Old Earth creationism: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively ← Previous edit Next edit →Content deleted Content addedVisual WikitextInline

Revision as of 10:53, 25 December 2007 editGusChiggins21 (talk \| contribs)910 edits →Gap Creationism: added ref for Gap creation.← Previous edit		Revision as of 10:59, 25 December 2007 edit undoGusChiggins21 (talk \| contribs)910 edits →Day-Age Creationism Next edit →
Line 52:		Line 52:
	The order of light, then the firmament, then stars, might be taken as a simplified description of modern theories of ], namely the ], followed by ], followed by ]. Similarly, modern ] believes that marine animals preceded land animals.		The order of light, then the firmament, then stars, might be taken as a simplified description of modern theories of ], namely the ], followed by ], followed by ]. Similarly, modern ] believes that marine animals preceded land animals.

	Critics of this old Earth view of Creationism comment~~{{Fact\|date=February 2007}}~~ that the order of the days of creation are inconsistent with modern scientific interpretation. For example, the Earth is unlikely to have existed before the Sun and all other stars, plant life could not have survived millennia without sunlight, flowering plants could not have been pollinated without insect life, and most birds could not survive long without terrestrial life. Another possible argument against the old Earth view of Creationism is that after each creation, the Bible states "And there was morning and night-the (corresponding) day."		Critics of this old Earth view of Creationism comment<ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0404order.asp</ref> that the order of the days of creation are inconsistent with modern scientific interpretation. For example, the Earth is unlikely to have existed before the Sun and all other stars, plant life could not have survived millennia without sunlight, flowering plants could not have been pollinated without insect life, and most birds could not survive long without terrestrial life. Another possible argument against the old Earth view of Creationism is that after each creation, the Bible states "And there was morning and night-the (corresponding) day."

	Other Old Earth creationism camps hold that the Sun, Moon and Stars were only given their mission or status by God on the fourth day, not literally created ex nihilo. Some believe that the phrase "Let there be light" implies only that light was made visible from the context of the surface of the earth (where the Spirit of the Lord was said to be moving upon the face of the waters) due to the removal of an opaque atmosphere. The Sun, Moon and stars were only made completely visible "for signs and for seasons and for days and years" in the fourth period when the atmosphere was made fully transparent and that the Sun was in existence well before the Earth. The "earth" mentioned in the first verse would be the cosmos as it existed in before the Big Bang, not literally the Earth itself in its modern form. The Hebrew phrase "shamayim erets" (Heavens and the earth) always refers to the entire Universe. It is also possible that the first verse "In the beginning ..." was only a summary of the account that would follow. The exact placement of particular creatures within the creation account such as insects and other forms of life are not necessarily mentioned in the text. The exact length and equality or overlap of "days" may vary from model to model.		Other Old Earth creationism camps hold that the Sun, Moon and Stars were only given their mission or status by God on the fourth day, not literally created ex nihilo. Some believe that the phrase "Let there be light" implies only that light was made visible from the context of the surface of the earth (where the Spirit of the Lord was said to be moving upon the face of the waters) due to the removal of an opaque atmosphere. The Sun, Moon and stars were only made completely visible "for signs and for seasons and for days and years" in the fourth period when the atmosphere was made fully transparent and that the Sun was in existence well before the Earth. The "earth" mentioned in the first verse would be the cosmos as it existed in before the Big Bang, not literally the Earth itself in its modern form. The Hebrew phrase "shamayim erets" (Heavens and the earth) always refers to the entire Universe. It is also possible that the first verse "In the beginning ..." was only a summary of the account that would follow. The exact placement of particular creatures within the creation account such as insects and other forms of life are not necessarily mentioned in the text. The exact length and equality or overlap of "days" may vary from model to model.

Revision as of 10:59, 25 December 2007

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Old Earth creationism" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Part of a series on

Creationism

History

Types

Young Earth

Old Earth
- day-age
- gap
- progressive

Neo-creationism

Biblical cosmology

Book of Genesis
- creation narrative
- as an allegory

Omphalos hypothesis

Creation science

Rejection of evolution by religious groups

Religious views

Non-creation

Evolution

Theistic evolution

Old Earth creationism is a variant of the creationist view of the origin of the universe and life on Earth. As a theory of origins it is typically more compatible with mainstream scientific thought on the issues of geology, cosmology and the age of the Earth, in comparison to Young Earth creationism. However, it still generally takes the accounts of creation in Genesis more literally than theistic evolution (or evolutionary creationism).

