Young Earth vs Old Earth

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I am deeply saddened that the greatly uncharitable argumentum ad hominem in this thread is permitted to stand.
 
I apologize if I have contributed to making this thread a difficult place for those who are inclined toward OEC to give their reasons or indicate their difficulties. My zeal on this matter is mainly for ministers. I want brothers and sisters who are wrestling with this matter to be able to express their thoughts here without fear of being jumped on by five zealous YECs. I apologize if I have been part of that. My own main point here was that ordained men should be competent in the basics of exegesis, and an old earth view indicates he is not ready. We confess six day creation, and it is not an obscure view like millennial views or lapsarian views.
 
I think the best thing going for OEC is that the sun was made on Day Four, and ordinarily you need the sun for day and night.

But we have God creating light and day and night on Day One, without using the sun. That is, we have the purported structural metaphor of OEC, the day and night, being created within the overall metaphor of the Six Days on Day One.

The creation of the first day on Day One seems to be coherent from a 24/6 position as opposed to an OEC position In my humble opinion.

God created day and night on Day One. What kind of day and night was that from an OEC position? Was it a metaphor that He created? Was it a very long period of darkness followed by a very long period of light?

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jwithnell said:
I am deeply saddened that the greatly uncharitable argumentum ad hominem in this thread is permitted to stand.
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Deleted my part in that. Are there others? To misquote Goldwater, extremism in the defense of scriptural inerrancy is no vice. The OP asked for a biblical defense of OEC, and what has instead been proffered is a convoluted attempt to fit the square peg of scripture into the round hole of so-called science. Whenever a YEC'er points that out he is portrayed as a rabid Luddite with a pitchfork and a torch bent on burning the peaceable intellectuals at the stake. I'm not sure that disagreement with OEC equates with that, or that scoffing and scorn against YEC is any less offensive.

I apologize for my own lack of charity.
 
Peairtach said:
I think the best thing going for OEC is that the sun was made on Day Four, and ordinarily you need the sun for day and night.

But we have God creating light and day and night on Day One, without using the sun. That is, we have the purported structural metaphor of OEC, the day and night, being created within the overall metaphor of the Six Days on Day One.

The creation of the first day on Day One seems to be coherent from a 24/6 position as opposed to an OEC position In my humble opinion.

God created day and night on Day One. What kind of day and night was that from an OEC position? Was it a metaphor that He created? Was it a very long period of darkness followed by a very long period of light?

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Augustine took the separation of the light from the darkness as being the separation of the angles which if he was correct would explain the long period of time that the ol earth was around before the sun moon and stars were created. This goes along very nicely that the "serpent of old" was around a lot longer than most think. Also I think that the "days of creation" may simply be saying the The Lord took 6 days to create and that the Lord created all that was created on a day which may have fallen within many days. It would go something like this....The first day Earl started building his house he made a foundation and after it hardened (which took 2 days) Earl made a frame to stand upon the foundation the second day he worked.
 
Augustine's metaphorical view of the separation of light from darkness would have the good angels called "day" and the bad angels called "night" ?

Surely, it is more in keeping with the passage - which never explicitly refers to the creation of the supernatural realm, except possibly in Genesis 1:1 - that God is creating day and night on Day One, and dividing time, in the way that He will distinguish between sea and sky, and land and sea on subsequent days. If the creation is carried out on different days, it is foundational that day and night be created first.

Your other point seems to be the Punctuated 24-hour Day view, which I've never considered.

Both Augustine and the Punctuated 24-hour Day view appear to be eisegetical.

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Peairtach said:
Augustine's metaphorical view of the separation of light from darkness would have the good angels called "day" and the bad angels called "night" ?

Surely, it is more in keeping with the passage - which never explicitly refers to the creation of the supernatural realm, except possibly in Genesis 1:1 - that God is creating day and night on Day One, and dividing time, in the way that He will distinguish between sea and sky, and land and sea on subsequent days. If the creation is carried out on different days, it is foundational that day and night be created first.

Your other point seems to be the Punctuated 24-hour Day view, which I've never considered.

Both Augustine and the Punctuated 24-hour Day view appear to be eisegetical.

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So when God created the heaven and the earth how long was it dark before God created light? 12 hours? :) I do agree Augustine point of calling the angels day and the demons night is eisegeical as is the possibility in assuming a 24 hour period of time before the Lord made the sun moon and stars which marked out the days, and years. As an old earther I really appreciate the young earthers take on what they think is a scientific teaching of scripture on how many hours were in a day before the sun moon and stars were created. In other words, I do not think scripture teaches how many hours were in a day before day 4 though I really do appreciate the zeal young earthers love The Word and wish "prove" it is inerrant. I also believe scripture is such (inerrant) though I do believe one of us errs in this matter. :)
 
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Well if we presume a long period during which the natural world and cosmos was sitting there like " a blank canvas" waiting to be formed and filled, the twelve hours before the creation of light would be the beginning of the first day.

I don't think fusion models of the relationship of science to Christianity are the way to go, i.e. proving science by Scripture and proving Scripture by science.

