The “six days” of creation.

Creationism is the belief God created the universe and life.

Creationism is an orthodox Christian belief: It’s found in the creeds. “I believe in one God… maker of heaven and earth, of all things, visible and invisible.” God initially created everything. He didn’t necessarily create everything since—fr’instance, he didn’t create evil. But he created their creators.

So yeah, technically all orthodox Christians are creationists. Problem is, the word “creationist” has been co-opted by the young-earth creationists (YEC for short), the folks who insist God created the universe only 6,000 years ago. Or if you wanna get specific, 6,021 years ago, in October. They’re the ones pushing the idea that if you’re a real Christian, if you’re truly orthodox, you gotta believe as they do.

A diorama from the Creation Museum of a primitive human and featherless dinosaurs. (Yeah, they’re a bit slow to keep up with the latest science. Be fair; so is Jurassic World.) Atlas Obscura

Of course young-earth creationism isn’t the only worldview Christians are allowed. I myself am an old-earth creationist (or OEC), who believes God created the universe 13 billion years ago, and the earth about 4 billion years ago. You know, like most scientists currently estimate. They tend to describe creation in terms of natural, physics-based processes, and they’re right to; that’s what science is supposed to do. Look at nature and make deductions based on the available evidence. Not, as the young-earth creationists do, start with a conclusion (“God made it in six literal days, precisely 4,000 years before Jesus was born!”) then bend what they observe in nature so it’ll fit the conclusion. That’s how you get superstition. Or, as some folks charitably call it, “junk science.”

I admit I’m biased in favor of my view, but lemme briefly list a few of the other views for your consideration.

• INTELLIGENT DESIGN. Creationism of any and every kind, but it downplays which specific creator, so as to be more palatable to those who object to religion.
• THEISTIC EVOLUTION. Much the same as regular evolution, but instead of being solely by natural selection, the Creator had a hand in it.
• DAY-AGE THEORY. A form of OEC, where the six days are described as six eras, thousands to billions of years long, during which God achieved what Genesis 1 describes for each day.
• GAP THEORY. Same as YEC believe, but instead of happening in six sequential days, gap theorists posit there are some billion-year gaps in the timeline.

Back during my Fundamentalist upbringing, when I was taught YEC was the only acceptable interpretation of the bible, I was also taught all these other views were forms of compromise: The only faithful interpretation of the bible was a literal one.

So why’m I in the OEC camp today? Because I read the bible without the YEC blinders on. Genesis 1 describes a physically impossible universe, inconsistent with the one nearly everybody recognizes to be true. Yes, nearly everybody. YEC followers included!

(Flat earthers are an obvious exception: They believe Earth is flat because they are striving to stay true to a literal spin on Genesis 1, despite being literally able to see Earth’s curve—and despite seeing Earth’s shadow during every lunar eclipse. Hey, if you’re gonna deny commonsense in favor of your interpretation of the scriptures, okay… but you’re doing it wrong. But enough about them.)

Okay. So how’m I reading Genesis 1 and coming to the conclusion it’s not meant to be literal? Glad you asked.

Shouldn’t we read it first?

Yes I did bother to read it in the original, then translate it. Here ya go.

Genesis 1.1-2.3 KWL

1 In the beginning, when God made the skies and land, 2 the land was unshaped and had nothing on it.

The ocean’s surface was dark. God’s Spirit hovered over the waters’ surface.

3 God said, “Be, light.” And light was. 4 God saw light, and how good it was.

God distinguished between light and dark: 5 God called the light day, and called the dark night.

It was dusk, then dawn: Day one.

 

6 God said, “Be, space in the middle of the waters. Be, distinction between waters and waters.”

7 God made space. He distinguished between waters which are under space,

and between the waters which are over space.

It was so. 8 God called the space skies.

It was dusk, then dawn: Day two.

 

9 God said, “Gather, waters from under the skies, to one place. Be seen, dry ground.”

It was so. 10 God called dry ground land. The gathered water he called seas. God saw how good it was.

