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Good luck proving the fossils old via scripture too me,
Pardon me for jumping in, but I couldn't resist throwing in my two cents.
On the length of the creative days, The morning and evenings are beginning and endings, like the sun rising or setting on an empire or an age. The Genesis creation account is a simplified poetic story told to man in a earlier age. The fact that each creative day is described as having a morning and an evening does not in itself require that they be literal days. Remember many things in the Bible are told in signs that have larger meanings like the parables Jesus told. Sometimes you have think a bit to discover the answer, this is part of how things in the Bible were hidden by God. On the length of the creative days, each one had a morning and an evening, all but the seventh day. Each of the earlier days we are told ended, but not the seventh, the Bible indicates that it is still on going. At Genesis 2:3 the seventh day starts and is on going, being referred to in Hebrew chapter 4 as still going on. In fact the seventh day is believed to last at least until the end of Christ millennium reign, which would give it a minimum length of over 7,000 years. This is the reason some use the figure of 7,000 years for the length of each creative day, but that is based on two assumptions, first that all the creative days were the same length, second that the seventh day ends at the end of the millennium. If we look to the physical evidence, we find that it overwhelmingly points towards very long periods of time. I am distrustful of scientific dogmatic statements, so I did some checking on some things that are hard to mess up. One of those things is Dendrochronology, tree ring dating, which extends back over 10,000 years into the past. The thing to remember is that that is a unbroken record made up of a continuos line of over lapping trees, it doesn't include 'floating chronology' of fossil trees from earlier times that are not part of the continuos record. The fact that fossil tree rings do not match the pattern seen in the continuos record, shows that these trees record patches of earlier time. For example trees from the Jurassic reveal that there was time enough for great forests to grow, so the time of the dinosaurs was real, it was not some brief period before the flood. The same is true of other periods, fossil trees and plants are found showing the passage of time. You may want to look at my post 134 in the Solving the Mystery of the biblical flood thread part 2 in which I have some pictures of fossil forests and discuss the impact on YEC flood theories.
Use of the term day in regard to creation is also shown to refer to periods of time rather than actual literal days is shown by Genesis 2:4 where the six creative days are referred to as one day. In the Bible the word 'day' can refer to a literal day or a much long period of time, such as 'in our fore father's day' (2 Peter 3:4). Genesis 50:20 states that one day for God is as a 1,000 years and a 1,000 years as one day. Clearly God's days are not the same as our days. At John 8:56 Jesus referred to his time preaching on earth as a 'day'. At 2 Corinthians 6:1-2 Paul tells the Corinthians that they live in the day of salvation and not to miss it's purpose. At 2 Thessalonians 2:2 Paul warns the congregation not to be deceived that the 'day' of Jehovah or the last 'day' has not yet come. Frequently the Bible uses the word day to refer to a period of time much longer than a literal day.
Obviously with the seven day being at least seven thousand years long, and the six days also being referred to as one day, the creative days refer to periods of time or stages or steps in the creation. There is no scriptural basis for requiring the creative days to be literal days of 24 hours each. The terms evening and morning simply means a beginning and end of each time period. The terms can't be taken literally for the simple reason that the earth is a sphere, the 'correct' morning would have only occurred a long one line of longitude. Places east or west would have their morning and evening at a earlier or later time, and at the poles the days can be six months long. Since the creation was not limited to just one location on the earth's surface, there is no way the terms evening and morning can be literal, for how can the whole earth have a literal morning or evening at the same time? Obviously the terms are figurative for a beginning and a ending of each 'day' or time period.
A Second line of evidence I looked at was the pattern seen in fossil distribution around the world and the connection with rates of continental drift. What I found was that the patterns matched the movements of the continents, thus it was possible to use the rates of movement to estimate how long ago the animals had lived. Using the highest rates of movement seen today and even allowing for faster movement in the past, it is very apparent great lengths of time were involved in the creation of life on earth. While I am still doubtful about some of the accuracy of the exact timing of these pass events, it is apparent that they occurred and that they occurred very long ago.
To sum up and keep this from getting too long, I looked at many lines of evidence and found undeniable proof of the passage of great lengths of time. Which resulted in my having two lines of complementary evidence, scriptural and physical, and they both indicated that the length of the creative days was far longer than 24 hours.
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please use the Authorized King James Version, all the other versions have been compromised,
The KJV was a wonderful achievement for its day, but Bible translators and archaeologists have hardly been twiddling their thumbs for last few hundred years. Many more ancient Bible manuscripts have come to light and translators have greatly increased their understanding of ancient Hebrew and greek. Just think of the Dead Sea scrolls, translators today have tremendous advantages over the translators of KJV. As a result, many of today's translations are far superior to the KJV. As a matter of a fact, if you check this link on the ranking of NT using 64 scriptures that Colwell used to determine accuracy in a New Testament, the KJV ranked dead last in accuracy out of the Bibles on this list of common translations. While I will agree there are many modern Bible translations that I would question, I wouldn't use the KJV by choice considering the many errors and poor renderings it has been shown to have.
hector3000.future.easyspace.com is no longer available
As for your "Submarine Ark theory", the Ark's draft is indicated by (Genesis 7:20) "Up to fifteen cubits the waters overwhelmed them and the mountains became covered." obviously Noah would not known that there was 15 cubits of water over the highest mountain unless God told him so, what is much more likely being stated here is that Noah saw no land and the ark was flooding freely above the land, so he knew the highest elevations where he was were submerged by at least the draft of the Ark, 15 cubits. So the Ark had a draft of fifteen cubits (22.5 ft) out of height of 30 cubits (45 ft) so with half of the vessel being above the water line, regular submersion by wave action is not a major concern. Since the earth is old, there is no need for YEC flood currents ripping up the whole surface of the earth so there did not have to be monstrous wave action, and since only a small cross section of animals was actually on the Ark, there is no need to rapidly pump air in and out of a ridiculously over crowded Ark. Once we throw the YEC flood theory requirements over the side, the now lightened Ark as described biblically, is plausible.
The recurring pattern is YECs take a believable scriptural account, and turn it into a totally impossible fantasy. Now who on earth, or busy going to and fro in the earth, could possibly want to do that?
Wm Scott Anderson
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