A new perspective on Genesis 1

[Wingnut]

I want to challenge Creationists to take Genesis 1 literally.
In particular, I am asking Creationists to take Gen 1:1 literally.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Hebrew for "heaven" is actually plural or "shamayim". The Bible lists 3 heavens.
1) earth's atmosphere 2) the cosmos 3) God's throne.

Can Creationists believe that by Gen 1:2 we have 1) an earth 2) with its atmosphere 3) and the cosmos?

So what is God doing for the further 7 days?
Tweaking and adding to what is already there.

Day 1 - God clears the thick atmosphere THAT WAS ALREADY THERE, so that the sun THAT WAS ALREADY THERE can shine through.

Day 2 - God lifts the cloud THAT WAS ALREADY THERE, raising it high above the sea THAT WAS ALREADY THERE creating clear sky (firmament) between.

Day 3 - God raises land THAT WAS ALREADY THERE causing it to poke out of the sea THAT WAS ALREADY THERE. God then populates the land with plants.

Day 4 - God appoints the sun, moon and stars THAT WERE ALREADY THERE to mark out days, months, years and Feast Days.

Day 5 - God populates the sky THAT WAS ALREADY THERE with birds, and God populates the seas THAT WERE ALREADY THERE, with fish.

Day 6 - God populates the land THAT WAS ALREADY THERE with land animals and man.

 

Day 7 - God rests, creating the Sabbath.

[Gregory Matthews]

The above should NOT be dismissed out of hand.

[JoeMo]

Well put, Wingnut!  I have believed for a long time that there is a long, indeterminate amount of time between Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the chapter.  IMHO, the Bible is the record of God's interaction with humanity; not necessarily the all-inclusive history of the eternal God.

[phkrause]

2 hours ago, JoeMo said:

Well put, Wingnut!  I have believed for a long time that there is a long, indeterminate amount of time between Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the chapter.  IMHO, the Bible is the record of God's interaction with humanity; not necessarily the all-inclusive history of the eternal God.

I don't believe wingnut is saying that there are long periods of time?? I could be wrong! So wingnut am I wrong?

[Wingnut]

I was hoping folks would examine the logic of this explanation irrespective of the time period between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2.

If folks wish to believe that "In the beginning God created the heaven(s) and earth" also occurred on day 1, then that is OK with me.

[8thdaypriest]

I have believed something very similar to your hypothesis for many years.  To make the land "appear", God "divided the waters" - creating waters above, and waters below.  I think that HE caused evaporation of a huge amount of the "waters", to create a firmament above.  There was no "sea" - as we know it now - after the land appeared. 

I like Dr Baugh's hypothesis that the H2O was split into H, which crystallized about 12 miles up, and O2 (making the pre-flood atmosphere very rich in oxygen).  In this biosphere, the weather was mild, and the atmospheric pressure was roughly twice what we know now.  Wounds healed almost overnight.  Anaerobes were non-existent.  Snakes were not poisonous.  It was like living in a hyperbaric chamber.  Pterodactyls could fly. 

At the flood of Noah, an asteroid crashed into the crystalline biosphere.  As the fragments were pulled toward the earth, the hydrogen combined with the oxygen, creating water from the sky.  Water once AGAIN covered the face of earth.  Some of the water then evaporated, until 1/4 (of the former amount) of land appeared. 

And the rest is history - as they say.....

[Wingnut]

50 minutes ago, 8thdaypriest said:

I have believed something very similar to your hypothesis for many years.  To make the land "appear", God "divided the waters" - creating waters above, and waters below.  I think that HE caused evaporation of a huge amount of the "waters", to create a firmament above.  There was no "sea" - as we know it now - after the land appeared. 

I like Dr Baugh's hypothesis that the H2O was split into H, which crystallized about 12 miles up, and O2 (making the pre-flood atmosphere very rich in oxygen).  In this biosphere, the weather was mild, and the atmospheric pressure was roughly twice what we know now.  Wounds healed almost overnight.  Anaerobes were non-existent.  Snakes were not poisonous.  It was like living in a hyperbaric chamber.  Pterodactyls could fly. 

At the flood of Noah, an asteroid crashed into the crystalline biosphere.  As the fragments were pulled toward the earth, the hydrogen combined with the oxygen, creating water from the sky.  Water once AGAIN covered the face of earth.  Some of the water then evaporated, until 1/4 (of the former amount) of land appeared. 

