(October 31, 2008 at 5:10 pm)leo-rcc Wrote: Religulous is not out yet in the Netherlands, and won't be for a while either.
One question does pop to mind. Are you a creationist in the "The earth is 6000 years old and everything was built in 6 days" sense, or do you think the creator was a instigator of the universe and life and let evolution do the diversity thing in the billions of years timeframe? If neither I be interested in that as well.
The 6 days are not literal 6 24 hour periods. The word 'day' is translated from the Hebrew word yohm which actually means any period of time given in the telling of an event. This is no different from modern day terminology. If you read the brief account of creation you will notice that the term day is used in three different ways. 1.) as the daylight hours, the same as we use it. 2.) as the day and night hours the same as we use it, and 3.) as the total 6 'days' or periods of time being one day or period of time.
Notice the seventh day, the day of rest, though. It lasted thousands of years. David and much later Paul mentioned it as still going on in their day thousands of years after it began. Psalm 95:8-11 / Hebrews 4:9-11
Not to mention the Bible doesn't state what period of time elapsed between the period of time before the first 'day' began. It starts out saying that the Earth was waste - as well as how much time elapsed between that first day and the sixth.
Bottom line - from the perspective of the Bible student there is no reason to disagree with science on the speculated age of the universe including planet Earth.
A Religious Encyclopædia by Schaff says: "The days of creation were creative days, stages in the process, but not days of twenty-four hours."
Delitzsch in his New Commentary on Genesis says: "Days of God are intended, with Him a thousand years are but as a day when that is past, Ps. 90:4 . . . The days of creation are, according to the meaning of Holy Scripture itself, not days of four and twenty hours, but aeons . . . For this earthly and human measurement of time cannot apply to the first three days."
