2 Comments

1. mes on June 3 at 5:20 pm

   It should be noted by all fair minded scholars and commentators that the Bible itself nowhere claims the earth to be only 6000 years old. That is an assumptioned assigned to it by sometimes overzealous but misguided Christians.

   Additionally, there are several notable scholars who maintain that there is a gap in the middle of verse one in Genesis Chapter 1 which implies that what is thought to be the “creation” of the earth is a really a “recreation” of the earth.

   The Bible is not a science book. It merely contains information that mankind cannot discover on their own.

2. gls on June 3 at 8:42 pm

   You write,

   “It should be noted by all fair minded scholars and commentators that the Bible itself nowhere claims the earth to be only 6000 years old.”

   How could it? The Bible was written in the past, so how could it possibly suggest that the Earth is any age whatsoever? If it suggested the age of the Earth, it would instantly be falsified with the passage of time.

   While the Bible does not suggest a specific age of the Earth, it does give genealogies that we can add up and figure out when the Earth would have been created. And that’s all the young Earth creationists have done. If the Bible is literally true, particularly its genealogies, then this makes sense.

   Additionally, the Bible does say that the Earth was created in six days. We can talk about how to interpret a “day,” but it does say “six days.” And so we’re left when the question of how to interpret part of the Bible literally (six day creation) and part of less literally (age of patriarchs added to current date should give rough estimate of when the six day creation occurred).

   A Christian apologetics site makes this argument succinctly, though in terms of theistic evolution

   The biblical creation account should not be regarded as a myth, a parable, or an Allegory, but as a historical report, because:

   • Biological, astronomical and anthropological facts are given in didactic [teaching] form.
   • In the Ten Commandments God bases the six working days and one day of rest on the same time-span as that described in the creation account (Exodus 20:8-11).
   • In the New Testament Jesus referred to facts of the creation (e.g. Matthew 19:4-5).
   • Nowhere in the Bible are there any indications that the creation account should be understood in any other way than as a factual report.

   However, as you pointed out, not all creationists are young Earth creationists, and not all Christians are creationists. There is the alternative of gap creationism.

   The common argument against such a gap theory — particularly the “ruin-recreation” theory that you’re speaking of — is that it diminishes the whole basis of Christianity (original sin and the need for redemption) because it means there were all the aspects of sin (i.e., death, disease, etc) before Adam’s original sin.