The 7 Day Paradox: My thoughts on how god could have created Earth in 7 days.

The Bible was originally written in Latin. The Latin word for days is also the same for periods/phases/stages.
Stage one (let there be light) could be the Big bang. Splitting the heavens from the earth could be the coalescing of the planets. Creation of the oceans could be due to the gradual sorting out of all the different material densities in the Earth's core. Start of plate tectonics would create land. Then you have the first living creatures; amoeba, plants, grass, trees, then mammals, reptiles, dinosaurs, mammoths, as well as humans. Finally recent civilisation in the past 10K years once the ice age ended.

originally posted by: stormcell
The Bible was originally written in Latin.

Wrong it was actually written in Greek and later translated from Greek to Latin.
The ancient Greek version refers to days not periods,phases or stages.

no. by the time he is creating the stars in your timeline the stars had long been created. the earth had also been created fit for life. but it had become a ruin and void due to the actions of men in the first earth age. He destroyed the surface of the earth an covered it in the Katabole. when he created the stars in the narrative you should note he had already create the heavens and the earth in line one. in line three he begins to rebuild the earth at the start of the second earth age. It's not that he then creates the stars. he already did that. he makes them visible again so that earth can receive their light again. there was a barrier smoke, dust, water or something in the earth's atmosphere that blotted out the stars and sun.

as for day:

en.wikipedia.org...

if you argue that the bible means one 24 hour period in the context of creation then you argue God is a liar. Because there is one truth. Where the bible and science touch on the same subject they must agree or one or the other is not telling the truth. In the case of the creation narrative it is not necessary for either to be false if you truly search the word for it's real meaning. it is not necessary for a christian to declare that in spite of mountain after mountain of rock solid evidence otherwise; that the creation happened in the last 7000 years. to do so is to render the word void and an object of ridicule and thus to drive people away from salvation just as if you were working for the enemy himself.

we know there are middens that have been uncovered that are older than 7000 years old. there are latrines older than the earth and the universe itself if you think the world is only 7000 years old.

What does genesis chapter one verse one say?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

It says he created the heavens and the earth. < - PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE. COMPLETED THOUGHT.

The heavens are the stars galaxies, the universe itself.

So they were created before anything else that is said in the remaining verses.

And please notice it does not say anything about how long all of that took. Nor does it mention how long it took to get from line one to line two.

Genesis chapter one Verse 2:

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

The word "was" here can be translated as "became" in the original language.

The prophets say God created the earth perfect and fit for habitation.

Isaiah 45:18

For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.

The words here are the same used in genesis to describe the state of the earth in genesis 1:2, above.

So the state it is in in gen 1:2; God did not create it that way. it became that way after a period of time.

Jeremiah is shown a vision of what happened in Genesis 1:2.

Jeremiah 4:23-26 also uses the phrase "tohu vav bohu", as follows:

“I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form (tohu), and void (bohu); and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger.”

Jeremiah was not describing Noah's flood. there were men and birds at the very least on the ark. the light of heaven was not withheld for Noah's flood. The mountains and hills were not moved.

originally posted by: Dr1Akula

originally posted by: stormcell
The Bible was originally written in Latin.

Wrong it was actually written in Greek and later translated from Greek to Latin.
The ancient Greek version refers to days not periods,phases or stages.

incorrect. the OT was first written in Hebrew. The Hebrew version (with some Aramaic and Chaldee) was all that was available until just around the time of Jesus. At that time the holy land was becoming Hellenized. A Greek translation was made but it was not very widely available at the time of Jesus. Never the less when the OT is cited in the New testament by Jesus and the Apostles it is usually the Greek version.

Notwithstanding the fact that Jesus preferred the Greek; the KJV editors used the Hebrew and Aramaic OT when compiling the KJV bible.

en.wikipedia.org...

In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew and Aramaic text, while the Apocrypha were translated from the Greek and Latin.

Who in the hell starred the fallacious claim that the bible was originally written in Latin? It wasn't. The original source texts are in the British museum of antiquities. and those manuscripts are in Hebrew, Aramaic, Chaldee and Greek. The Latin Vulgates (plural) itself (themselves) was (were) rife with absurdities, errors and heresies.

originally posted by: Gothmog

originally posted by: jazz10
Remind me again please.....what is time?

