My first interviewee was my cousin. He believes that the days in Genesis were literal 24-hour days. He supported this belief by citing other instances of the word “Yom” meaning literal 24-hour periods. Going along with a literal interpretation of the Bible, he believes that when you add the 2,000 years between Adam and Abraham to the 4,000 years since Abraham, you come to a total of 6,000 years old. My cousin does not believe that humans and apes share a common ancestor. His explanation is that although God created them on the same day, He created them separately.
My cousin also believes that the account of Adam and Eve is true and supported by multiple people in the Bible, even Jesus himself, treating him as a historical figure. My second interviewee was a family friend. He believes that Genesis is a literary story, and the “days” in Genesis are neither 24-hour periods nor long periods of time. According to him, the earth is 4. 5 billion years old because that is what science and physics prove. He also believes that humans and apes share an ancestor and that Lucy is the perfect example.
He went on to say that looking at humans and apes show their similarities. He supported this idea by the studies of DNA that prove there is a common ancestor. The idea that Adam and Eve were real people seemed preposterous to him. He went on further to say that he believes nothing in the Bible is true, but that it was edited for our reading. My third interviewee was my mom. Her view of the days in Genesis is very similar to my cousin’s, but she added that if they were not literal days God would have said otherwise.
My mom believes that the earth is less than 8,000 years old because that is what science along with the Bible proves. She also believes that apes and humans do not share a common ancestor because God created them separately, giving man dominion over everything. When asked whether Adam and Eve were real people, my mom answered yes, giving the explanation that the Bible does not tell fictitious stories, only records history. The creation week mentioned in Genesis is given on a day to day basis. Many theories have been proposed about what the word “day” means.
While the creationist would say it represents a 24-hour period, the evolutionist would say it was a long period of time, such as millions of years Another view, the one that was taken by my distant cousin, is that “day” was neither a 24-hour period nor a long period of time, but that was used as a literary device. These theories do not make sense and exemplify the evolutionary ignorance to anything coming from the Bible. B. C. Hodge mentions in his book, “Revisiting the Days of Genesis”, that those who held the literary device view saw the purpose of the Bible as “only theology, not history. It is my belief that the “days” in Genesis represent normal 24-hour periods.
In Genesis, it says, “there was evening and there was morning on the ___ day. ” This cycle of light and darkness implies one normal day, not periods of time. When discussing the word “day” it is important to take into account the Hebrew word “Yom”, interpreted as “day. ” The word “Yom” is used multiple times in the Bible and has different meanings depending on the words around it. In Genesis, the word “Yom” is found in singular form followed by a number, which based on a grammatical analysis done by Steven Boyd, is determined to mean a literal 24-hour period.
To be considered more than a day it would have had to been found plural and surrounded by prepositional phrases, which is was not. When God created the earth, He created it with an “appearance of age. ” Although we do not know His exact purpose for this, it was necessary for life that things be created fully formed. A direct reading of the Bible implies a youth earth, roughly 6,000 years old. This number can be obtained by tracing the genealogies from various scripture passages. Abraham is believed to have lived 2,000 years after Adam and about 4,000 years prior to the present.
Adding these two time periods offers 6,000 years as the total age of the earth. According to my cousin, there is strong evidence for an old earth because “it is what science and physics prove. ” Scientific data are largely based on interpretation, which is completely dependent on one’s worldview. One scientist can observe a fossil and estimate an age, while another scientist can observe the same fossil and come up with a drastically different age. Radiometric dating is the most common evidence evolutionists use to support an old earth. More recently, scientists have begun to find discrepancies in the dating process.
For example, Carbon-14 was found in 300 million-year-old coal, with a half-life of 5,700 years. If the earth is really millions of years old there should be no Carbon-14 left, yet there is. Another example is the helium production from the decay of uranium into lead While radioactive decay proved the process to be 1. 5 billion, RATE scientists used the helium diffusion method and found the helium to only be 6,000 years old, creating another flaw in the evolutionists dating process. These discrepancies only point further to the young earth consistent with the Bible.
Many scientists believe that humans and apes share a common ancestor. They assume that all life came from one thing and therefore every organism has a common ancestor somewhere along the line, which can be seen in the Evolutionary Tree diagram. Many evolutionists cite the fossil record as evidence showing the common ancestry between apes and humans. The problem with this is the lack of fossils they have found that the common ancestor. Their theory is solely based on the intermediates that should be there, and not on the fossils that are actually found.
In making humans and apes ancestors, evolutionists are upgrading apes and downgrading humans drastically. They ignore the key differences and only focus on the similarities. As the book states, “if you are looking for differences you will find them, and if you are looking for similarities you will find them. ” It is my belief that humans and apes are not ancestors, but were both created by an almighty God. There is a wide variety of evidence against supporting my belief. One set of evidence is the key skeletal differences between the two organisms.
Major skeletal differences would include the thigh bone angle, skull and jaw sizes, and the location of the foramen magnum. Another major evidence disproving the common ancestry is the genetic make-up of the apes (chimps) and humans. One evidence of this is that humans only have 23 pairs of chromosomes while chimps have 2 Scientists have tried to prove the fusion of two chromosomes in the humans, but lack a mechanism for the universality of this abnormality. Another genetic difference is that humans possess 689 genes that chimps lack and chimps possess 86 genes that humans lack.
The examples above further exemplify that humans and apes do not share a common ancestor. God created both humans and apes, but He created them to be different. A common view taken by evolutionists is that Adam and Eve were not real people. They also believe that they had no historical correlation, but only existed for our enjoyment as readers. As a Christian, I believe that Adam and Eve were real people that walked the earth. I also believe that God placed Adam as an authority figure over the earth.
For me, the most substantial evidence is the fact that Jesus mentions Adam and Eve as historical figures. In both Mark 10:6 and Matthew 19:4, Jesus says, “and He created them male and female. ” Another reason for the existence of Adam and Eve is that multiple other people in the Bible mention the historical account of Adam. Luke the physician speaks of Adam as a historical figure in the genealogy account mentioned in Luke 3. The Apostle Paul also treats Adam as a historical figure in 1 Corinthians 15:22 by saying, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ, all will be made alive.
There are many different views when it comes to the topics of the days in Genesis, the age of the earth, common ancestry, and the reality of Adam and Eve. Everyone has their own opinion and it is ultimately derived from their personal worldview. As a Christian, it is important to share the love of Christ with everyone we come in contact with, no matter what their views. It is also vital to not just share the love of Christ, but to exemplify it in our everyday life. We must be able to defend our faith using good reason along with the Word of God.