Old Earth creationism is in fact an umbrella term for a number of perspectives, including Gap creationism and Progressive creationism.

Types of Old Earth Creationism

Gap Creationism

Main article: Gap creationism

One type of Old Earth creationism is Gap creationism. This view states that life was immediately and recently created on a pre-existing old Earth. One variant rests on a rendering of Genesis 1:1-2 as:

"In the beginning ... the earth became formless and void." (It is argued that the word 'was', hayah, can also be correctly translated as 'became'.)

This is taken by Gap creationists to imply that the earth already existed, but had passed into decay during an earlier age of existence, and was now being "shaped anew". This view is more consistent with mainstream science with respect to the age of the Earth, but still often resembles Young Earth creationism in many respects (often seeing the "days" of Genesis 1 as 24-hour days). This view was popularized in 1909 by the Scofield Reference Bible.

Progressive Creationism

Main article: Progressive creationism

Progressive Creationism is the religious belief that God allows certain natural process (such as gene mutation and natural selection) to affect the development of life, but has also directly intervened at key moments in life’s history to guide those processes or, in some views, create new species altogether (often to replenish the earth). This view of creationism allows for and accepts fluctuation within defined species but rejects transitional evolution as a viable mechanism to create a gradual descent from unicellular organisms to advanced life. Progressive creationists point to multiple destructive events in the earth's history (such as meteoric impacts and large-scale global volcanic activity) and geological evidence for rapid subsequent speciation as evidence for distinct, typically limited intervention by a Creator. This view can be applied (as it often is) to virtually any of the other Old Earth views.

Approaches to Genesis 1

Old Earth creationists may approach the creation accounts of Genesis in a number of different ways.

The Framework interpretation

Main article: Framework interpretation (Genesis)

Summary of the Genesis 6-day creation account, showing the pattern according to the framework hypothesis.
Realms created	"Rulers" of realms created
Day 1: Light; day and night	Day 4: Sun, moon and stars
Day 2: Sea and Heavens	Day 5: Sea creatures; birds
Day 3: Land and vegetation	Day 6: Land creatures; man

The framework interpretation (or framework hypothesis) notes that there is a pattern or "framework" present in the Genesis account and that, because of this, the account may not have been intended as a strict chronological record of creation. Instead, the creative events may be presented in a topical order. This view is broad enough that proponents of other old earth views (such as many Day-Age creationists) have no problem with many of the key points put forward by the hypothesis, though they might believe that there is a certain degree of chronology present.

Day-Age Creationism

Main article: Day-Age Creationism

More commonly, advocates of Old Earth creationism hold that the six days referred to are not ordinary 24-hour days, but rather the Hebrew word for "day" (yom) can be interpreted in this context to mean a long period of time (thousands or millions of years) rather than a 24-hour day. The Genesis account is then interpreted as an account of a progressive creation, or sometimes a summary of life's evolutionary history. This view is often called "Day-Age Creationism".

There are a variety of ways in which the events in the creation account are interpreted. Some closely resemble the order of events as held by Young Earth creationism. In this view on the first "day" God is said to have created light; on the second, the firmament of heaven; on the third, the separation between water and land, and the creation of plant life; on the fourth the sun, moon, and stars; on the fifth created marine life and birds; on the sixth land animals, and man and woman.

The order of light, then the firmament, then stars, might be taken as a simplified description of modern theories of cosmology, namely the Big Bang, followed by cosmic inflation, followed by stellar evolution. Similarly, modern zoology believes that marine animals preceded land animals.

Critics of this old Earth view of Creationism comment that the order of the days of creation are inconsistent with modern scientific interpretation. For example, the Earth is unlikely to have existed before the Sun and all other stars, plant life could not have survived millennia without sunlight, flowering plants could not have been pollinated without insect life, and most birds could not survive long without terrestrial life. Another possible argument against the old Earth view of Creationism is that after each creation, the Bible states "And there was morning and night-the (corresponding) day."