And the rest is history - as they say.....

I used to love watching Carl Baugh's program "Creation in the 21st Century" on TBN.

Also enjoyed watching Kent Hovind and his young earth series on TBN.  He was real slick.  His son Eric is not as charismatic.

But I always watch them with all my antennae up for dodgy science.  I often detected sloppy science and iffy logic.

[JoeMo]

Wingnut and Rachel -

I have no problems with either of your hypotheses.  I have no problem with dinsaurs being millions of years old.  I don't dismiss the possibility of one or more "extinction events" prior to Genesis 1:2 which required God to rehabilitate earth's environment to support life.  Kinda like what I envision He will do when He creates a new heaven and earth sometime during the 8th Millennium.  I find it entirely plausible that God "rehabilitated" (created the current environment of) the planet using what was already there.

[Ted Oplinger]

On 11/15/2015, 7:52:24, Wingnut said:

I want to challenge Creationists to take Genesis 1 literally.
In particular, I am asking Creationists to take Gen 1:1 literally.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Hebrew for "heaven" is actually plural or "shamayim". The Bible lists 3 heavens.
1) earth's atmosphere 2) the cosmos 3) God's throne.

Can Creationists believe that by Gen 1:2 we have 1) an earth 2) with its atmosphere 3) and the cosmos?

So what is God doing for the further 7 days?
Tweaking and adding to what is already there.

Day 1 - God clears the thick atmosphere THAT WAS ALREADY THERE, so that the sun THAT WAS ALREADY THERE can shine through.

Day 2 - God lifts the cloud THAT WAS ALREADY THERE, raising it high above the sea THAT WAS ALREADY THERE creating clear sky (firmament) between.

Day 3 - God raises land THAT WAS ALREADY THERE causing it to poke out of the sea THAT WAS ALREADY THERE. God then populates the land with plants.

Day 4 - God appoints the sun, moon and stars THAT WERE ALREADY THERE to mark out days, months, years and Feast Days.

Day 5 - God populates the sky THAT WAS ALREADY THERE with birds, and God populates the seas THAT WERE ALREADY THERE, with fish.

Day 6 - God populates the land THAT WAS ALREADY THERE with land animals and man.

 

Day 7 - God rests, creating the Sabbath.

Hmm...Posts like these used to appear often over at the Origins forum.

First, Most people who want to take the earth into long ages, do so to bow to the dictates of man's science. It is man who has appointed an order of origins contrary to God's Word.

With the first verse, God lays His integrity on the line. He says He created the earth and the heavens. One can either take His Word for it, or not. If His Word is trustworthy, then one must accept it as it is given, not how one wants to fit it into man's format.

Man's science has historically declared the order of origins to be:

1. Big Bang - explosion from a singularity (though this is also being debated again)

2. Formation of galaxies by accretion of massive nebulae

3. Formation of stars and star clusters within those galaxies by accretion of mass within nebulae (Insert sun here)

4. Formation of planets by accretion of mass via dust/material disc orbiting stars (insert the earth and other planets in our own solar system here)

5. Formation of the moon

6. On earth - formation of planetary land (by material accretion) 

7. On earth - formations of atmosphere (by accretion and volcanic processes)

8. On earth - formation of seas on top of land mass (by condensation above and geologic process below)

9. On earth - Cambrian explosion - plants and creeping things (invertebrate sea life) appear simultaneously in the marine geologic record.

10. On earth - appearance of fish

11. On earth - appearance of land plants - simpler forms first

12. On earth - appearance of amphibians and creeping things (insects); plant life moves to ferns, cycads, and fern trees

11. On earth - appearance of reptiles, birds and mammals, then man - in that order. Plants evolve to include flowering plants, conifers, then deciduous trees, in that order.

 

Placing this list side by side with the Creation account, one immediately notices there are several discrepancies between orders. Hence, either man's listing, or the Word of God, must be true. Both cannot be true at the same time, for God placed creation in a specific order in His Word:

1. The earth was formless, with nothing on it (vs. 2)

2. It was composed of water (vs 2); owing to the language, it could be interpreted as water completely covering the rocky planet.