11 God said, “Sprout sprouts, earth. Sow seeds, grass.

Fruit trees, make fruit which has seed in it, by species, on the land.”

It was so. 12 The earth produced sprouts, grass sowed seeds by species,

trees produced fruit which had seed in it, by its species. God saw how good it was.

13 It was dusk, then dawn: Day three.

 

14 God said, “Be, lights in the space of the skies, to distinguish between the day and night;

to be signs, seasons, days, and years; 15 to be lights in the space of the skies; to light the land.”

It was so. 16 God made two great lights:

The great light for ruling the day, and the small light for ruling the night. And the stars.

17 God put them in the space in the skies to light the land,

18 and to rule the day and night, and to distinguish between light and dark. God saw how good it was.

19 It was dusk, then dawn: Day four.

 

20 God said, “Swarm the waters, you swarming, living soul.

Fly, bird, over the land, over the face of the space in the skies.”

21 God created the great serpents and every living, crawling soul which swarms the waters, by species;

and every winged bird, by species. God saw how good it was.

22 God blessed them, saying, “Bear fruit. Be many. Fill the waters of the seas.

And bird, be many on the land.”

23 It was dusk, then dawn: Day five.

 

24 God said, “Bring out, land, living souls: Species of livestock, animal, and vermin, by species.”

It was so. 25 God made life on the land, by species:

the livestock by species, every dirt-burrowing animal by species. God saw how good it was.

26 God said, “We’re making humanity in our shape, like we’re like,

to rule the sea’s fish, the skies’ birds, all the land’s livestock, and every land animal.”

27 God created humanity in his shape; in God’s shape he created it: He created male and female.

28 God blessed them and told them, “Bear fruit. Be many. Fill the land and take it over.

Rule the sea’s fish, the skies’ birds, and all life—everything crawling on the land.

29 Look, I give you every single seeding plant on the face of the earth,

and every tree, and every seeding fruit in it. It’s for food.

And to every life on earth, to all the skies’ birds,

and everything crawling on the land with a living soul in it, every green plant is food.”

It was so. 31 God saw everything he did, and look, it was very good.

It was dusk, then dawn: Day six.

 

2.1 The skies, the land, and all the creatures were finished.

2 God finished the work which he did on day seven,

and stopped all the work which he did on day seven.

3 God blessed day seven and made it sacred,

because on it God stopped working on his creation.

Got all that?

The primary reason the author of Genesis wrote this creation story, was to correct the other creation stories of the ancient middle east. The pagan stories always began with a pre-existing universe. Not one their highest god, father god, or head god created: It was already there, and their gods spontaneously sprang from it. To their minds, God didn’t create the universe: The universe created God. So verse 1 totally turns that idea on its head.

God created day and night. God created the שָּׁמַ֖יִם/šamáyim, the “skies, heavens;” it’s not the other way round. God created the seas and the sea creatures, whereas middle eastern myths usually had him battling some great sea serpent for supremacy. God created the sun and moon, whereas Genesis’s author doesn’t even use the words for “sun” and “moon,” since middle easterners thought of שֶׁמֶשׁ/šeméš and יָרֵחַ/yaréhakh, “sun” and “moon,” as Šeméš and Yaréhakh, the sun-god and moon-god. God created humans to supervise Earth, rather than as an afterthought—“Oh, I need worshipers”—or as slaves, to feed him with our sacrifices.

The seven-day structure was to explain the Hebrew week, to focus the readers’ attention on God’s intentional acts of creation, and present the origin of the Hebrew Sabbath:

Exodus 20.11 KWL

“For six days, I the LORD made the skies and the land, and everything in it.

Day seven, I stopped, so I the LORD blessed a day of Sabbath. I made it holy.”

We stop work because he stopped work.

Genesis 1 was written to counter false religious beliefs. Not to create a structure for bad science. But in the hands of young-earth creationists, that’s precisely what many Christians are doing.