Isn't time the man made tool to enable a strategic routine and timetable in order to control an entire system?
God created day and night not hours and minutes.

Time is a measurement that merely measures man's mortality. Per certain models of the so-called Big Bang Theory all matter , energy , and time was contained within the original singularity. At the time of the Great Expansion all matter , energy and time was released and began expanding into the space (whatever that means) of this universe.I believe the model that all time happened (from beginning to end) at the Big Bang and what we see as time is merely the perception of our portion of the history of the universe we live in.
So , if there exists a Supreme Being, time would mean absolutely nothing and any measurements would be MAN's perception and not God's

Exactly

Only thing i can take out of this is that god only works a six day week . Must be in the god union .

If He thinks about something to be done, It is done instantly. The question is if you believe in Him or not.

a reply to: PollyPeptide

Why bother? It's about as real as My Little Pony. May as well reconcile Goldilocks and the Three Bears with reality...

Time and the spreading out of space are inseparable. The days (evening and morning) are from the standpoint of the observer. We know from E=mc^2 that we might assume that we began with energy moving outward at a fantastic speed, c^2. When it lost the speed, it became matter. Light, being in the medium of that spreading space, maintained it's connection so that you could see these distant bodies as if the light had traveled for 13.6 billion years. However, with the White Hole theory, the spreading of space could have resulted in the light from stars/galaxies appearing on Earth by the fourth day of the six day creation.

In the beginning there was nothing, not even empty space. When God created, he made the heavens (empty space) and the Earth. From the standpoint of Earth, space was created outwardly, which is verified by quantum red shift observations and the original Hubble discovery where Hubble ruled out that Earth was the center because he did not want to believe in God, so he picked the other of the two possibilities.

So, you see the fabric of space spread out at tremendous speed, which in turn created time along with it, apparently taking billions of years but actually only taking a few days from the standpoint of the observer.

originally posted by: PollyPeptide
First, I would like to say that this is just a THEORY I came up with a little while back. It was right after Bill Nye and Ken Ham had their debate about creationism...

As other members explained how this does not make sense in time/day/night, I will focus on your seleciton of words. Firstly, if you use word theory as scientific theory, then sorry, you have hypothesis, but scientific theory means its proven correctly, where this idea of yours is just not possible as showed in this thread...

originally posted by: PollyPeptide
My logic is sound. Science AND Christian Theology together, for once!

This deserves facepalm...

originally posted by: PollyPeptide
I really do think that it's up to us Skeptics to pick the Bible apart and look at it Objectively, the way skeptics say they look at things. IF skeptics want the proof, they need to find it themselves. I think that this way of thinking could very well be a path towards finding that elusive proof...

You really think you have to be skeptic to find bible ignorance of reality?? Nah, just bit of inteligence is enough to know that bible is just set of stories copied from some of already known ancient civilizations, has nothing with truth, but due to authority bible has hold for thousands of years some are unable to understand that WE are way past that... We KNOW how earth, moon, sun, all planets in our system have formed. We found one not visible without strong telescopes, but with laws of gravity we knew existed.... We (humanity) paid HUGE price to get here, as radical people that have lost touch of reality tried to hold on the same 'idea' that you propagate here... while even my 10 year old can teach you that god did not create day/night as you said, but that earths orbiting sun gives us light...

Sorry, but this literal reading of bible is just stupid, not working and does not even require any skepticism, just bit of intelligence and knowledge to beat...


a reply to: Masterjaden
Day is measure, it is the same length of time if we talk about about something when earth even did not exist, has nothing to do with earth orbit when it was created. Try to mix this with some mysticism and unknown that you represent science to be... just laughable...

originally posted by: Masterjaden
Well, I'm afraid you might be confused about what I would consider a potential accounting for Genesis. I am not of a mind that God came down and wrote it. It was written by man and almost every account of God communicating with man (there are some exceptions) are via visions and man passes down that information in the best way he can.

