It isnt actually very mysterious either.

Its made up. Just make believe. That explains how it doesnt make sense in the real world, or even within the bounds of its own explaination.

it doesnt make sense because it is non-sense. garbage taken down in written language.

I am fully on board with your investigation here Tat, you can and should hold his feet to the fire, but unfortunately you won't end up boiling answers to the top of his YEC stew. You'll just end up with burnt mess.

Thanks Johnson1010, I'm honestly truth seeking here. It seems that one of the two options - symbolic or literal - can be eliminated as invalid. I just eliminated the option of literal. So symbolic is left standing. Then the question is symbolic of what? It can't be symbolic of literal years going by for each day of creation, so that is eliminated. It is symbolic in terms of pairing environments with the celestial orbs and livings creatures set to the number 7 mythological theme (1/4, 2/5, 3/6, 7). But of course that doesn't establish the literal age of the earth in any way. One has to take the myth literally in order to do that. Man had to be literally created on the literal sixth day of creation just as the bible literally says it. And his literal descendants lives have to be calculated to the present day in order to give the earth a young age which then conflicts with science and observation.

So this house of cards seems to rest on the foundation of Genesis 1 being taken literally true. With the sand foundation exposed to the tide that has just come in, it would seem the entire house falls down as the sand foundation of literalistic interpretation[/] is washed out. You'd think that a YEC proponent would do anything and everything to prevent that from happening rather than evade and attempt to divert the issue elsewhere. But, perhaps evading and diverting the issue elsewhere is a conscious or sub conscious mind strategy to draw attention away from the sand foundation of YEC so that no one will realize just how easily washed out it actually is when the torrent comes? It would be a good apologetic strategy for the most part, but it only works on those willing to take the diversion of course.

tat tvam asi wrote:Stahrwe, I just hit a Roman Catholic with it recently, in person, and he immediately confessed that it isn't to be taken as literal. He just leaves it as the mystery that it actually is. We have no absolute answer as it's a work in progress. Why not be honest about it?

Well, I'm not a Roman Catholic, and it is not a work in progress.

Read Genesis Chapter 1 again.

tat tvam asi wrote:
There are those who believe that the world was created 4004 BC and in six days literally. That makes the world six thousand years and provides an insight into the millenium of Revelation as making for a 7 thousand year old earth - six thousand years followed by a thousand years of peace for a Sabbath rest before the Lake of Fire and so on...

Maybe Stahrwe can answer this question regarding Young Earth beliefs. Some Creationists say the earth is about 6,000 years old, but Stahrwe has said that it's actually about 8,000 years old. For the moment I won't comment on the absurdity of guessing the age of the earth based on texts that were written 2,000 years ago. But I do wonder what weird ideological permutation accounts for this discrepancy.

geo wrote:

tat tvam asi wrote:
There are those who believe that the world was created 4004 BC and in six days literally. That makes the world six thousand years and provides an insight into the millenium of Revelation as making for a 7 thousand year old earth - six thousand years followed by a thousand years of peace for a Sabbath rest before the Lake of Fire and so on...

Maybe Stahrwe can answer this question regarding Young Earth beliefs. Some Creationists say the earth is about 6,000 years old, but Stahrwe has said that it's actually about 8,000 years old. For the moment I won't comment on the absurdity of guessing the age of the earth based on texts that were written 2,000 years ago. But I do wonder what weird ideological permutation accounts for this discrepancy.

Take 8 billion and drop the last six zeros.

Sorry, feeling a bit giddy this afternoon with all the birthday wishes.

geo wrote:

tat tvam asi wrote:
There are those who believe that the world was created 4004 BC and in six days literally. That makes the world six thousand years and provides an insight into the millenium of Revelation as making for a 7 thousand year old earth - six thousand years followed by a thousand years of peace for a Sabbath rest before the Lake of Fire and so on...

Maybe Stahrwe can answer this question regarding Young Earth beliefs. Some Creationists say the earth is about 6,000 years old, but Stahrwe has said that it's actually about 8,000 years old. For the moment I won't comment on the absurdity of guessing the age of the earth based on texts that were written 2,000 years ago. But I do wonder what weird ideological permutation accounts for this discrepancy.

Take 8 billion and drop the last six zeros.

Sorry, feeling a bit giddy this afternoon with all the birthday wishes.

Even atheists wish people happy b-day sometimes.

No seriously, what in the Bible says the earth is 8,000 years old? Where is it?

I've read through a lot of horrible apologetic attempts at Genesis 1. None of them ever solve the contradiction.There's ton of twists and everyone seems to have one. But what they all have in common is that something other than the literal interpretation of the bible is required, so the literalism fails apart anyways. They have to try and twist around the words of the bible which comes becomes self defeating in the long run. One good example is saying that the sun was created on the first day when God made the heaven and the earth. These apologies suggest that the sun, moon, and stars existed on the first day when the heaven was created, but they remained invisible until the fourth day at which point they could be observed from the earth.

But, there was no life on the earth on day 4 in order to observe or not observe the sun. Now that's just plain horrible! Because the bible contradicts itself by having the heaven created at the beginning of the first day and then the sun created later on day four the sun has to be considered as "invisible from the earth until the fourth day". Invisible to what? There was no observers any ways. This twisted apology requires diverting away from what the bible literally says as the bible doesn't literally say anything about the sun existing as invisible and then later becoming visible from the earth on the fourth day.