So let’s do what the YEC adherents claim they’re doing… and take it literally. Let’s see how well it holds up.

The ancient middle eastern cosmos.

First of all, the idea God made the universe 6 millennia ago, on day one. Yeah, the first verses can imply God created the universe on day one. But it doesn’t have to.

Genesis 1.1-5 KWL

1 In the beginning, when God made the skies and land, 2 the land was unshaped and had nothing on it.

The ocean’s surface was dark. God’s Spirit hovered over the waters’ surface.

3 God said, “Be, light.” And light was. 4 God saw light, and how good it was.

God distinguished between light and dark: 5 God called the light day, and called the dark night.

It was dusk, then dawn: Day one.

When does day one begin? When God turned on the lights. When’d God turn on the lights? After he created the unshaped, dark land which had nothing on it. How much time took place between the beginning and day one? We don’t know.

Notice God created light, and day and night, before creating the sun on day four. Since we recognize days depend on sunlight, exactly how does that work? God was hanging some specially-created shoplights before he started construction? God needs light to see by? You do realize as a spirit, Jn 4.24 he doesn’t have physical eyes, right? He doesn’t see because photons hit his optic nerves; he didn’t have optic nerves before he became human. How do you have light without the sun?

Well, to the ancient middle easterner, the sun didn’t actually light up the sky. The sun just happened to hang in the bright sky—but the sky itself was lit. Well, half of it anyway: The sky rotated around the earth—’cause you could see the stars moving, but you weren’t moving, as far as you could tell. For half the day the sky was bright, and for the other half the sky was black.

After all, the sky was light on cloudy days when the sun wasn’t around… so it appeared to middle easterners that the sun was optional. Light didn’t require sun.

If all this sounds completely wrong to you, it’s because you grew up with a view of the universe based on western astronomical science. Ancient middle easterners didn’t. Theirs was pre-scientific, based on observation and guesswork. And Genesis was written to them. Not us. It was written to conform to their beliefs. Not to endorse them, of course; the flat-earthers are still wrong. But Genesis’s author didn’t see any cosmological problems with what he was writing: He didn’t know astronomy. Neither did his readers. He only cared about theology: The bright sky? God created that. The sun? God created that too.

This is why we read, on day two, about God creating a giant air pocket in the waters which made up Earth, and calling it “space”—

Genesis 1.6-7 KWL

6 God said, “Be, space in the middle of the waters. Be, distinction between waters and waters.”

7 God made space. He distinguished between waters which are under space,

and between the waters which are over space.

It was so.

—then putting sun, moon, and stars into that air pocket on day four.

Genesis 1.16-18 KWL

16 God made two great lights:

The great light for ruling the day, and the small light for ruling the night. And the stars.

17 God put them in the space in the skies to light the land,

18 and to rule the day and night, and to distinguish between light and dark. God saw how good it was.

Wait, what?

Yep. Again, ancient middle eastern cosmology: The back end of space, which all the stars are fixed to, is a firmament (which is how the KJV translates רָקִיעַ/raqíya, “space”), a massive wall which holds back all the water that used to cover the dry ground. The sun, moon, and clouds hover in the space between the waters above and the waters below.

Now. Whenever YEC adherents talk about the firmament, they never describe it on the far side of the stars. Even though the bible does. They always describe it on the far side of the clouds, holding back rain. That is, till the “windows of the heavens” dumped it back onto Earth for Noah’s flood. Ge 7.11

See, that’s the problem: Genesis doesn’t describe a universe any larger than a few miles up.

When Genesis was written in the 1400s BC, the ancients really had no idea how big their universe was. Eventually the Greeks got a better idea: Around 240BC, Eratosthenes of Cyrene accurately calculated out how big the earth is. Around 140BC, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria inaccurately speculated the stars (which he assumed were attached to the firmament, and all equidistant from Earth) were about 3 trillion kilometers away. True, that’s only a third of a light year, but it’s a way better guess than only a few miles up.

