Whether you're a bigbangist, a oldearthevolly, or a youngearthcreashist, you have that nagging question/problem of "What before." So for both ideologies, this,imo, is the only compatible answer to your dilema.
For the bigbangist, your only solution to the problem of the first existence of something is that there has always been something.
For the creationist of either the young earth or the old earth persuasion, the problem becomes more complex:
1. If you have no universe before Genesis 1, you have no Biblical eternal God Jehovah, who scripture says is "the same yesterday, today, and forever," for if there was ever a beginning of the universe (everything existing) then you have a strange god floating out there in empty space with nothing around him and nothing to do for all eternity previous to "creation." Not even a throne to sit on. Certainly this doesn't cut it with being "the same yesterday, today and forever," as the text states.
2. Imo, God has been creating and destroying things in his eternal universe forever to suit his good pleasure and plan.
3. Genesis one, one states that God created the heavens and the earth. That, imo is a prefacing statement for what follows. What it is saying is this: "Whenever heaven and earth began it was God who made it." Period. That's all this opening statement is saying.
Then in the verses of Genesis chapter one and two to follow, God explains what he did with/to the earth which he had at some time, unknown to man, created.
4. The sun and the moon were, according to the text, created subsequent to day 3 and before day four ended.
5. Since the earth was alread present in day one, the earth preceeded the sun, moon and stars. This brings up the question, "Which stars?"
The heaven and earth of Genesis one, imo has to be refering to the heavens pertaining to the earth. That is logically our Milky Way Galexy.
6. The text says the sun and moon originated the measurement of days, years and seasons. So we MUST, imo, assume from this that the length of days, years, and seasons before day 5 is UNKNOWN TO MAN, since (a)nobody knows how long day four was before the work of day four was finished. and (b) Days one, two and three have no specified length either of the "evenings and mornings" of these days.
The text, imo, gives the exact length of days 5 and 6 in which the animals, birds, and mankind was created. Those days and all the days subsequent to that were measured by the sun, i.e. 24 hours, consisting each, first of an "evening" of relatively darkness and secondly, "morning," of relatively daylight.
There's a starter. What do you think?
[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 03-15-2003]