The answer is obvious, day 1 and day 4 are being used for a mythological purpose. It's the environment of space (heavens) without any sun, moon, or stars to inhabit space yet, just the realm of space and the void formless earth. Later, after the three environments are created their matching inhabitants are created to dwell in the environments of inhabitation, all of this being fixed to the sacred mythological number 7 for mythological purposes - so creation is rendered as 7 days reflecting reverence for the 7 visible celestial orbs that our ancestors have been observing for countless eons of evolution on the planet. It's funny to see what happens when people try and divert away from the mythological origins of the creation story. It creates quite a mess.

tat tvam asi wrote:I've read through a lot of horrible apologetic attempts at Genesis 1. There's ton of twists and everyone seems to have one. But what they all have in common is that something other than the literal interpretation of the bible is required, so the literalism fails.

One good example is saying that the sun was created on the first day when God made the heavens and the earth. The sun, moon, and stars existed on the first day when the heavens were created, but they remained invisible until the fourth day at which point they could be observed from the earth.

Would you please provide a link to that explanation? I would like to see who came up with the one.

http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth ... g1tZ8H3VSr

Day 4

Many people believe that the text about day 4 says that God created the Sun, moon and stars on the fourth day. This is not what the text actually says, so let's read it again.

•Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; (Genesis 1:14)
•and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. (Genesis 1:15)
•And God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. (Genesis 1:16)
•And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, (Genesis 1:17)
•and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:18)
How can a day be longer than 24-hours?
Even though the Genesis text clearly indicates that the days are longer than 24-hours, some Christians insist that any interpretation of Genesis 1 that deviates from 24-hour days is not literal. The problem is that the Hebrew word yom17 has three literal definitions - 12 hour daylight period, 24 period of time, or a long, but indefinite period of time. A careful reading of the Genesis creation account reveals that the 24-hour interpretation is ruled out by the actual Genesis text. The first definitive example of a day that is longer than 24-hours can be found in the beginning of the Genesis 2 creation account, which says that the entire six days of creation are one day.18

In verse 14 we have that unusual construction again of "let there be." It is not a statement of creation, but a statement of appearance. At this point, the clouds present at the initial creation of the earth were completely removed so that the bodies themselves appeared for the first time on the surface of the earth. The passage tells us that the lights were allowed "to be" so that they could be signs of the seasons, days, and years. It was necessary for the creatures of day 5 that the heavenly bodies be visible. We know that many of the migratory birds (created on day 5) require visible stars to navigate, hence the need to actually see these bodies. Verse 18 gives us another hint. The lights were placed in the sky to "separate the light from the darkness." Does this sound familiar? It is the exact Hebrew phrase used for God's work on the first day when, "God separated the light from the darkness" (Genesis 1:4) By using this phrase, the text is recounting the formation of the Sun, moon and stars from the first day. If we accept that God created the Sun, moon and stars on the fourth day, then He didn't really create the heavens in verse one. So, the 24-hour day interpretation suffers a contradiction between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:16.

So because the Bible contradicts itself, he feels the need to go back and try to make it not contradict itself. The heavens of day 1 are the environment of space. Each environment is laid out and then the inhabitants for each environments are created. He has no idea that day 1 corresponds to day 4 as the heavens and then that which inhabits the heavens. Just as day 2 establishes firmament from sea and day 5 brings that which inhabits the sea and firmament. and Just as day 3 establishes dry land and day 6 brings that which inhabits the dry the land. This is mythological pairing of environment and inhabitants and to neglect to see and understand this is to neglect to understand the writing style of Genesis 1. The above apologist has fallen into that trap and suffers for it.

He wants to assert that "let there be" isn't a statement of creation, rather the sun, moon, and stars already existed and simply became visible on day 4. So what of the living creatures? Elohim (Gods) said "let the waters teem with living creatures", and "let the earth bring forth living creatures" as well. So then we must conclude that he didn't create them on the 5th and 6th days if "Let there be" doesn't indicate the sun, moon, and stars, being created on the fourth day because it's not an act of creation. He's digging a deeper hole for himself. So yes, the sun was created on the fourth day as the bible states and so no amount of "years" could have gone by before time keeping was established on the fourth day when the sun was created. Because he fails to see the day 1 / day 4 mythological pairing of space (heavens) with the celestial orbs that inhabit space (heavens), and how this theme runs through each of the other days exactly the same way, he gets further and further away from the meaning of Genesis 1.

Finally he comes around to conclude:

We are left with only one internally consistent interpretation for the days of Genesis one. The literal, clearly indicated, meaning of yom for Genesis one must be an unspecified, long period of time. Since the Genesis text says that the third day must be at least several years long, none of the other days would be expected to be limited to 24-hours. All or nearly all of the other creation days would seem to require long periods of time, although the text does not clearly indicate the specific amount of time required.

So he comes to an OEC theory in the end. This guy's all over the place! The root of the problem - which solves the whole thing - is that Genesis 1 is a mythological creation story that does not give any concrete information on either the age of the earth nor how life emerged on the earth. It's a mythological creation story, not live CCN coverage of the dawn of creation. Trying to present it as such only results in problems stacked upon more problems that require stacking ever more problems until the amount of pure bunk involved is so blindingly obvious that it reduces the proponent of such ideas to a deceptive force loose in society! Whether they realize it or not.

The blind leading the blind further along into the darkness (ignorance)...