I am not a theologian or religious reader. I attained my religious faith through reasoning and I am not going to give reason away. There are things in religion that you can reason with but few are not because it is not given to us or it does not matter much to reason with. Example of the first one is where is the throne of God. Examples for the second one are the prayers in Islam 5 times a day and fasting one month a year. One can say it is a reasonable average for prayers and more than one month a year fasting will be a burden in human. Whenever possible one has to reason religion. That is why I did not believe in the Gods of ancient Egyptians despite being an Egyptian. The 6 days of creation are used by atheists to reject the Bible and Quran. We have to reason with them this puzzle. I will lay down here the Christian prospective as I summarized from John Phillips (exploring Genesis) www.apocalypsesoon.org /xfiles.html - 11k - . I apologize for not asking permission from authors for quoting them in my blog since I feel cut off from the outside world. Most news media do not respond to my correspondences. I feel like I am living in an Island.
The author writes: Genesis 1 does not argue with the claim that the earth is very old. It simply states that God created it "in the beginning."
Attempts have been made to reconcile Genesis with geology. One theory is the day-age theory. The "days" of Genesis 1 are viewed, not as literal days of twenty-four hours, but as epochs, or ages, or vast periods of time. Elaborate charts have been drawn up to thus reconcile Genesis with geology. Certainly there is a remarkable similarity between the two.
Another theory is the gap theory. Genesis 1:1 records the account of the original creation. Between the first and second verses of Genesis, theorists postulate a gap of countless ages. In that gap they insert all the ages demanded by geologists, ending with the Glacial age said to be described in Genesis 1:2. The remainder of the chapter is the not an account of the original creation, but of the rehabilitation of the earth as an abode for man.
Another theory is that the days of Genesis 1 are not days of creation but days of revelation: the revelation theory. The days of Genesis 1 are literal days of twenty-four hours, but they are days in the life of Moses. In six days God revealed to Moses the truths concerning creation, and on each of those days Moses recorder the revelation that was given to him. The revelation theory satisfies the Hebraist who says that the Hebrew of Genesis 1 demands literal twenty-four hour days, and it satisfies the scientist who demands long periods of time for the formation of the earth.
Certainly the first chapter of Genesis is remarkable as a statement of fact, no matter how it is viewed. Moses did not write Genesis 1 according to theories of creation current in the schools of his day, even though he was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:22). Egyptian myth postulated a primeval ocean upon which appeared an egg. From the egg was born the sun god, and the sun god has four children: Geb, Shu, Tefnut and Nut. From the rivalries of those god-born children of the sun the creation took place. What a blessing Genesis 1 does not begin like that!
Instead we have a narrative that rises like the Himalayan peaks, far above all human creation epics. The Babylonian epic is the story of plot and counterplot amongst the gods, the story of banquets and rivalry and war. The Greek pictured a mythical giant named Atlas standing at the borders of the earth upholding the wide heavens on tireless head and arms. The Hindus thought the world rested on the backs of three elephants, which in turn stood on the back of a giant tortoise, which swam around in a cosmic sea. Genesis 1 avoids all such gross ideas and gives such a remarkable statement of fact that it is the only document coming to us from antiquity that is seriously considered when the origin of the universe is discussed.
