How can people say that when God created things in 6 days, it actually meant "a long period of time?

Question

When, after each day of creating, the Bible specifically says, "So, the evening and the morning were the first day", and "so the evening and the morning were the second day" and "So the evening and the morning were the third day" and so on????? It is telling you right there that a day was a day and a night was a night. Why do people keep leaving this out when they talk about the creation? It is just so plain and simple. God didn't make it to be complicatied. He was saying there was day, and there was night, and that made ONE DAY. Anybody else agree with this?

Answer 1

I pretty much agree. Even if you take the attitude of a day is as a thousand years, you've only got an extra seven thousand years. That's hardly enough time for evolution. I'm willing to give somebody that, but billions of years are definately contradictory to the Biblical account. I think the Bible is clear about morning and evening, yes.

Answer 2

why in the world would you even worry about that? If there was really an omnipotent being, capable of waving his arms and making something like the earth or the universe, then what difference would it make how many days it took? A day is a full revolution of the earth. So if you are creating the earth, why would you use as a reference to time, one rotation of the thing you are creating, while you were creating it? Doesn't it stand to reason that if the time were measured, it would be against some other standard?

Which just goes to show you one more of 10,000 examples of why we suspect that the bible is a really good collection of stories made up by some people who wanted to do good things, and it is silly to take it as literally as some people still seem to think they should.

I wish people could become comfortable about the fact that we don't yet know how everything came to be, and we probably never will, because we can always ask the question "what was there before that?" We don't need a pat answer for everything today, and certainly can't focus exclusively on a collection of writings for that purpose that date back to 2,000 years ago.

The universe, by definition, is infinate. It is "the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm". It never began and will probably never end, (unless the conservation of energy principle is incorrect) both in time and in extent. To try to describe when it began, simply begs the question "what was there before it?". Either the answer is nothing, in which case, who created it, and from what?, or the answer is something, and we make up a new name for that. But we don't need a new name for what came before the universe. If there was anything at all, its still the universe.

Its really not that hard to see this. What IS interesting and useful is to try to understand things about our past, so that we can use it to make good choices about our present, to try to make the future good for those who follow, or perhaps to just try to leave things in better shape than we found them.

Spend some time thinking about that, instead of worrying about the bible too much.

Answer 3

The argument can go both ways. That is, why did God take six days to do what he could've done in an instant? Could it be instead that he used language humans could understand and identify with to tell the story of creation, but in reality it all happened in a nanosecond?

Those who promote the days=ages theory point to verses like those in 1 Peter that say to the Lord a day is a thousand years, and a thousand years but a day.

The point is you have to decide whether you want to interpret the creation account literally or figuratively. Neither gets you off the hook: "in the beginning God created". It doesn't matter if it took 6 days, 6 seconds, or 6 million years.

Answer 4

For one, mankind wrote that book for the self glorification of control over Dominion.
For two, God speaks to the individual in the language one understands, not all languages is through speech you know,
how about signing?
For three, there were not always 7 days in a week, nor 12 months in a year or 365 days. There have been many different calendars and still is.
For four, perhaps they, whoever could have been making the point that night (dark) was in the womb and when you were born ( came into the world), there was day (light).
For five, you are wasting your day and night stressing over what others think and are doing. Tomorrow is not promised, we only have right now.
For six, your personal relationship to whatever force, Deity etcetra you choose is for your existence not necessarily for a pat on the back from the world. If others benefit from your goodness of the heart, that is the blessing for all involved or connected.
For 7, I am a SPIRITUAL BEING.

I THINK THOSE ARE SEVEN REASON'S TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION. MUCH LOVE TO YOU

Answer 5

God, being an inconceivably vast, eternal, and everpresent BEING, fortunately 'fits' into every small mind, including those who insist on translating the Hebrew language, which describes things like eons in terms of 'night and day', literally.
Similarly, the 'rib' from which Eve was created is not literally a rib made from bone, but rather a rounded object or CONCEPT which enfolds and protects, much like a woman enfolds and protects family, the unborn child, and the precious emotional soul within.
God is NOT a simple BEING but rather ultimately complex and, despite all our intelligence gathering, still somewhat beyond human understanding. The Hebrews realized that when they wrote the Old Testament and therefore chose analogies to describe the undescribable.
English-speaking Christians who seek to take these descriptions literally are missing the boat.
Consider that GOD lives by its own evidence, not by words in misinterpreted, much edited, and little-understood scriptures.
Wouldn't it be better to seek understanding of God's nature (of LOVE, of POWER, of FORGIVENESS, of INFINITE INTELLIGENCE), rather than argue about words in a book?

Answer 6

these are relative terms - they are relative to what a particular 'day' entails... when a planet spins slowly, a day may equate to fifty of our years so what entailed a 'day' at the time of creation, is relative. It is also relative to interpretation since the bible has been reinterpreted zillions of times by many different people so translation tends to lose things :) Agreeing with you or not doesn't alter what is or isn't. Believe however you wish to believe - you don't need validation from someone on the internet... but you might want to think a bit more on what you are considering...

Answer 7

If it does not mesh with current scientific evidence then Christians say that it is a 'metaphor' or an 'allegory', if it cannot be disproved due to it being purely faith or woo woo based, then it is the unabridged perfect word of god.

They change, re edit and interpret the bible to suit whatever they are trying to argue about that day.

They see no hypocrisy in this, or any contradiction, its just the way the bible is. Malleable.

Answer 8

one, you must be a literalist, which I am not.

two, even in the bible there is some verse that says one day is like a thousand days in heaven and visa versa.

three, there is no time and space so putting a time and space to this, is obviously the work of a human..

four, what does it matter how long it took for the universe to be in existence, does it make God less credible or less amazing.... it only makes the bible less credible, not God, and there is a major difference.

Answer 9

The meaning of that statement is in terms of what time means to God. To God 1 day is equal to 1,000 years to us. so to him it was 1 day, in our terms it is a lot longer.
I suspect that the main reason people leave that part out is that don't think about and assume that everybody already knows it already. You are correct, I think God didn't mean for it to be complicated. It seems that as humans we tend to over complicate things by over thinking it or trying to over rationalize it. It's interesting how you can take one statement and say it to 100 different people and each one will come up with their own interpretation.

Answer 10

God didn't say that. The author of Genesis said that. And a simple reading of ancient philosophical literature is sufficient to suggest that the author of Genesis was relating a metaphysical doctrine, and not a historical account or a creation myth.