Why don’t you ask, “Ok, if you can keep your six days, can you accept the age of the earth and natural selection / evolution?”
That’s a strained interpretation. Genesis says: “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.” This seems to be saying that Adam already existed when God created the animals. They were created because Adam was alone and he was present when they were named.
And if the animals had already been created before Adam, how is this interpreted: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” This seems to be saying there weren’t even any plants growing prior to Adam’s creation. God had created them but they were still seeds under the ground until God made it rain.
Where does the creation of the animals fit in with that? God had created them, decided not to mention it, and then dumped them in a barren desert until he got around to creating the water and plants to sustain them?
Here’s the NIV version of Genesis 2:
To reconcile it with the timeline in Genesis 1, you have to break it up into sections - sometimes in the middle of a verse.
And then shuffle around the order of the passages so the events described happened in the right sequence.
You say, **why is it so critically important that the six days mean 24-hour periods? **
And you say it is “My question to him”.
Have you asked him? What does he say?
You say he is intested in science. Does he know what science is? Does he understand the concepts of a hypothesis, and evidence that supports or undercuts it, and a resulting theory that is supported by actual evidence?
Does he reject the scientific method? If he does, then his interest in science is akin to his interest in say, Broadway show tunes. A mild entertainment to pass the time.
If he accepts the scientific method, then either he thinks it doesn’t apply biology for some reason, or he thinks biologists as a class are a bunch of frauds.
Why don’t you have a discussion along these lines with him, and let us know what he says?
“Because that’s what my pastor says.”
He’s certainly aware of the tenets of science and the scientific method, but is skeptical. Ironic, I know. Believe me, there are times when I talk with him when I want to pound my head against a wall.
But overall, I find it fascinating to talk with him. He’s very intelligent, but appears to have compartmentalized certain facts from each other. On some level he appears conflicted. I talk a lot about scientific evidence and methodology and I think a part of him realizes the logic of it, yet he perceives his faith to be at odds with science. I’ve assured him, truthfully, that I have no desire to talk him out of his faith. Indeed, I fail to see how his faith is even in conflict with science unless one uses a ridiculously literal interpretation of the bible, hence my OP.
I find it really interesting and encouraging that he continues to seek my company. One day I asked him why he associates with me at all since I’m apparently advocating for the work of Satan in the world. He said he enjoyed talking with me and respected my intelligence and knowledge (we also have a hobby in common). I then asked if he held out hope for “saving” me. He laughed and basically said he had little hope of that happening, but didn’t close the door on it entirely. In the end, I think we have a respectful understanding of each other and are able to talk quite freely. Once in a while I even feel that ignorance is being fought.
And in this lies the answer to your question. You ask why is it so critically important to your friend that the six days mean 24-hour periods. The answer does not lie in scriptural interpretation: that’s a dead end and a waste of time. All those who say they believe in the literal truth of the bible actually pick and choose. The answers lie in human nature. The underlying question and the one you really need to ask him is “why is it critically important to believe what your pastor says?” If you can get your friend to talk about the answer to this question, you may begin to get somewhere.
It is obvious - well, as obvious as anything can be in The Bible - that according to the account of Genesis, God bestowed the ability of speech upon Adam, because it was Adam who named all the animals. So, after Adam and Eve’s fall from grace, how long do Creationists think it took man to forget the ability of speech, go back to primitive, illiterate beasts and then relearn it all again?
Would 6,000 years or 60,000 years really cover it?
Whoosh? The length of days varies but little. The Moon, and to a much lesser degree the Sun are slowing the rotation via tidal forces, requiring a leap second every couple of years or so in the last few decades, now that we have atomic clocks that vary by less, NOT ~6hrs/year. The reason we need leap days is that the planet’s orbital period about the Sun is not an exact integer multiple of it’s rotational period. Sidereal days ARE of constant length except at the extrema of our ability to measure time, and yet sidereal years still require leap day adjustment.
Due to our elliptical orbit, the suns position varies a bit at noon over the course of a year, but this amounts to minutes of accumulated variation at the extremes, averages out over the year, and has nothing to do with leap days. It mattered a bit for navigation once the marine chronometer advanced to the point where it varied by substantially less, but a second more or less can’t reasonably be said to put a damper on the Almighty’s daily productivity.
I’m more interested in why the pastor feels the six-day interpretation is necessary.
If we’re into literal bible interpretation - where’s the bit where the Bible asserts that PI=3.0? Somewhere it says a well(?) is 2(units) across and 6 around.
So they make an exception for math but not biology, or is every measurable round item a heresy?
The “Molten Sea”, a giant basin of water in the Temple courtyard. Note the dimensions given, which are copied straight from Scripture (I used the Wiki article to avoid composing an essay on what “the Molten Sea” was).
The passage you refer to just proves that God understood significant digits long before man did.
I answered this for you at #4. The pastor (or, rather, the people who taught the people who taught the pastor) feels it is necessary because this is the way that they can leverage people’s deep, traditional, prior commitment to Christianity to discredit the theory of evolution, and, thereby, to discredit progressivist political views (which they thought, not entirely correctly, but not entirely wrongly either) drew support and inspiration from evolutionism. It is not a coincidence that nearly all Biblical literalists and anti-evolutionists are right wing Republicans. (I do not say “conservatives,” because this a very specifically American form of conservativism.)
The driving force behind creationism is not religion (it is, after all, a very aberrant form of Christianity, which took form only in about the 1920s) but politics (and, of course, behind that, as always, struggles over wealth and power). Of course, most present day creationists do not know this. They have been fairly thoroughly duped into believing that the particular form of Biblical literalism they have been taught is what Christianity has always been about. What is sad, however, is that most of the people on the other side seem to have been duped on this point too, and waste their energies attacking religion in general (which is just not going to go away anytime soon), rather than the political ideology behind this very specific, recent, and atypical perversion of religion.
I’d be more inclined to believe that astrologers came up with the concept, and that someone incorporated it into the biblical texts, than that it was divinely inspired.
I’m more interested in why your friend believes his pastor’s interpretation of the Bible over any others. Not only does this interpretation fly in the face of science, but of many (perhaps a majority) of other Christian interpretations. So ask him if he believes his pastor is infallible.
So now you have to be a science geek AND a shrink…
You should get paid for this!
I am paid – by ego self-gratification. Now if I can only find a way to pay my mortgage with it.
There’s a scene, I can’t remember if it’s in 1984 or something else, where the interrogator/torturer is breaking someone by holding up two fingers, saying “I’m holding up three fingers”, and asking the subject how many. Every time the subject doesn’t answer “three”, he gets tortured again.
Some Christians view a literal reading of Genesis as a necessary part of their faith, the reason being that without Adam/Eve/the snake and such, there is no “Fall of Man.” If there’s no Fall of Man, there’s no reason for the redemption of Jesus. Therefore, all that Garden of Eden stuff must be literally true, to justify the sacrifice of Jesus.
I’m not saying it’s a great argument, but it’s one I’ve seen tossed around.
Simply put, the six-days thing is important, because if you start using scientific implausibility as a basis for taking the Bible non-literally, what DON’T you invalidate? Plagues of Egypt? Manna in the Desert? Water turning into wine? A three-day-dead corpse returning to life?
Too much of Biblical religion is dependent on a belief in miracles to start re-interpreting anything that science wouldn’t agree with. Either you take it at face value and explain away the science, or you have a totally different religion.