3. Light was created by the Word of God, with no visible source (vss. 3-5); this marked the events of the first day. There was no atmosphere created at this point in time, so a "thick atmosphere" could not have been parted to reveal a light source. Indeed, that light source was not even created yet.

This is already at variance with numbers 1-8 on man's listing

4. Waters were separated by God's Word, between the water composing the earth, and the waters composing the heavens, By that same word, an atmosphere was created between the waters.

Here, we have waters above (where the sun, moon, and stars are destined to be), waters below (the earth, composed of water). Light is still present, with no visible source. This completes the activity of God's Word on the second day.

5. Day 3 of Creation begins with God sending forth His Word to command the waters to be gathered together into one place, and for the dry land to appear (Hebrew = "cause to be seen"). God further commands the plants into existence - everything from simple single cell plants and phytoplankton, to fungi and lichens and moss, all the way to fruit trees and the majestic conifers. No animal life exists at this point, and neither does any visible source of light. Day 3 ends at this point.

 

These are the foundational days of creation - setting the arenas to be populated in the next 3 days.

6. On the fourth day, God commands by His Word the heavens to be populated. It is at this point the sun, the moon, and the stars are created. The sun and stars are now visible sources of light. This differs significantly from man's listings, as man puts the stars in first, then our sun, then our earth and moon. It also differs significantly from Wingnut's #1, in that there the sun did not yet exist to shine once a "thick atmosphere was parted". Only AFTER the heavens were populated with these things, did he appoint them for signs and times. Here, God created the yearly and monthly cycles which everything living would follow. This is, perhaps, the major difference Wingnut has with the creation account as God says it, for I can grant the caveat that waters covered a rocky planet in the beginning.

Here, one must either take God's Word to be true in having 3 days of light strong enough to distinguish day from night, without the sun being the source...or reject it as fancy.

7. On the fifth day, God populates the seas, fresh waters, and the air simultaneously. The seas are populated with sea life from the simple single-celled amoebas, paramecium and euglenae, to molluscs and invertebrate sea life, to vertebrate fish and mammal water life. It may well have included the marine dinosaur life seen in the fossil record. The air is populated with birds and fowl of every kind. There are no returning to the sea animal life forms, as the land is not yet populated. There is no transitioning from land life to avian life, as proposed by man. This completes the 5th day.

8. Finally, on Day 6, God creates all of the land life to populate dry land. There is no transitioning from sea to land alongside the plants (as man proposes). God creates the insects, the amphibians, the reptiles, and the mammals, in a separate, sequential time two periods past the creation of the plants, and separate from the birds. Then, God crowns Creation by creating man - by forming him out of the dust, not taking him from a monkey's DNA.

Again, one is faced with having to take God at His Word that He did indeed create in this specific order, or reject God's testimony of His work. He is either telling the truth at every point, or He is a Supreme Deceiver who cannot be trusted in the light of man's interpretation of science data. The order between the Creation account and man's interpretation of the geologic, paleontological, and paleobotanical data is just too different, too disparate, to ever be looked at reasonably as a mere difference in timescales.

As if that was not enough, God then creates the Sabbath on Day 7, and permanently embeds the weekly cycle into the plant, aquatic, avian, and land life He has created. The weekly cycle is something well documented in science, but there is absolutely no reason for its being. There are no prominent planetary or astronomic cycles lasting precisely 7 days. The only prominent thing with a weekly periodic cycle is...the 7th day Sabbath itself.

I do take it literally. Every bit. I do not say I understand how He did it, but I do know every process He used obeyed the various Laws of Science He had authored in eternity past. More on why in another post.

 

Blessings,

 

[Wingnut]

 

If I had to ask a Sabbath School group of kiddies what God created on the first day, almost all of them would get the right answer.  "On the first day god created light".

A few adults and "brighter" kids would think, "Hang on, surely God must have created the heaven and the earth too?"  

I want to explain why the kiddie group is correct.

1)  It would only be an ASSUMPTION by the adults that God SURELY must have created the heaven and earth earlier the first day?

2)  This assumption is proven incorrect by Gen 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good:
God does not admire the heaven, the earth and the light, calling them good.  God just calls "the light" good.

3)  If we assume that God created the heaven and the earth early the first day, then some questions come to my mind.