Still, say the firmament is 3 trillion kilometers away—and only holding back a millimeter of water. That equates to about 113 sextillion liters of water. Earth only has about 1.26 quintillion liters on it. So there’s 90 million times as much water above as below? Well, that’d definitely flood Earth….

Oh, and let’s not forget God put plants on the earth a day before he put the sun in the sky. Ge 1.11-13 But I won’t get into that.

The universe… when we take Genesis literally. NIV Faithlife Study Bible

Nobody’s a literalist.

You see the diagram above of the ancient middle eastern cosmos. I’ve shown it, and similar diagrams, to young-earth creationists. Every one of them balks at it: They don’t believe the universe looks like that at all.

Nor should they! But that’s the universe as ancient middle easterners imagined it. The universe Genesis 1 affirms. As for the stuff beneath the earth—the foundations, the great deep, sheol—that’s confirmed by the rest of the Old Testament.

Nope, the diagram doesn’t look at all like the hourly photos which come back from our weather satellites, nor the views from the International Space Station.

My point is: Unless we’re willing to deny the work of every astronomer since Nikolaus Copernicus, deny the images from our satellites which provide our weather forecasts, deny the experiences of every astronaut and cosmonaut, deny the existence of the Global Positioning Satellite networks which make our electronic maps work… not one of us can describe ourselves as a biblical literalist. Our daily lives deny a literalistic interpretation of Genesis 1.

And as I’ve demonstrated, young-earth creationists, for all their zeal, aren’t hewing to it all that closely either. They’re only picking and choosing the interpretations they like… ones which provide them a fun idea of cavemen and dinosaurs frolicking together. Which ain’t bible; it’s The Flintstones.

So what are we to do? Make the flat-earther mistake and deny reality in favor of a literalistic interpretation? Of course not. We simply recognize a literalistic interpretation is incorrect. It’s not the reason Genesis 1 was written. It’s not the reason a lot of bible was written; don’t get me started on the “prophecy scholars” and how they mangle God’s apocalypses.

The proper interpretation of the scriptures requires us to look at the motives of the authors, and recognize what they were trying to say… and not trying to say. Genesis’s author wasn’t trying to teach science. He was trying to teach theology. Treat Genesis 1 as a scientific text, and you wind up with bad theology: One which claims God made a universe which deceptively looks older than it really is, and implies God himself is deceptive.

Leading people to suspect God is a liar: That’s as bad as bad theology gets.

Connect-the-dots interpretation: Stop that.

Just because your brain sees a connection, doesn’t mean it’s real.

Your brain is designed to recognize patterns.

It’s how the brain stores data. It takes a memory, breaks it down into “what I know already” and “what’s new,” stores what’s new, and stores links to the memories we know already. And they don’t have to precisely be memories we know already; just stuff that’s close enough. If it sees a similarity, or pattern, in what we experience, that’s close enough.

That’s how we pack 50-plus years of experiences into a 100-terabyte brain. And explains why some of our memories are kinda sloppy: Our brains were pattern-matching things which weren’t accurate matches.

Our brains pattern-match inaccurate things all the time. Sometimes for fun: Ever played the game of “What does that cloud look like?” Or had to put up with your mom insisting that so-and-so looks like some celebrity, but you can’t see it at all? Or been startled by a shadow which kinda looked like a stranger was in your house, but turns out it wasn’t?

Psychologists call this tendency apophenia: Your brain’s making a connection which isn’t really there. Happens all the time, and a lot of the time we realize this and are amused by it.

This person is pretty sure the word “love” is written in his cat’s fur. I see more of an “HXICVW,” but you know how people tend to see what they wanna see. Reddit

But other times we’re deliberately looking for connections. Like detectives trying to solve a case, like mathematicians looking for a statistical trend, like gamblers looking for a lucky streak, like conspiracy theorists searching for a cover-up. They wanna find a connection so bad, they’ll jump right on top of anything. Including all the bad matches our brain makes.