What do we call people that hear voices in their head and act upon them today???

originally posted by: Masterjaden
I would think that the if the account of Genesis came from God, that it would be man's interpretation of God's vision to them and that the time frames would be an approximation by the person seeing and interpreting the vision. So the time frame given would be based on THAT person's time and his description of the visions could be distorted.

But what if man made up all of this, something we have proven with current knowledge of universe?? WHy that is never possibility in your mind? Because of fictional book??

originally posted by: Masterjaden
Truth comes easier from trying to find out HOW something can be true than trying to dismiss it based on your current beliefs and predispositions. If after attempting to see HOW something can be true you come to the conclusion that it isn't likely, then you are in a more informed position.

No matter how much you bend your 'truth' it will never fit into science... it is just made up story, just like Santa Claus. But today not even kids believe in Santa, yet you are strongly pushing your belief...

originally posted by: Masterjaden
If you start out trying to discredit something because it doesn't fit your paradigm, you are doomed to live in ignorance.

Ignorance is believing in bronze age folklore tale while EVERYTHING points to story being wrong... Now that you mention it...

Its simple. The Solar system was moving very slow compared to God existing at or above the speed of light. So due to relativistic effects what was 7 days to god was millions of years here on Earth. So... this also explains why Christians believe Earth is only a few thousand years old. It all in 'God' years.

I don't actually believe this but it's plausible and even scientifically possible.

originally posted by: jazz10
Remind me again please.....what is time?

Isn't time the man made tool to enable a strategic routine and timetable in order to control an entire system?
God created day and night not hours and minutes.

Right, but God didn't write the account of creation, man did, so man wrote in terms that they understood at the time. Day was while the sun was "up" in the sky, night was when it was "down."

I suppose a religious person could argue that God dictated to a human scribe what to write, but there's no evidence of that, and since everything except the quoted lines from God are written in the third person, it's safe to assume that God's hand did not write the accounts of creation, therefore it's also safe to assume that the timeframes mentioned would equate to mankind's known understandings, not God's unproveable measure of time that may or may not differ from ours.

Of course, nothing about the creation story is proveable at this point, so it's all conjecture--I just get a little bored with the canned response of, "Well, it's God...it can do whatever it wants and it doesn't have to make sense to us."

originally posted by: Xeven
Its simple. The Solar system was moving very slow compared to God existing at or above the speed of light. So due to relativistic effects what was 7 days to god was millions of years here on Earth. So... this also explains why Christians believe Earth is only a few thousand years old. It all in 'God' years.

I don't actually believe this but it's plausible and even scientifically possible.

If you read my posts on page 1 you'd see how this reasoning isn't very sound since the various days themselves vary from day to day. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter than the previous day too. There is really no way to reconcile Genesis account with actual creation outside of just saying it is an allegory. Even then I'm a bit dubious because events are out of order and there are a few more paradoxes in the account (humans are created twice for instance).

originally posted by: Keshia
If He thinks about something to be done, It is done instantly. The question is if you believe in Him or not.

And herein lies the reason that having interesting, rational discussions concerning the bible tend to end in frustration and irritation.

I tried.

I failed.

I bow down

Your Interpreting the Bible in a literal sense. Some Argue the days just represent periods in time. Couldve been days, or couldve been decades.

Just a thought.

The evening and the morning were the first day. A day was consistent with our days today.
There are plants that depend on insects or animals to survive, therefore the plants and animals would be made within days of each other.
The plants needed sunlight to survive, so the light of God was replaced with the cycle of the Sun within a day.
God made it in 6 days like He said. You don't believe it because it (1) seems impossible or (2) evidence appears otherwise.
(1) Seems impossible. Your concept of God is too small. He is eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. Nothing is hard for Him.
(2) Evidence appears otherwise. Well, that's partly due to the evidence not being allowed by the scientific community. Their agenda is to push evolution and secularism, naturalism, and uniformitarianism. If they succeed, they have pushed God out. However, with agencies working on creationism, we have plenty of proof of a young Earth using hard science. You won't hear about it because you won't look. Scientists are afraid to tell you for fear of losing tenure. Hundreds of great scientists have been fired over this problem.