Why did God not do a better job of creating the heaven and earth the first time?  Why does this "rush job" leave the earth "without form and void", in darkness, covered with water and thick cloud?  Was it necessary to create the earth in such a decrepit state in the first place?

4)  If we adopt the natural reading of Genesis that God created the heaven and earth IN THE BEGINNING, without assuming that beginning was on the first day, then we don't have to answer the questions in "3" above.

5)  If there was a gap between the creation of heaven and earth and Day 1, that gap can be ANY length of time.  Science suggests the original creation (Big Bang) of the heavens occurred 13.75 billion years ago, and that earth only came into existence 5 billion years ago.

6)  Consider the possibility that Gen 1 is not addressing the original creation of the world, but rather a week in which God restores/renovates/remakes earth from "without form and void", dark and covered with water, into the earth we live in today.

7)  6000 years ago, in 6 literal days, God replenished the earth, stocking it with modern plants, animals, and man.

8)  Maybe a mass extinction occurred which left earth "without form and void". 

9)  God invokes 4 witnesses to testify on His behalf, as to His greatness.  Ps 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

I believe Cosmology (the heavens) testifies to the greatness of God.  Hubble telescope looks back 13.2 billion years and can photograph the early cosmos.  Every part of the cosmos is fantastic.

The other witness is Palaeontology (the firmament) which shows His handiwork through all ages of earth's history.  And this testifies to multiple different biomes in earths past.

10)  If I had to guess, I would say Gen 1 is describing God recreating the earth after the catastrophe which ended the Pleistocene, at the beginning of what palaeontologists call the Holocene.

11)  Both witnesses, Cosmology and Palaeontology, show a far greater God than most religious folks imagine.  These two witnesses give us an almost perfectly clear look at what God has been busy with for the last 13.75 billion years, both in connection with the heavens and the earth.

12)  Other witnesses to the greatness of God are Science and the Bible.  The sciences like biology, microbiology, marine biology etc. tell us how great every every little creature is down to its smallest detail.

13)  Ps 104:26-30 perhaps describes a mass extinction and recreation event....   
...there is that leviathan [dinosaurs like plesiosaurus??], whom thou hast made to play therein.  27 These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season.  28 That thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good.  29 Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. [mass extinction??]  30 Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. [regeneration such as Gen 1].

14)  Most arguments with Cosmology, Palaeontology and Science in general are solved when Christians accept that Gen 1:1 did not occur on Day 1.  God is renewing earth in one literal week, 6000 years ago, after some mass extinction event left it "without form and void".

And He places Adam and Eve on earth, so this is a very important new beginning.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Ted Oplinger]

As Wingnut had challenged Creationists to take it literally Genesis 1:1, I respond as a Creationist to say I do. Even in the defining of heaven as he notes the Hebrew to mean. It bothers me not. The Word allows for this present space-time universe we call home to be created at that point. What people have a hard time fathoming, is how can there be a Created universe as astronomically immense as we have observed it to be, yet be so unpopulated by anything - and the earth being so formless and unpopulated in the manner God speaks of. Creation is just too big, too immense, for everything to be called into existence as God described it. And following that, man is simply convinced by his own observations and (still) limited understanding of the laws of science, that the universe must be far, far older than God says it is.

It must be a phased Creation, some will say - creating over in this nook of the universe one time, then over there another time, and had populated Creation substantially, over a huge period of time, before God got around to Creating in this neck of the astronomical woods. Yet, God said He created light apart from any visible source, and populated the cosmos on day 4. Impossible, one might say? Well, God places His integrity on the line with this thought as well, for He says again in His Word that where man deems things to be impossible, all things are possible with God. Luke 18:27; supported by similar statements in Matthew 19:26 and Mark 10:27.

Everything in Genesis 1 was created from nothing by God. In a way, even the secular scientists admit this, as their Big Band has everything starting from from an infinitesimally small singularity that, compared to the immense size of the universe, was nothing. From nothing, the singularity exploded, and from that, we have everything...so really, the idea is not that far-fetched as some would tell us.

And that is precisely what the Bible tells anyway in Hebrews 11:3 - " By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible."

Furthermore, whatever God creates, He also maintains. Hebrew 1:3f says, " And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.