Sound exegesis should be done and good science and then they should be brought together to see if they relate. If they don't exactly match up then something is wrong with the exegesis or the science, or we just have to wait for more light.

I find the 24/6 model to comport best with a straight forward reading of Scripture. I also find it theologically satisfying that the Creation is not billions of years without a Head, Man, and that death, destruction and natural selection aren't happening before Man sins. There seem to have to be various contortions on the part of OECs to explain that the days should not be taken as 24/6 (e.g. the Framework Hypothesis; what did Moses and his Israelites think about the Framework Hypothesis?) and various other things, such as the whole creation being under a curse (some OECs have posited that the Curse went backwards, whatever that means).

Some would hold that the YECs engage in convolutions with their scientific hypotheses in order to fit the science to their biblical interpretation, but I think their biblical interpretation is plainer and less convoluted, and the scientific project is a much broader and more complicated work, than learning what God would teach us from Scripture, that has still a long way to run.

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I am no expert, but I believe there was some form of light before the plants on day 3 and the sun/moon/stars day 4. Light can come from energized plasma, and the modern theories of the electric/plasma universe would fit in here. You can have light without sun and stars. Light before the heavenly bodies is no scientific proof of old age. There is much we do not know about the universe before the fall.
 
This is how the OEC system comes across to me as I view it from a time line point of view.
The Bible, God's Word which appears to tell us plainly and easily enough that a primary school child can understand in Genesis that the world was created within 6 days actually is not that easily understood. It is actually veiled and we need to have biblical scholars teach us what it actually is saying.
In fact it is so deeply full of mystery that needs to be unfolded that it is taking centuries for us to figure out.
New theory after new theory is put towards us, some never heard of before but are now the "hey, have you heard this one" theory "this one sounds right, it fits with science". So this now new theory of the Genesis account of creation is the one, it has taken centuries for man to figure it out. Now 1 guy has come along and has it.
Phew, thank goodness this guy came along and has been able to crack the Genesis code after all these centuries of Christians getting it wrong.
Do I believe for 1 second that Genesis is so, that it is or has taken centuries for someone to come along and crack the code and tell me what it really says? Or that we are left to walk around wondering and asking each other what it means, whats your take, what do you think it says? That the opening part of Gods Word, we still haven't figured out? No way.
 
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earl40 said:
as is the possibility in assuming a 24 hour period of time before the Lord made the sun moon and stars which marked out the days, and years.
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The misunderstanding comes from insisting on a modern definition of "hour." Today an hour is defined in a very precise scientific way, and this means a day is not exactly 24 hours, and no day is exactly the same period of time as another. However, in its original use, an hour was simply defined as 1/24th of any calendar day. "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" (John 11:9). If you took the period of light and divided it into 12 equal sections, you got an hour. They didn't normally need to be much more precise than this. This is the sense in which the days of creation were normal, 24-hour days. Now suppose you object that by this definition, a creation day could have been any arbitrary length of actual time - even billions of years. Even going along with that for the sake of argument, it doesn't help the old earth position. The old earth position involves billions of years in which a whole bunch of normal evening-and-morning cycles were occurring. One cannot simply squeeze this long time period into six evening-and-morning cycles. The plants would all have died from a billion years of darkness or a billion years of constant sunlight.
 
au5t1n said:
earl40 said:
as is the possibility in assuming a 24 hour period of time before the Lord made the sun moon and stars which marked out the days, and years.
Click to expand...

The misunderstanding comes from insisting on a modern definition of "hour." Today an hour is defined in a very precise scientific way, and this means a day is not exactly 24 hours, and no day is exactly the same period of time as another. However, in its original use, an hour was simply defined as 1/24th of any calendar day. "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" (John 11:9). If you took the period of light and divided it into 12 equal sections, you got an hour. They didn't normally need to be much more precise than this. This is the sense in which the days of creation were normal, 24-hour days. Now suppose you object that by this definition, a creation day could have been any arbitrary length of actual time - even billions of years. Even going along with that for the sake of argument, it doesn't help the old earth position. The old earth position involves billions of years in which a whole bunch of normal evening-and-morning cycles were occurring. One cannot simply squeeze this long time period into six evening-and-morning cycles. The plants would all have died from a billion years of darkness or a billion years of constant sunlight.
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This all assumes 6 consecutive 24 hour periods of time of creation instead of 6 days He created within billions of years. Is there any reason one would have to assume from scripture that they were consecutive days and if Genesis is in some other literary type, like poetry, could it not mean such?
 
Could I have a billion years off between today and tomorrow? It'd be nice to catch up on some sleep!
 
earl40 said:
This all assumes 6 consecutive 24 hour periods of time of creation instead of 6 days He created within billions of years. Is there any reason one would have to assume from scripture that they were consecutive days and if Genesis is in some other literary type, like poetry, could it not mean such?
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"And the evening and the morning were the third day" (Gen. 1:13). The days are defined as evening and morning cycles which take place in sequence and are associated with numbers that define the total number of days that have elapsed since "the beginning." As for Genesis 1 being poetry, I have three responses: 1. We could make any narrative in Scripture poetry with equal justification, 2. The frequent presence of the vav-consecutive indicates the passage is historical narrative, and 3. Even without Genesis 1, there is still Exodus 20:11, which cannot be poetry because it is in the middle of the Ten Commandments and is used as a factual reason for the fourth commandment.
 