Yep, we Christians do it too. When we want a sign from God badly enough, we’ll settle for anything; we won’t even bother to confirm it. Or when we’re scouring the bible for truths and revelations, and find coincidences… and if we wrongly believe nothing is meaningless, we’ll insist these can’t be coincidences; they’re revelations!

Happens all the time. Generates a whole lot of really bad bible interpretations. So it’s something I gotta warn you about, lest you stumble into this trap yourself. Or be led into it by an overzealous preacher.

End Times preachers in particular; many of ’em are just the right combination of conspiracy theorist and connect-the-dots misinterpreter.

Evangelicals, climate change, and creation care.

Gotta admit: For the longest time I was skeptical about climate change.

Back then it was called “global warming”—the idea of pollution changing our planet’s atmosphere, creating a “greenhouse effect” which trapped heat and gradually upped the world’s average temperature. And even if it did exist, big deal. So the world’s temperature went up a degree or two. What kind of impact would that make? Hardly any, I expected.

’Cause naïvely I’d imagined “average temperature” meant everywhere only got warmer by a degree. The north and south poles, however, got warmer by more than that. Warm enough for a lot of ice to melt.

Between 1980 and 2003, the north polar ice cover shrunk 1.6 million square kilometers. It’s getting so ships can now travel the Arctic Ocean. NASA

The reason I hadn’t believed in climate change was because, at the time, it was speculation. Based on evidence, but still speculation. I’m old enough to remember when scientists were predicting global cooling: Back in the 1970s, some scientists claimed another ice age was on the way, and the United States would be covered in snow like that lousy 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow. Global cooling, global warming; make up your mind, science guys.

But between the shrunken ice caps and sinking islands, I grew convinced. Obviously the poles are getting warmer; ergo the earth is getting warmer.

The “price of industrialization”—well, when Beijing can’t be bothered to filter their smokestacks. CNN

All right, if pollution is the problem, can we solve it? Of course we can. Some of you older folks remember when London, New York, and Los Angeles were covered in smog to the level Beijing currently is. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s, and despite the nearby ocean making it legitimately overcast in the mornings, it used to remain “overcast,” in the wrong shade of gray, most days. It’s not anymore. California passed laws capping emissions. There was some uproar at the time, ’cause adjustment costs money, and those who have to spend the most on it really don’t wanna. But now we can breathe our own air… something China’s bigger cities can’t yet do.

So can we fight pollution and win? Of course; we’ve done it before. Humans, as the LORD once pointed out, can do whatever we set our minds to. Ge 11.6 At the time it wasn’t a compliment; we were up to no good. But we can do good. Not always for righteous reasons, but still.

Problem is, a significant number of politically conservative Evangelical Christians in the United States don’t believe in climate change. Even after they’re presented the very same evidence I was.

The God who stays the course.

James 1.16-18.

In verse 15, James used a pregnancy metaphor to describe how one’s own desires conceives and gives birth to sin. In these verses, he kept up the metaphors. God’s like the planets and moon, only unlike them, he doesn’t go through phases and retrogrades. And we’re like the firstfruits, the crops the Hebrews took their tithes from.

James 1.16-18 KWL

16 Don’t be led astray, my beloved fellow Christians: 17 Every good gift,

every perfect present from above, came down from the Father of heavenly lights.

There’s no phase, no seasonal shadows, with him.

18 His will birthed us by his truthful word, for us to be one of the firstfruits of his creation.

“Don’t be led astray” connects with the previous idea: God isn’t the source of temptation and sin. We are. Determinists regularly make that mistake, figuring if they were almighty like God, they’d let nothing out of their control, and project that view upon God. Even though God clearly, regularly objects to sin throughout the bible, and states he had nothing to do with it. Jr 7.31, 19.5, 32.35 But determinists insist he does so have something to do with it, for not even birds fall out of trees without God’s knowledge. Mt 10.29

Since a lot of determinists profess they’re only following John Calvin’s lead, just for fun let’s have Calvin correct ’em.

