holes and they (the ones who write these books) even admit this fact.

Answer 4

You are attempting to apply logic and reason to the beliefs of extreme fundamentalists.

Simply put: that's a mistake.

Answer 5

In biblical times, people thought that the earth and heaven were all that there was... and that the earth was essentially a 'terrarium' (you might want to look that up). They thought that the sky was a solid object, called the 'firmament', and that the sun, moon, and stars were affixed to it. So, essentially, heaven is 'on the other side of the sky'.

The story of Genesis is comprised of the myths, superstitions, fairy tales and fantastical delusions of an ignorant bunch of Bronze Age fishermen and wandering goat herders, lifted from the oral traditions of other cultures, and crafted into a tale that incorporated some of their own folk tales and pseudo-history. This collection of ignorance provides the basis for the Abrahamic death cults of desert monotheism... Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The cosmological aspects of Genesis are perfectly understandable, if you contemplate it in the proper context. At the time the bible stories were concocted, the perception was that the earth was the object and the center of creation. Why? Because they had no reason to think otherwise. Today, as we advance science, we stand upon the shoulders of all the scientists that came before. Back then there were no shoulders to stand upon... so they did the best they could with what they had... their senses and their imaginations.

* They had no concept of 'outer space', and so they conceived that in the beginning all that existed were dark waters.

* They had no concept of 'nothingness'. Remember, the concept of 'zero' wasn't invented (discovered?) until thousands of years later. With that in mind, the term 'void', as it is employed in Genesis, can not refer to 'nothingness'... it can only be applied in its alternative definition, which is 'empty'. So, the waters were dark, formless and empty (devoid of content).

* They thought that all of creation consisted of the earth and an unseen 'heaven', and they thought that the sky was a 'thing'... a substantive 'firmament' (the sky) that was created by god to separate the waters and differentiate earth from heaven, when both were created.

# They had no idea that Earth was a planet, orbiting the sun.

# They had no idea that there is no firmament... that the sky is not a 'thing'.

(If you don't believe that they thought the sky was an object... a solid barrier... consider the Tower of Babel, that they were building to reach heaven. Apparently, God ALSO thought that the sky was an object, since it concerned him so much that he confounded their speech, so as to disrupt their project and keep them from reaching his domain. God must be pretty much of a dumbass, if he doesn't even know the actual configuration of the universe that he created. So much for the 'inerrant' bible.)

* They thought that the sun was a light that god had placed upon the 'firmament' to differentiate night from day.

# They had no idea that the sun is a star... the center of our solar system.

# They had no concept of 'stars' in the same sense that we understand them today.

* They had no idea that night and day were a consequence of the earth's rotation.

* They thought that the moon was a 'lesser' light that god had caused to travel across the firmament to enable man to differentiate the seasons, and provide illumination at night.

# They had no concept of the moon as a satellite.

* They thought that the stars were tiny lights that god had placed upon the firmament to provide for omens. (Some thought that the stars were 'holes' in the firmament that allowed the 'light of heaven' to shine through.)

# They had no idea that the stars were suns, just like our own sun.

# They thought the eyeball-visible planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn) were 'wandering stars'.

# They had no idea that the planets were actually sun-orbiting bodies, just like earth.

* They had no idea that the earth, itself, is a planet.

# They had no clue as to the actual nature of the earth, our solar system, the place of our solar system in the galaxy... or even of the existence of our galaxy. (Up until very recently, we didn't even know that there were other galaxies. Our galaxy, when it was first known that there actually WAS a galaxy, was thought to be the whole universe.) From their perspective, the 'earth' and 'heaven' (i.e., whatever existed on the other side of the sky) represented all that there was. A terrarium.

I do not say this things to disparage what they thought back then. They were trying to do what science is trying to do today... trying to understand reality. Today, we have technology and disciplined meta-procedures (scientific method) to help us extract answers from nature.

Back then, they did not.

Today, we have 'theories' to provide consistent explanations for what we are able to observe in nature, supplemented and validated by the additional information that we are able to extract from nature by means of our technology, our disciplined methods and our intellectual tools (mathematics, logic). Most of our theories are incomplete, so we continue to work on them... because we know that they are incomplete.

Back then, they did not have disciplined methods, and they did not have the technology to extract answers from nature. The only information they had access to was what they could see with their own eyeballs. There was no technological knowledge base or scientific context in which to interpret their observations, so they had to appeal to their imaginations... and the 'supernatural'... in order to make sense out of what they saw. Actually, what they really achieved was deluding themselves into thinking that they knew the truth. Amazingly, over time, this delusion has become codified, institutionalized, and incorporated... complete with franchises.

Basically, Genesis can be thought of as a 'theory', concocted by people who were constrained by lack of technology, methodology and intellectual tools... but they sure weren't constrained by lack of imagination.

Today, we try to interpret Genesis in the context of what we know to be true of the universe... galaxies, stars, planets, moons, gravity, orbits, inclination of the earth's axis, planetary rotation, etc. They problem is that Genesis can't be interpreted in terms of those things, because Genesis was written by men, based on oral traditions, and those men did not know about those things. They could only write about what they could see and what they could guess about the reasons that lay behind what they saw. In any event, it provided them with a mechanism to quell the innate anxiety that comes with fretting about how and why they came to be here.

They guessed wrong.

So... I think that the cosmological aspects of Genesis require a literal interpretation... no metaphors... no allegory... no hidden meaning. The key, though, is in understanding that the literal interpretation does not lead to a description of the way things are... it leads to a description of the way they thought things are. It leads to a naive description of reality, concocted by people who were doing the best they could with what they had.

