It seems to me that the natural laws that God maintains, and through which we understand Creation (His other book), indicate that the earth is billions of years old. If so, Genesis must be metaphorical, with regard to the six days of Creation. Such a position is logically coherent.
Alternatively, if Creation was literally of six days duration, then God would have had to have created the world in some kind of miraculous manner (possible), but this divine Action would simultaneously give the appearance of the world being millions of years old. This would make God deceptive, which is logically impossible.
No, saying that would make God deceptive is to hold Him responsible for the misapprehension of humans who insist on interpreting the evidence without allowing for His influence. Hardly His fault when all throughout history He is proclaiming His existence to those very humans.
I object to your conclusion. God is only following logic. Without His supernatural intervention, our sky would be dark at night because the distant stars light would not have reached us. Also, between the Great Flood and the works of Satan, the aging "look" may have been accelerated by elements beyond our ken. I'll trust God and stick with literal days.
With all due respect, this talk of two books makes no sense. God gave us only one, and we don’t have to twist ourselves into pretzels trying to prove what we think God REALLY meant when He said six days. As I pointed out, the Hebrew word for “day” in the Creation account always refers to a literal day/night 24 hour period elsewhere in the Bible.
The evidence for a young earth-—in other words, for the truth of God’s word-—is actually overwhelming.
Radiometric dating is extremely flawed and very inaccurate.
In Mark 10:6, Jesus said God made Adam and Eve at the beginning, not billions of years after everything else. Also, if you accept God’s word-—including Mark 10:6-—as true, you know that sin and death were not originally in the world, but were brought into it by Adam and Eve. To believe the old-earth theory, you would have to believe that there was already a fossil record when they came along, which would mean suffering, disease and death pre-dating Adam and Eve. This contradicts Scripture.
Much of the fossil record shows evidence of sudden death, as would happen in a worldwide flood, and in fact such a flood would produce exactly the kind of geological record we have today.
The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 prove that the earth can’t be billions of years old.
You’re right about God not being deceptive, and that is sort of my whole point. Take Him at His word when He says He created in six days. It’s strange to me that you say it’s “possible” God created the world in some kind of miraculous manner. Don’t you agree that Creation IS the most amazing miracle of all?