Do not err. This is an argument from what is opposite; for as God is the author of all good, it is absurd to suppose him to be the author of evil. To do good is what properly belongs to him, and according to his nature; and from him all good things come to us. Then, whatever evil he does, is not agreeable to his nature. But as it sometimes happens, that he who quits himself well through life, yet in some things fails, he meets this doubt by denying that God is mutable like men. But if God is in all things and always like himself, it hence follows that well-doing is his perpetual work. Calvin at James 1.16-18 

By “whatever evil he does,” Calvin explained in his next paragraph: Sometimes God’s gotta punish sinners with acts we might prima facie call “evil,” but aren’t really. It’s not at all in God’s nature to do evil. Not accidentally, not passively, not intentionally, not ever. There’s no dark side to him. 1Jn 1.5 No secret evil plan. What he revealed of himself to us, is who he legitimately is.

And if we wanna compare God with the heavenly lights he created… well, for this interpretation we need to learn a little ancient astronomy.

Creationism. (Don’t let it distract you!)

When American Christians use the word “creationist,” they’re often thinking of the folks who believe in young-earth creationism (YEC for short). These people seriously believe God created the universe about 6,000 years ago.

This date isn’t deduced by observing the universe around them. If we did that, we’d notice we can see stars in the night sky which are billions of light-years away. We’d come to the natural conclusion our universe must be old enough for the light from these distant stars to make it to Earth. In other words, creation took place billions of years ago.

Why do YEC adherents insist the history of the cosmos is less than a millionth of that? Well, they claim, they’re literalists. When they read the bible, they don’t believe Genesis 1 is using metaphor, nor trying to describe creation using the view of the universe familiar to ancient middle easterners. Every day of creation is a literal 24-hour period. Every genealogical chart elsewhere in the book represents literal years; nobody skips generations like Matthew did, and none of the numbers are metaphors (i.e. “40 years” representing a generation).

So when we start from the dates we know for certain, like when the Babylonians captured Jerusalem (16 March 597BC), then work our way back to dates we sorta know (like the year of the Exodus, estimated to be around 1446BC), then add up all the ages in Genesis’s genealogies, we can roughly pin down creation at the fifth millennium before Christ. As Irish archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656) did in his 1650 book Annales veteris testamenti/“Years of the Testament,” when he concluded God said “Let there be light” Ge 1.3 around 6 p.m. on 22 October 4004BC.

Seriously, dude pinned down the hour. He believed the years properly begin at the autumnal equinox, and in order for it to be evening then morning, Ge 1.5 evening’s around 6, right? I would presume he meant 6 Arabia Standard Time, not Greenwich Mean Time, which’d be more like 3. Still, it makes sense. Kinda.

Since YEC arithmetic regularly comes close to the good archbishop’s date, lots of ’em figure why reinvent the wheel? They use Ussher’s numbers—which makes the cosmos only 6,019 years old as of 2016. Bible says so.

And, insist young-earthers, if you don’t believe the cosmos is only 6 millennia old, you don’t really believe the bible. You believe scientists who tell you the universe is older, or your eyes, which show you billion-year-old galaxies through the telescope. But you’re not supposed to believe your eyes, nor any of those godless scientists: You’re supposed to only believe the scriptures. Placing anything above the bible means you’ve foolishly undermined your faith, and real Christians believe the bible first and foremost. Heretics believe in the sciences.

So this is why a lot of Christians don’t believe in science: They’ve been convinced science contradicts the bible, and they really don’t wanna go to hell for believing in science.

And this is why there’s a whole branch of Christian apologetics which fights specifically on behalf of YEC theories. Entire organizations, like Answers in Genesis and the Creation Research Institute, exist to provide Christians with solid reasons to embrace YEC beliefs… which they equate with believing in God and the scriptures.

So if you’re an old-earth creationist like me, you’re heretic. Even though most Christians fall straight into the old-earth creationist camp. And have no problem with science.