Other Old Earth creationism camps hold that the Sun, Moon and Stars were only given their mission or status by God on the fourth day, not literally created ex nihilo. Some believe that the phrase "Let there be light" implies only that light was made visible from the context of the surface of the earth (where the Spirit of the Lord was said to be moving upon the face of the waters) due to the removal of an opaque atmosphere. The Sun, Moon and stars were only made completely visible "for signs and for seasons and for days and years" in the fourth period when the atmosphere was made fully transparent and that the Sun was in existence well before the Earth. The "earth" mentioned in the first verse would be the cosmos as it existed in before the Big Bang, not literally the Earth itself in its modern form. The Hebrew phrase "shamayim erets" (Heavens and the earth) always refers to the entire Universe. It is also possible that the first verse "In the beginning ..." was only a summary of the account that would follow. The exact placement of particular creatures within the creation account such as insects and other forms of life are not necessarily mentioned in the text. The exact length and equality or overlap of "days" may vary from model to model.

Cosmic Time

Gerald Schroeder puts forth a view which tries to reconcile 24-hour creation days with an age of billions of years for the universe by noting, as creationist Phillip E. Johnson summarizes in his article "What Would Newton Do?": “the Bible speaks of time from the viewpoint of the universe as a whole, which Schroeder interprets to mean at the moment of "quark confinement," when stable matter formed from energy early in the first second of the big bang.” Schroeder calculates that a period of six days under the conditions of quark confinement, when the universe was approximately a million times smaller and hotter than it is today, is equal to fifteen billion years of earth time. Thus Genesis and modern physics are reconciled. One problem with this approach is that it puts the creation of the Earth approximately eight billion years earlier than modern scientific theories and it may be incorrect with respect to the viewpoint of creation.

Broader Reasoning

There are a number of other scriptural reasons that Old earth creationists cite for belief in an old Earth that are often (though not always) held commonly by Gap, Day-Age and other old earth views. One argument is that there are a number of passages which seem to indicate the antiquity of Earth (many of which are poetic) for example Proverbs 8:22-31, although they are also compatible with a 6,000-year-old earth which is likewise "old" from the perspective of a human lifetime. Others seem to relate the age of the Earth (or some aspects of Earth) to the eternal nature of God (implying great antiquity), although strict interpretation would prove too much, as old-earth creationists don't believe that the earth is eternal, Old Earth creationists argue that antiquity much greater than a few thousand years is implied. One claimed passage is Psalm 90 (which is said to demonstrate that the passage of time can be considerably different from God’s perspective, although others claim it shows that God is outside time).

Many (Roman Catholics especially) also see a belief in an old Earth as predicated upon the view of Thomism, that the words of the Bible (Special revelation) ought to be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the record of nature (general revelation).

By far the most compelling reason for Old earth creationists to believe in an old Earth is scientific evidence.

The Biblical Flood according to Old Earth Creationism

Old Earth Creationists have many scientific reasons for rejecting flood geology. The accusation often levelled at Old Earth creationists in rejecting a global deluge is that they reject the infallibility of scripture which suggests that the Genesis flood covered the whole of the earth. In response, Old Earth Creationists cite references in the Bible where the words "whole" and "all" clearly require a contextual interpretation.Old Earth creationists generally believe that the human race was localised around the Middle East at the time of the Genesis flood.

External links

Reasons to Believe An Old-Earth, Day-Age site with a number of resources
God and Science An Old-Earth, Day-Age site with scriptural and scientific rebuttals to Young-Earth Creationism
Answers In Creation An Old Earth site purporting to demonstrate the flaws in young earth creationism
‘Progressive creationism’: why is it wrong to add billions of years to the Bible? from Answers in Genesis, A Young-Earth site purporting to demonstrate the theological flaws in old-earth creationism
New Creationism.org Old-Earth Creationism Site
Does God Exist?
Notable Christians Open to an Old Earth Interpretation
Genesis 2:5 and the Framework Hypothesis, by Michael Butler

References

Categories:

Misplaced Pages