I cannot hold to a young earth for the simple reason that everything was created in an operative state, which means it was fully developed. Young earth science is counter-productive. I expect science to show evidence of age.
 
I've been tempted to enter into the discussion here on a number of occasions, but have refrained because I don't think I could possibly say anything that would remotely be productive given the circumstances. While there are some that I believe would be gracious in discussing the matter as brothers and looking at the exegetical arguments together (and yes, there are purely Biblical and exegetical arguments that can be made apart from science), I fear others would not be interested, having already judged my motives and heart based their own presuppositions, and would be a distraction from any real edifying discussion that could take place. I think this has already happened.

So what do you want me to do? Do you honestly want to talk about this? I have things I can bring to the table, but if it's going to turn nasty, and the only arguments presented are going to be "Repent you ignorant heretic" and sarcastic and snide remarks, then I have no interest in going any further.
 
thbslawson said:
So what do you want me to do? Do you honestly want to talk about this? I have things I can bring to the table, but if it's going to turn nasty, and the only arguments presented are going to be "Repent you ignorant heretic" and sarcastic and snide remarks, then I have no interest in going any further.
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Do not assume of what will come. I personally would love to see some purely biblical exegetical arguments.
 
Hello Thomas. Do you believe, that what God gave us in Genesis as the account for the creation of all is insufficient or not an entire account or that it is somehow, the truth, hidden or veiled. And that we have needed to wait for modern science and theories from others centuries later to show us what it really was all about? Lets say we take on board John Sailhamers version and say "that's it". Are we supposed to now think that it has taken all these centuries for someone like him to come along and enlighten us to the truth of the matter? This is how I view those like himself, his theories, as Godless. God is a God of truth. When they set forth theories or teachings that hold no truth I ask "show me God in that?"
ps Thomas, the responses here are tame compared to how I used to get hammered by OEC's, most of whom were RC, on the forum I left.
 
Free Christian said:
Hello Thomas. Do you believe, that what God gave us in Genesis as the account for the creation of all is insufficient or not an entire account or that it is somehow, the truth, hidden or veiled. And that we have needed to wait for modern science and theories from others centuries later to show us what it really was all about? Lets say we take on board John Sailhamers version and say "that's it". Are we supposed to now think that it has taken all these centuries for someone like him to come along and enlighten us to the truth of the matter? This is how I view those like himself, his theories, as Godless. God is a God of truth. When they set forth theories or teachings that hold no truth I ask "show me God in that?"
ps Thomas, the responses here are tame compared to how I used to get hammered by OEC's, most of whom were RC, on the forum I left.
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No I don't believe it's insufficient. Have you read Sailhamer? I guessing from what you've written here that you do not fully understand his position, or the evidence that he's given that his position is not "new," but is rather the way that Genesis 1 and 2 were understood historically.

If you haven't read him, that's fine. I don't expect everyone to. But you're attacking a straw man.
 
thbslawson said:
I would refer you to this article on the subject.

Science, the Bible, and the Promised Land | Desiring God
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Perman's analysis of Sailhamer's book is long and tortuous, and loaded with superfluous repetitions. So no, I'm not going to read it all the way through. His use of medieval rabbinical views are entirely pointless. I'm not going to ask a Buddhist monk to interpret scripture, why would I rely on some other teacher of a false religion to do so? His entire argument appears to hinge on separating Gen 1:1 from the rest of the sequence of events. God made clear no such distinction there or anywhere else in scripture. As with the English word beginning, the Hebrew word reshiyth can be used to refer to varying lengths of time, but there is no valid reason to insert any amount of time other than the first day unless modern science so-called is applied. This is what you decry as 'caving to science', so your protestations against it seem dubious. Why would you object to that term if it is exactly the root of your rejection of YEC?
 
Mushroom said:
thbslawson said:
I would refer you to this article on the subject.

Science, the Bible, and the Promised Land | Desiring God
Click to expand...
Perman's analysis of Sailhamer's book is long and tortuous, and loaded with superfluous repetitions. So no, I'm not going to read it all the way through. His use of medieval rabbinical views are entirely pointless. I'm not going to ask a Buddhist monk to interpret scripture, why would I rely on some other teacher of a false religion to do so? His entire argument appears to hinge on separating Gen 1:1 from the rest of the sequence of events. God made clear no such distinction there or anywhere else in scripture. As with the English word beginning, the Hebrew word reshiyth can be used to refer to varying lengths of time, but there is no valid reason to insert any amount of time other than the first day unless modern science so-called is applied. This is what you decry as 'caving to science', so your protestations against it seem dubious. Why would you object to that term if it is exactly the root of your rejection of YEC?
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Thanks for the confirmation. I have no desire to discuss this issue any further in the face of such gracelessness.
 
I surrender, Thomas. You are correct that I find grace difficult to extend when by my reckoning you are attacking the reliability of scripture. I guess we can accuse each other of being beasts of one stripe or another and take our balls and go home.
 
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