As by the Word He Creates, so by that same Word He maintains what has been created. So...on Day 1, God says, "Let there be light!"...and there was light. No visible sources we are familiar with. Just like Hebrews 11:3 testifies. Yet God both created that light across His creation...this universe filled with light in transit to earth...and God maintained that light by the power of the Word He created it with. (the same goes for the people and new hearts He creates - but that is a subject for another thread). And yes, that means the only shadow being cast is...is upon the dark side of planet earth...where night has been created.

All things are upheld. Nothing is not upheld. All light in our known universe being upheld by the Living God means...our Living God is immensely more bigger, greater, than this immense expanse we call "the universe". He looks at populating that expanse as nothing more than if we were to jot down some things on a Post-It note. That said, the Bible says this really immense God took a very deliberate approach to populating this planet, more so than when He populated the heavens on the 4th day (where billions of galaxies, and untold trillions x trillions of stars, were spoken into existence - and even now maintained - by a single command). Hence, when the galaxies and stars are created by God on the 4th day, there is already enough light in the universe being maintained by God's Word, these created sources of light in the night time sky can be said to have light in transit already. No need to wait for 13.5 billion years or so for the light (as well as the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum) to reach us - when God spoke, it was already in transit to earth.

Yet, having a God who does this is anathema to today's science pursuits. Science deems faith and reason mutually exclusive. However, that has not been my experience. From my experience, faith and reasoning go hand in hand.

Genesis 1 is far more than just a chapter on origins. It teaches us of God's magnitude and power (as I intimated earlier), what faith really is, and how redemption really works. Should we try to wedge this chapter in to a box to conform to what man's misunderstandings of science are, we short circuit these lessons.

 

[Wingnut]

Ted - everything made on the other days remains today.  Why does the light of Day 1 not remain today?

[Wingnut]

On 19 November 2015 at 7:09:20 AM, Ted Oplinger said:

3. Light was created by the Word of God, with no visible source (vss. 3-5); this marked the events of the first day. There was no atmosphere created at this point in time, so a "thick atmosphere" could not have been parted to reveal a light source. Indeed, that light source was not even created yet.

 

Ted - you realise this is no explanation at all as to what the light was and what it contributes to the creation of the earth etc.

Whenever I see an argument invoking/inventing a spiritual element (in this case the light "with no visible source") it sounds a very weak argument. 

[pnattmbtc]

15 hours ago, Wingnut said:

Ted - everything made on the other days remains today.  Why does the light of Day 1 not remain today?

Light goes away when it reaches its destination.

[Samie]

This is the portion I disagree with Ted:

22 hours ago, Ted Oplinger said:

galaxies and stars are created by God on the 4th day

How could the stars, if created on the 4th day, sing together on the 1st day?

^NKJ Job 38:6-7   ⁶ To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone,  ⁷ When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

[Wingnut]

7 hours ago, Samie said:

This is the portion I disagree with Ted:

 

How could the stars, if created on the 4th day, sing together on the 1st day?

^NKJ Job 38:6-7   ⁶ To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone,  ⁷ When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Surely everyone knows that "morning stars" = "sons of God" = angelic host?

[Wingnut]

8 hours ago, pnattmbtc said:

Light goes away when it reaches its destination.

Why would God need a temporary light?

To see what He was doing?

He has His shekinah glory to see by anyhow.

So the question remains - What did God actually do on Day 1?

I have already explained this to my satisfaction  

[Tom Wetmore]

In the beginning of what ?  Time.  Time of what ? What is time?  What kind of time? Time is relative to the what. There are  many possible whats in play. Universe? Multiverse? Galaxy? Solar system? Planetary? Which one of any one of those? There are  also different times, or types  of time.  How do we measure time?  Why do we measure time? To measure time there has to be standard, a constant.  Without that, time is without meaning, vague, empty with no boundaries or certainty.  ( Hint - "without form, and void") Is it infinite? Infinity. Where is the beginning or end of infinite time?  Ageless. How can you even know of the passage of this thing we call time?  What happens when you do know of the passage of time?  It's components become finite.  A day.