It is absolutely appalling, though, to realize that hundreds of millions of people, TODAY, including participants in this forum, BELIEVE that this ignorant bovine excrement is actually TRUE.

Answer 6

The necessity for believing in six literal days

by Ken Ham

The majority of Christians in churches probably aren't sure whether God really created everything in six literal days. Many believe it doesn't matter whether it took six days or six million years. However, it is vital to believe in six literal days for many reasons. Foremost is that allowing these days to be long periods of time undermines the foundations of the message of the Cross.
Why do people doubt the days?

The major reason why people doubt that the days of creation are 24-hour literal days usually has nothing to do with what the Bible says, but comes from outside influences. For example, many believe that because scientists have supposedly proved the earth to be billions of years old then the days of creation cannot be ordinary days.

If people use Scripture to try to justify that the days of creation are long periods of time, they usually quote passages such as 2 Peter 3:8, '... one day is with the Lord as a thousand years ...'. Because of this, they think the days could be a thousand years, or perhaps even millions of years. However, if you look at the rest of the verse, it says, '... and a thousand years as one day'. This cancels out their argument! The context of this passage concerns the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This particular verse is telling people that with God, waiting a day is like waiting a thousand years, and waiting a thousand years is like waiting a day because God is outside of time—He is not limited by natural processes and time. This has absolutely nothing to do with defining the days of creation. Besides, the word 'day' already exists and has been defined, which is why in 2 Peter it can be compared to a thousand years. There is no reference in this passage to the days of creation.
What does 'day' mean?

The Hebrew word for day in Genesis chapter 1 is the word yom. It is important to understand that almost any word can have two or more meanings, depending on context. We need to understand the context of the usage of this word in Genesis chapter 1.*

Respected Hebrew dictionaries, like the Brown, Driver, Briggs lexicon, give a number of meanings for the word yom depending upon context. One of the passages they give for yom's meaning an ordinary day happens to be Genesis chapter 1. The reason is obvious. Every time the word yom is used with a number, or with the phrase 'evening and morning', anywhere in the Old Testament, it always means an ordinary day. In Genesis chapter 1, for each of the six days of creation, the Hebrew word yom is used with a number and the phrase, 'evening and morning'. There is no doubt that the writer is being emphatic that these are ordinary days.
What if the days were millions of years?
The whole of the creation restored ... to what?

The Bible says there will be a future restoration (Acts 3:21), with no death or suffering. How could all things be restored in the future to no more death and suffering unless the beginning was also free of death and suffering? The whole message of the gospel falls apart if you allow millions of years (with death and suffering) for the world's creation.

The idea of millions of years came from the belief that the fossil record was built up over a long time. As soon as people allow for millions of years, they allow for the fossil record to be millions of years old. This creates an insurmountable problem regarding the gospel. The fossil record consists of the death of billions of creatures. In fact, it is a record of death, disease, suffering, cruelty, and brutality. It is a very ugly record.

The Bible is adamant though, that death, disease, and suffering came into the world as a result of sin. God instituted death and bloodshed because of sin so man could be redeemed. As soon as Christians allow for death, suffering, and disease before sin, then the whole foundations of the message of the Cross and the Atonement have been destroyed. The doctrine of original sin, then, is totally undermined.

If there were death, disease, and suffering before Adam rebelled—then what did sin do to the world? What does Paul mean in Romans 8 when he says the whole of creation groans in pain because of the Curse? How can all things be restored in the future to no more death and suffering, unless the beginning was also free of death and suffering? The whole message of the gospel falls apart if one allows millions of years for the creation of the world.
How should we approach scripture?

Wrong foundation.

One of the major problems we all have (in fact, it is the same problem Adam and Eve had) is that we tend to start from outside God's Word and then go to what God has written in the Bible (or—in Adam's case—what God said directly to him) to try to interpret it on the basis of our own ideas. This is really the major reason why most people question the days of creation.

We need to realize that the Bible is God's Word. And as it is the inspired Word of the infinite Creator, God, then it must be self-authenticating and self-attesting. Thus, we should always start with what God's Word says regardless of outside ideas. Only God's Word is infallible.

If we allow our children to accept the possibility that we can doubt the days of creation when the language speaks so plainly, then we are teaching them a particular approach to all of Scripture. Why shouldn't they then start to doubt that Christ's Virgin Birth really means a virgin birth? Why shouldn't they start to doubt that the Resurrection really means resurrection?

In fact, there are many theologians who doubt these very things, as they have come to disbelieve the plain words of Scripture written in the foundational Book of Genesis.

Why did God take six days?

If you think about it, an infinite Creator God could have created everything in no time. Why, then, did He take as long as six days? The answer is given in Exodus 20:11. Here we find that God tells us that He deliberately took six days and rested for one as a pattern for man—this is where the seven-day week comes from. The seven-day week has no basis for existing except from Scripture. If one believes that the days of creation are long periods of time, then the week becomes meaningless.

The Bible tells us that Adam was created on the sixth day. If he lived through day six and day seven, and then died when he was 930 years old, and if each of these days was a thousand or a million years, you have major problems! On the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:14-19), we are given the comparison of day to night, and days to years. If the word 'day' doesn't mean an ordinary day, then the comparison of day to night and day to years becomes meaningless.

Were the days 24 hours? Most definitely! 'Let God be true, but every man a liar' (Romans 3:4).