You’ve got more good commentary here, but I have a concern.
You used the analogy of life surviving a meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs to illustrate how Christianity survived the 3-year persecution by Nero.
Do you believe that the dinosaur’s were wiped out by a meteor, or were you simply using this as an analogy?
How does this impact your interpretation of the Genesis account of creation?
Okay...I suppose I really should stop saying things like that due to the can of worms it inevitably opens.
But let me clarify my position (such as it is) for you.
I had no idea until recently, as I post more and more blogs and videos out there, how divisive this issue is.
Personally, I’m not a Young-Earth Creationist. In fact, when I was growing up my parents taught me the Genesis gap-doctrine, which teaches that an undetermined span of time existed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, in which the billions of years of Earth’s history described by scientists, including the age of the dinosaurs, occur. So according to this account, the 7 days of creation in Genesis are the starts of a NEW world (present) after the destruction of the old. This account sometimes attributes the fall of Lucifer with mass extinctions from the past.
I’ve always had a side obsession with natural history. I loved dinosaurs as a kid and had a blast going to natural history museums and learning about the geologic eras in school. So because of my upbringing, it never occurred to me that there was a contradiction between science and Genesis.
I was in my late teens when I first heard of Young Earth Creationism. I also had never thought to add up the genealogies of the Bible to arrive at a creation date of 6,000 years ago. It struck me as a bit silly, kind of like trying to calculate the date of the Rapture (both modern Young Earth Creationism and Rapture-dating have origins in 7th Day Adventist movement, so this isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds). I also had a hard time accepting dinosaurs on Noah’s ark.
I’ve investigated this further. There’s a lot of great material out there, but it’s left me with more questions than answers. There are actually several views on this, not limited to:
-The Genesis Gap doctrine I just described.
-Day Age Creationism: this claims the 7 days of Genesis are not literal 24-hour days but billion-year spans of time. A brilliant astronomer and cosmologist named Hugh Ross has dozens of books out there supporting this; however, I do see flaws in some of his claims.
-Most orthodox religions have now rejected the first few chapters of Genesis as historical at all, and are just ancient parables. I have the hardest time accepting this, obviously.
Some great reading material on this can be found at biologos.org, oldearth.org, cerebralfaith.blogspot.com, and kjvbible.org. And I’m sure you’re familiar with Ken Ham’s site, answersingenesis.org, which is probably the most well-known Young Earth Creationist website.
My personal thoughts are that people make way too big a deal out of this. I have problems with Young Earth Creationism but I don’t think people’s salvation depends on it. But I’ve encountered Young Earthers getting angry, denouncing me as a heretic and Bible-denier, and even telling me I’m not a real Christian until I accept the 6,000 year date of Creation, which I think is going too far. The foundation of Christianity is the resurrection of Christ, not how long ago Genesis occurred. So I think as long as one accepts Christ as their Savior, they’re a Christian, and how they think the first few chapters of Genesis fits in with natural history is an issue of MUCH less importance.