Read Genesis 1 as being, in significant part, about the creation of time itself. Time for our planet. Time for mankind.  It has to start with a "what" to give time any context or meaning.  Why create time?  Did God need time? Why or why not? What is time to us?  How important is time to us?  Time, times, and the dividing of times. Day from night? Evening and morning?  For us that requires a light source.  How would we measure time without the basic element of a daily cycle? To do that God  needed more than light.  Light and dark, does that make a day.  No.  It also requires movement.  Empty rock hanging space. Put a light source (our star, what we call the sun) to illuminate it. Time can' be measured yet. Eternal daylight on the one side, facing the light, and eternal darkness on the other side. Spin the rock. One revolution creates a cycle of a change from day to night. The evening and morning.  Let's call it a day.  Time for earth has now begun.

Not at Geneis 1:1. 

Time for our planet began with God spinning it in the light of the sun.  But was the first day exactly the same length as we know days to be now? Depends on how fast he spun it.  We know that the length of planetary days do vary, greatly even within our own solar system.  But time is not just about days.  It is also about seasons and years.  The Genesis 1 account tells it took God until the end of the 4th creation day cycle to calibrate all of those. Before he even put animal or human life in place on the earth. 

[Wingnut]

 

Tom said "The Genesis 1 account tells it took God until the end of the 4th creation day cycle to calibrate all of those."

In summary, what you are saying Tom is that until day 4, there were no recognizable 24 hour days such as we are familiar with today? 

On each of the 6 (re)creation days God says "And the evening and the morning were the .... day."

Call me simple, but the very fact that God describes time for all the days before the 4th in exactly the same way as time for days after the 4th convinces me they all were 24hour days, and each day had a dark period and a light period (evening and morning).

My explanation starts with an earth rotating every 24 hours, and on day 1 God clears the atmosphere enough so that from the perspective of where the Spirit was moving "there was light", as diffuse sunlight broke through the less-dense atmosphere.

I really don't have any questions about time such as you describe.  There are no "what's" in play in my mind  

 

[Tom Wetmore]

I am not really trying to cast doubt on 24 hours as we know it.  If we read as suggested "literally", we can read only the words in the original text.  No more. No less. But to interpret the meaning of the word "day", we do have to make an assumption beyond the literal reading that  the length of one earth rotation is and always has been excactly the same from the very point at which He flung the 3rd rock from the sun into space. ( As noted already a day on each of our own solar system planets is very different in length.) the text suggests that he di something as understood by the ancients that created a daily cycle.  The setting in motion of its rotation and orbit around the sun and fixing the axis of the earth relative to that orbit were all required to give us time as we now know it. It says in the text that by whatever means God created days seasons and years.  That is clearly stated. We understand the how of it now.  The ancients didn't.  To them the earth was the center of the universe, the rising and setting of the sun was presumed to be because of the movement of the sun. Even the seasons were because of the movement of the sun. And the phases of the moon were a mystery that counted a lunar cycle or month.  They were wrong and the text tends to reflect that lack of knowledge of planetary rotation, orbits and axis tilt in understanding what God did to set up the earth to support life as we know it.

So the creation of time require those facts not explicit, or literally, in the text to be in place to create morning and evening transitions.  If we read the passage literally as you suggested, an evening and morning don't actually describe a full 24 hours.  Depending on the season and location on the planet. The span of time between evening and morning would be no more than 12 hours. And ironically it wouldn't as read literally be one day, but rather one night. Why not say morning to morning, or evening to evening as described elsewhere in Scripture the describe a full day.  Here is a thought.  Maybe the phrase was understood to describe a transition from one step to the next, or even a work cycle, God's creation work day when he actively did each step to prepare the earth for life and to create that life.  

I have said before tha the most important thing God created for us was time itself.  That is an important part of the story. Time is an important reoccuring theme throughout Scripture.  This is the start of time for us.  Genesis 1:1 implies that there was a begining that preexsited what God did once he set about creating life here on earth.  At the very beginning of all things God created all the heavens and  whatever is in them, including the third rock from our star, the one we call the sun.  

[Wingnut]

Tom

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a time machine that could take us back 6000 years or 13.75 billion years so that we could SEE who was correct, you or me.  If I was correct, looking at earth from space 6000 years ago, one would not even notice God doing anything on earth unless one was standing on the moon.  Then one might see the atmosphere thinning a bit on the 1st day.

