Replies

Well, there is an interesting theory (held by only a few, but those few tend to be bible scholars who take their Hebrew seriously) that Genesis describes the recreation of the earth (yeah, it sounds wacked). Here is the basis for the concept.

The 1st verse of Genesis is a stand alone: "In the beginning God created (barah) the heaven and the earth." That's it.

2nd verse: "And the earth became without form, and void (tohu bohu); and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Note that here it is translated "became" instead of "was". Which is very interesting. Why?

The explanation I have heard is that between the 1st and 2nd verse occurred the "war in heaven" where Satan was cast down, etc. In which case, what happens when God deals with the earth is that earth was destroyed (became without form and void) in that war. In which case, God effectively does a "system reboot" and a "system recovery" (obviously from his good reality backup archives). Which takes 6 days (however you want to specify the length of the days.) Sounds flakey, right? But here is the benefit of this variant interpretation:

1st, there is no problem whatsoever with the age of the universe, dinosaurs, or anything else. It all happened (generally) as explained by science (although, like I said, I don't buy the "theory" of evolution per se as it exists now.)

2nd, since God is doing a system reboot, he "recovers" the damage from the war of heaven. The description can be somewhat figurative ("the face of the waters" doesn't have to mean 'water' water), but he doesn't have to recover everything in the same original order (thus he has "light" before the stars, sun, moon).

3rd, no problem with the creation of Adam. He wants to create Adam, he uses existing DNA stock and modifies it. No conflict with fossil record, etc.

And so on. See the neat thing is, this account does not have any conflict whatsoever with our understanding of geology, archeology, history, physics, or anything else. Plus it provides both an explanation for and a timeframe for the "war in heaven" to have occurred.

The funny thing is, a scientist will not, strictly speaking, have any problem with this account (because there is no scientific basis for judging it, either for or against.) But plenty of Christians will complain about it for various sectarian reasons.

Nice post. My way of thinking on this follows yours pretty closely.

I have never considered evolution and creationism to be competing ideas.

My personal belief is that "evolution" may have occurred, but that it is/was guided evolution

I see... You're really a closet creationist. :)

Your post 90 was very interesting. Do you have any links for the "recreation" theories?