Scripture says six days, I believe it was six days. God didn’t intend for the Bible to be a riddle; He indicates where He is speaking in parables, and I didn’t see that in the account of creation.
It’s hard to wrap our minds around a six day creation because our minds are so limited, and He is so awesome, so limitless and all-powerful. When we struggle to find alternate explanations for Biblical accounts, it’s because of our limitations, not His. I not only believe the six-day creation wasn’t difficult; I believe it was as simple for Him as speaking it into existence, or even willing it.
Not true. If it was you could read it once, get everything out of it and put it up on the shelf. People have been blessed with finding new things in it for 2000 years.
Well, yes and no. Einstein established an equivalency between energy and matter. Humans have tapped this in a small way with nuclear electricity generation and the atom bomb, in which an exceedingly small portion of the matter originally existing disappears and is changed into energy. In an atomic explosion, the original mass of fissile material is relatively small, maybe a few 10s of kg, and the amount converted to energy is an exceedingly small fraction of that, yet look at the vast amount of energy liberated.
Now, humans other than Tom Swift don't know how to reverse the process, that is, to turn energy into matter, but given enough knowledge and access to the immense amounts of energy that would be required, there's no reason it shouldn't be possible. And the Bible presents God as comprising and having access to, virtually unlimited amounts of energy.
——Scripture says six days, I believe it was six days.———
I’m an I’D guy. I don’t find the scientific evidence for evolution convincing —at all.
But as the medieval Christians said, God wrote two books, Scripture and Creation.
The reason we believe the universe to be intelligible, and natural laws to be uniform, is because God is Intelligibility Itself. He is Truth.
Science depends on this metaphysical presupposition, so it is no coincidence that science was born in the Christian West, and failed in the East and in Islam.
The God of Truth is the God of Scripture and Creation. Scripture cannot contradict Creation, and vice versa. Any conflict is only apparent —a paradox.
So when science tells us that the universe is billions of years old, according to the laws of nature, and God’s other Book tells us that the world is six days old, we have an apparent contradiction.
We must conclude that the ancient author was speaking figuratively, since by his own account, the sun was created on the fourth day. This was St. Augustine’s conclusion.
Augustine
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/creation-and-genesis
“It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation” (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20 [A.D. 408]).
“With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation” (ibid., 2:9).
“Seven days by our reckoning, after the model of the days of creation, make up a week. By the passage of such weeks time rolls on, and in these weeks one day is constituted by the course of the sun from its rising to its setting; but we must bear in mind that these days indeed recall the days of creation, but without in any way being really similar to them” (ibid., 4:27).
“[A]t least we know that it [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar” (ibid., 5:2).
“For in these days [of creation] the morning and evening are counted until, on the sixth day, all things which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these were is extremely difficult or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!” (The City of God 11:6 [A.D. 419]).
“We see that our ordinary days have no evening but by the setting [of the sun] and no morning but by the rising of the sun, but the first three days of all were passed without sun, since it is reported to have been made on the fourth day. And first of all, indeed, light was made by the word of God, and God, we read, separated it from the darkness and called the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night’; but what kind of light that was, and by what periodic movement it made evening and morning, is beyond the reach of our senses; neither can we understand how it was and yet must unhesitatingly believe it” (ibid., 11:7).
“They [pagans] are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of [man as] many thousands of years, though reckoning by the sacred writings we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed” (ibid., 12:10).
Six days??? God could have done the entire thing in a half hour, or less...
Amen. I heard some teaching on the use of the word “day” in the Bible. The word for day in the Creation account (yom) is the same word used in other passages that, where those other passages are concerned, day (yom) was referring to a 24 hour period of time. I think God, a being marked by consistency, uses the very word He intends to use, to suggest the very meaning He intends for us to understand. He created the Earth, and everything in it in 6 days. He is intending for us to understand that His creation of things was recorded in blocks of specific time—and that time would be understood (someday) by His creation as they would experience it (a single day, 24 hours) throughout their lives. God, being a God whose utmost desire is to see His fallen creatures saved, would want them to see Him in every aspect of creation, including time. He sets the pattern for the people of Israel with creation (the 6 days of work, the 7th a day of rest). He sets the pattern for the church (Christ is buried on the seventh day, bringing the Old Testament system of law to an end, and is resurrected on the first day of the (new) week—introducing Grace “and, lo, I make all things new”).
God, if He is God, needs about a billionth of a half a second to speak all things into creation. He has used the 24 hour day, 7 day week time period to reveal Himself to us. God’s whole desire is that you might know Him and by knowing Him, have life in His name. Stop guessing. Be not doubting, but believe. And don’t worry, He has taken the foolish things of this world to confound the wisdom of the wise...because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. You have God on your side when the unregenerate mock you!)