Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
People often assume that Christians will stoically stick to the “young earth creation” story, but will hit a wall when science disagrees with the age of the earth and the extinction of creatures before man was created. There is so much that science can tell us but it disagrees with what many assume that the Bible teaches.
I believe that there is middle ground. YEC proponents cannot make the Bible fit with the science, but I have found through deeper study that science and the Bible can be perfectly compatible.
First of all we need to know the difference between provable science and theoretical science. One has clear evidence and the other has a suggested scenario based more on 'faith' than real evidence....so here we see the same problem from both sides of the fence. What is promoted is what is “believed” but cannot be “proven”. A “Theory” is just that...speculation on what appears to be the truth. Each side has an agenda and a strong desire to promote their view....but “faith” actually drives them both.
So from my perspective, the Genesis account is correct, but devoid of the science that would have been wasted on early humans to whom such knowledge would not have made any sense.....only from the 20th century did humans begin to gain that level of scientific knowledge.
Genesis is presented in simple terms but we shouldn’t be fooled by the simplicity.....understanding one word in the creation account, I believe changes everything......that word is “day” which in Hebrew is “yôm”. This word does not mean only a 24 hour period, but can be used to describe a division of time, or an undetermined period of time.....so if the creative days were not 24 hours in length, then that puts a whole new perspective on things. If the creative “days” were divisions of time of significant length, thousands or even millions of years, (which to a timeless God means nothing) then that would explain the age of the earth and the fact that many creatures were long extinct before man came on the scene. We were last to arrive.
It explains why there were no dinosaurs on the ark and it makes the statement at the end of each creative period something that a master craftsman might say after finishing a project or completing a significant portion of it. Each day ended with God's declaration that it was "good". The finished product was described as "very good" so the sixth 'day' saw everything God had made was perfect. This makes God a thoughtful and meticulous Creator....not a magician.
It also explains why adaptation, (a natural mechanism in nature) is not 'evolution'. Science can prove adaptation, which is the ability to adapt to a change in environment or food source where the organism can genetically alter itself over time to fit the new circumstances. But Darwin's observations were blown out of all proportion by 'suggestions' rather than facts, because in observing adaptation in the creatures on the Galapagos Islands he found that the finches had adapted to new food sources, and the iguanas had adapted to a marine environment.....but the finches were still finches and the iguanas were still identifiable as belonging to the iguana family. They differed from their mainland cousins, but not one of them ever changed into a different creature altogether. Their DNA is set to reproduce their own "kind". In an ocean full of fish, we see them only reproducing with their own species. There is no interbreeding in nature. God has 'programmed' everything to stay as he created it, with minor adaptations that simply create variety within a species to enable them to survive....not creating new creatures altogether.
So science 'suggesting' that all life came from a single celled organism is nonsense. If that is true, then where did the single celled organism come from? Science knows that all life springs from pre-existing life.....and we know who existed first....
They will present a chain of evolution but the "common ancestor" is always suggested, but never identified. The common ancestor is the myth....not Genesis.
I am not sure how a Christian can be an atheist....
