Tuesday, November 11, 2008
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QOTD: God Created the Universe in 6 Days?
This question isn't to raise any doubts, but Christians differ on how they interpret Genesis –
Do you believe that the universe was created in six literal days?
Editor's note: Original post said 'seven' days, we took into account the day of rest. Thanks for catching that!
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Comments (216)
If a Christian doesn't believe the beginning of the Bible, just when would he or she start believing it? If you can't believe the beginning then can you trust the ending?
it would be 6 days, but yes.
No. The Bible says that God created the Earth in 6 days, which is what I believe.
(He RESTED on the seventh day; might want to read the Bible
)
@Hecalmsthestorm@xanga - The question didn't ask anyone to not believe anything, it's just asking if the Hebrew word for "day" (yom) was one that should be taken literally in this particular case since it can also mean varying passages of time. It's a legitimate question and I don't think you're really answering the question by saying, "you can't believe the end without the beginning."
Must we do this again? Really? We all know how this is going to end....
Many Christians don't believe in a literal seven days. And they are no less faithful than those who do.
@Allen_Oz@xanga - I agree. Yom means an appointed period.
@Hecalmsthestorm@xanga - I wouldn't say that disagreeing with the literal interpretation of 24 hours negates the truth in the Bible. Besides, which creation account do we believe...the one in Genesis 1 which places the creation of man before the creation of plants and Animals. If we're being literal, we have to take 2:5 seriously "And NO shrub of the field had yet appeared on Earth."
So we have to make a choice; do we perform intragesis where we try to manipulate the text by rationalization...or do we step out of it, look at the Bible critically as a historical document, written by men who, inspired by God to tell of his miraculous and wonderful love for us, write about cosmic and infininte truths in a finite and limited linear way.
Yes, I believe what God's word says. 6 days He worked creating the earth and everything in it, then He rested.
I do believe God is God and is capable of creating the world in six (not seven) days, as is stated in the Bible. Does that mean that there is no such thing as an evolutionary process such as speciation? Nooooo. One doesn't exclude the other. We have healings in Scripture, but we still need doctors and to continue studies in health remedies and care.
@Hecalmsthestorm@xanga - I agree with that. If you can't trust the beginning, then you can't trust the ending.
I believe that the Universe was created in 6 literal days. Days being that "there was evening and there was morning and then it was the next day." (Genesis 1) What that translates into our current time table as far as hours as a unit of measurement, I don't really know.
@Hecalmsthestorm@xanga - Good question. I struggle to understand how people determine that parts of the Bible are literal and other parts are "stories" Aside from the obvious times such as when Jesus is actually telling a story.
Well... first of all, Genesis was written by Moses who was inspired by God. The calendar did not exist during his time so therefore, I think that the word "day" in Genesis isn't the same "day" we think of in today's term.
Now, what I think is that the word "day" in this case is equivalent to a thousand years or so. How do I come up with this? Well, in Psalms 90, it says that a day in God's eyes are like a thousand years. Now, Psalms was written by David who lived around the time Moses lived. So if we follow through with that, a day in this time's Biblical metaphors can be assumed to be a thousand years. I don't know, just my thoughts.
I believe in six literal days of creation.
@Hecalmsthestorm@xanga - purely by way of information and I don't want to debate the legitimacy of this claim for a variety of reasons (one cited above, one cited below, and a couple others which will go unnamed), but most Christians (especially theistic evolutionists) who don't believe in the literal 6-day creation take the first 11 chapters of the Bible to be metaphorical. Why 11? Well...to be honest I have yet to read one of the seminal books on that topic...it's on my to-do-list...but I don't really know. As for believing the end (i.e. Revelation), I know many Christians who don't believe in the rapture, or if they do, they still read Revelation metaphorically. In fact, I can't think of anyone off the top of my head who reads Revelation literally.
Reading something to be metaphorical does not necessarily mean you don't believe it, just that you don't believe the Bible is a book of science. It does not make the concepts and principles in the Bible any less true in the mind of the reader (and it arguably makes them more important)...just the details are perceived as analogical rather than historical/factual.
@MrCheetah@xanga - not true...well reasoned, but not true.
1.) just because they didn't have a calender does not mean they didn't know what a "day" is...defined as 23 hours and 53 minutes? probably not, but sunrise and sunset are as good a measure as any (unless you live in Alaska...)
2.) In that same passage in Psalms it also says a 1000 years is like a day....the purpose is to show the timeless element of God, not provide a conversion scale from "our time" to "God time" like one would between feet and meters.
3.) David was not around the time of Moses. There was a good couple hundred years between them.
I'm not trying to be mean and pop your balloon, but it needed to be said.
does that make sense?
He created the world in 6 "days", but God is outside of time, so it might have taken him longer than the standard 24 hour day.
Time was created by man, not by God
@sheepthatsblack@xanga - Like I said, the word "day" is a Biblical metaphor. By the way, the "a thousand years is a day" is in a chapter from 2 Peter, not Psalms 90. Also, when I said David and Moses lived around the same time, I did not mean they lived together and went shopping down the markets. I meant that they both lived in an era when the calendar was not yet created. Besides, both of them were contributors to the book of Psalms.
I understand your argument about them knowing what a day is. But the question here is whether or not the word "day" is either literal or metaphorical. The Bible is uniquely written and because of it, there are many, many different interpretations even for the simplest things such as deciphering whether a "day" is a day or not.
So with that said, I'm not offended or anything and I do not think that you "popped my balloon." I do, however, respect your views on this and I'd greatly appreciate it if you respect mine as well. There really isn't a right or wrong on this. Just personal opinions.
yes, I don't think it's impossible for God to create an entire world in 6 literal days where evening and morning gave a day.
@itangel@xanga - God is all around of time; inside, outside, underneath, on top, beside, everywhere. Who are we to say where God is and is not? And also, time was created by man? Mmm, I kind of get where you get that but that's a pretty faulty statement. Time was not created by man, but by God himself. Time is measured by the movement of the earth (revolution and rotation). Who moves the earth? God does. So God created time, not us.
@Evowookiee@xanga - Um, no... animals and plants were created before man... EXCEPT in the Garden of Eden. You have to actually READ it before you interpret it, my friend. The passage you're referring to talks about the Garden of Eden only.
@Allen_Oz@xanga - Actually, he answered it very well, friend. Very well indeed.
*shrugs* I don't think it really matters, honestly. The one thing I do know, i that the Bible says 6 days... not 7. He rested on the 7th. Haha. Whether the days are literal or not, I have no idea.
it is 6 days...
but I am not sure whether it is literal or not. God is completely God and sovereign, and he can do it whichever we he chooses...that could be literal days or it could be millennial...this is actually something minimal that we don't need to be divided over, and we may never know until we reach eternity with Christ.
To believe that Creation took place in 6 literal days is to defy reason. The ability to reason is one of the capacities of our intellect. The intellect is an ability of the human soul and is what makes made in the image of God.
So to hold that God created the universe in 6 literal days is to deny the human intellect and thus deny God.
Denying God is the end result of denying reason and/or faith.
No, I do not believe the universe was created in seven literal days.
yup, he made it in 6 days. the best day was obviously the 6th since that's when he made dinosaurs. forget evolution no wai that's real. fossils are hoaxes made by scientists who don't think the earth was made in 6 days. we're smarter than them clearly, the fact we believe a book written by some old dude who got some help from god after wandering in the desert proves so! even though it's a confusing book that causes more conflict than agreement!