Let There Be Light!
I’ve decided to channel my inner philosopher. Not the “why am I here?” philosopher, not even the “why is the sky blue?” philosopher. This week I’m feeling more of the “So the Bible says God created the world in 7 days. Who’s to say a day was really a 24 hour turn back then? Can’t we just, for a moment, combine two trains of thought?” And like a good combo of chocolate and peanut butter, I am here to ask you to ponder creation with me for a moment.
So here’s my thinking – and I will apologize in advance if this post is too ramble or stream of consciousness or whatever…..
On one hand the book of creation states that God created the world in 7 days –
Day 1 – God created light and separated the light from the darkness, calling light “day” and darkness “night.”
Day 2 – God created an expanse to separate the waters and called it “sky.”
Day 3 – God created the dry ground and gathered the waters, calling the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters “seas.” On day three, God also created vegetation (plants and trees).
Day 4 – God created the sun, moon, and the stars to give light to the earth and to govern and separate the day and the night. These would also serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years
Day 5 – God created every living creature of the seas and every winged bird, blessing them to multiply and fill the waters and the sky with life
Day 6 – God created the animals to fill the earth. On day six, he also created man and woman in his own image to commune with him. He blessed them and gave them every creature and the whole earth to rule over, care for, and cultivate.
Day 7 – God had finished his work of creation and so he rested on the seventh day, blessing it and making it holy.
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and I thought my weeks were busy. None of this, mind you, can be proven. It’s a story. Written by someone gosh knows how many years after the fact. (I mean, he didn’t create man and woman until day 6. So….)
On the other hand, there are scientists and such that can prove theories of evolution. Through DNA studies and fossil testing, man has proven the relationship between many organisms.
But I am not here to wax scientific. My point is – in the war between Creationists and Evolutionists, can’t there be a middle ground? Can’t we say, for arguments sake that God’s “day” isn’t what we know to be a 24 hour rotation of the earth? Maybe it’s a figurative number to streamline a process of trial and error. What do you think? How would this story fit into FanFic? I’ve always been interested to see if someone could come up with a cool story based on creation. I mean we’ve all seen what happens when people get their hands on the “fun stuff” like the Book of Revelation…..
~Christine
(and P.S. – don’t think for a moment that I don’t have something to say about that whole “Eve gave Adam and apple” debacle…we will discuss that another time…)
Posted on February 28, 2013, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 11 Comments.
New Stories, Old Book. 
Exactly. Science and the creation story don’t contradict each other. The creation story isn’t a science textbook. It was a story written thousands of years ago to make a spiritual point — that there is a God and he created everything. It was written in a way that the people of thousands of years ago could comprehend the spiritual point of the story. Nothing in evolution theory disproves the existence of God. Nothing in the Bible says evolution didn’t happen. The conflict between the two is manufactured by a few people on both sides who are dogmatic about their particular beliefs. The argument between the two never made any sense to me because they are discussing two separate matters, the external physical universe and the internal spiritual realm.
I totally agree with you. All the bickering came after the fact – like humans have developed some crazy need to prove the other is wrong.
I always figured it out this way. God made everything to be selfsustainable. Thus evolution makes sense. Perfect sense. Maybe when he knocked off for lunch on the sixt day Homus Erectus was prancing around like a village idiot. Maybe not. But to try to box Him into a nice cubbyhole is a bit daft. So what if a God day takes 4000 years. That is fine by me.
That’s why I feel if you take the best bits and pieces of each form of spiritual belief, you’d probably have the closest definition to what really happened. But, unfortunately, there is an innate need for everyone to be better than everyone else – which, by my definition, is exactly the opposite of what true spirituality teaches.
Funny you mentioned that. I’ve always had that thought in the back of my head. Logically, if he was in the process of creating the universe and the earth, then who is to say our earth was in motion around the Sun at that time and if it was rotating around the sun, did it really take only 24 hours to so? On the evolution side of things, the same reasoning can be applied. If the earth is 4.5 billion years old, what was the condition of our solar system and the universe. When did the planets start to gravitate toward the sun and start to spin? Was it faster or slower?
Exactly! Who’s to say?? Certainly not man.
While my faith agrees with the Bible, I do also feel that the two can go hand in hand. Who says some sort of evolution didn’t happen? I believe God created everything, including science. It makes sense to me that the world and people evolved through time to what we are now. And I’ve always wondered what a typical day is like to God. What if one of God’s days is 1000 years to us? Deep questions.
I totally respect your faith and the faith of others. Some follow the Bible to the letter, some faiths are nudged by the teachings of their books. But, agreeing with you, who is to say the teachings of spirituality don’t go hand in hand with the teachings of science? And why can’t they be cut from the same cloth?
Time is an artificial construct that is useful in helping us organize reality. The labels we assign – the four minute mile, the eight hour work day, the seven day week – are malleable, taking on more or less meaning depending on where you’re standing on the globe or in history. I mean, 600 years ago, life was organized around the monastic hours, a system of chanted services that are rarely remembered, much less followed, any more. I mean, when’s the last time you got up for Matins? (That was the 2am service…)
Which is all a high-fallutin way of saying time is what you make of it, and the important message is that God took responsibility for the creation of reality, starting with something as basic as separating day from night. Did he have a timer on him when he did it?
That’d be no.
An egg timer, to be exact! I think you hit the nail on the head – time is what we make of it. Whether we are procrastinating, rushing around, wasting it or making the most of it – time is individual. I jut don’t understand the close-mindedness of those who refuse to see a different point of view. I have a friend who swears 7 days is 7 days – that’s it. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Time isn’t literal. Why should the story of creation?
Well, time is more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly time-y wimey stuff. ;0) I think time isn’t linear to God they way people experience. And I’ve always thought evaluation is apparent in God’s creations. Both can exist without nullifying the other. Great post!!