 

But if you were correct, the whole universe, time and space, sun moon and stars would be appearing from nothing 6000 years ago.  We would definitely notice something happening to the whole universe, not only to earth, 6000 years ago.

 

Turns out there is a time machine with 20/20 vision.  The heavens declare the glory of God.... (Ps 19).

One can go to Toys-R-Us and buy a cheap telescope and peer into the heavens.  The stronger the telescope, the further back in time we are looking.  For instance when we look at the moon, we see it as it was 2 secs ago.  The sun, 8 minutes ago.  Looking at mars we see it as it was between 4 and 24 minutes ago.  Light from Polaris took 434 years to reach us, so we see that star as it was 434 years ago. Pleiades 444 light years.  Betelgeuse is 642 light years away.  Most of the sky is comprised of about 9000 stars ranging in distance from 4 to 4000 light years.  The furthest object visible with the unaided eye is the Andromeda Galaxy which is 2.5 million light years away.

With our cheap telescope we will be able to see stars millions if not billions of light years away.

There is a smooth and uniform transition between looking at close and distant heavenly objects - showing that NOTHING happened to the universe 6000 years ago.  Therefore God did not create the cosmos 6000 years ago.  He regenerated the earth 6000 years ago and this did not interfere with us looking much, much further back in time than 6000 years back.  In fact, one can see the furthest galaxies 13.7 billion light years away, proving a very old universe.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Wingnut said the following about Tom.  If I correctly understand what Wingnut said and correctly understand where Tom is, Wingnut has failed to understand where Tom is.

 

But if you were correct, the whole universe, time and space, sun moon and stars would be appearing from nothing 6000 years ago.  We would definitely notice something happening to the whole universe, not only to earth, 6000 years ago.

[Tom Wetmore]

1 hour ago, Gregory Matthews said:

Wingnut said the following about Tom.  If I correctly understand what Wingnut said and correctly understand where Tom is, Wingnut has failed to understand where Tom is.

 

 

 

Yes, quite significantly so, it seems.

[Tom Wetmore]

Most of what I have posted here is more in support of what Wimgnut originally posted and more a reaction to the blind insistence that creation of everything or anything happened 6000 years.  Maybe 10,000 years ago life and time as we know it on the earth...  Archeological evidence suggests human life at least that long ago.

More directly to the notion of hopping into a time machine - My fascination with time theory has me pretty well convinced that time travel is impossible. The past exists in memory only.  The future exists only in imagination. The present moment is the only piece of time we can exist in and experience in real time.  In our dreams only can we time travel. Our God who is infinite has an infinite and perfect memory and imagination to know the past and "see" the future.  We are not so equipped.  

But time travel is still great to contemplate and if it were possible we would need to go back further than 6000 years to "prove" anything of what we are speaking. Go back to the 11,000 year point and see if anything exists.  I think we would see the universe existed.  I think even our own solar system, at least in some elemental aspect existed.  Life on earth? Not at all, or not as we now know it.  

[Wingnut]

2 hours ago, Tom Wetmore said:

 

But time travel is still great to contemplate and if it were possible we would need to go back further than 6000 years to "prove" anything of what we are speaking. Go back to the 11,000 year point and see if anything exists.  I think we would see the universe existed.  I think even our own solar system, at least in some elemental aspect existed.  Life on earth? Not at all, or not as we now know it.  

Tom

A telescope IS a time machine.

The light from every star takes different lengths of time to reach us so we are seeing BACK to when the light left that star.  And we see Pleiade as the 7 sisters were 444 years ago.  And Andromeda Galaxy as it was 2.5 million years ago.  Likewise Hubble sees back 13.2 billion years back to the early universe.

To see what it looked like then go to...

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/08/hubble-telescope-captures-images-galaxies-from-132-billion-years-ago.html

The universe is ancient.

But back to earth 6000 years ago.  I see no fudge factor, no questions about time as you expressed them.

In 6 literal days, God replenished the earth and rested on the literal 7th day, which also lasted 24 hours.

God treats all 6 days as "evening and morning".  My motto is to take the Bible literally when I can.  And it is no stretch for me to take literally that a day IS an evening and a morning.

And I have heard no (logical) explanation yet for the type of light God created on the first day apart from the one I gave, viz that it was weak sunlight penetrating a thinned out atmosphere.