Obviously the world wasn’t created in 6 days. Proof of that has been surfaced for quite some time. However, religious fundamentalists seemed to have this idea that “Oh, well. Now one knows how long a “day” was. God didn’t have a sense of time.”
Obviously this argument is preposterous. How would you go about explaining this logical fallacy to a religious fanatic.
Thanks!
Posted: October 16th 2009
Eric_PK
It’s often been said that you can’t use logic to argue somebody out of a position that they didn’t use logic to get into.
There are religious people out there that you can have a logical discussion out there, but the ones who believe on faith are not among them.
So, I don’t think you can discuss plausibility with them.
I do think you can ask them interesting questions, such as who created god.
Posted: October 22nd 2009
SmartLX www
You’re describing a relatively moderate position known as “day-age creationism”. On the surface it allows Genesis to be correct while taking into account the overwhelming evidence that the world is billions of years old in modern terms.
While it solves the broad problem of timing, there are plenty of other issues, for example the idea that all the plants were finished by the time God started on the animals, and (in one of the two Biblical chronologies) the plants lived before the Sun. It’s just that you have to think a tiny bit harder to find the problems.
I say it’s a relatively moderate position because it’s flatly rejected by full-blown young-earth creationists. Some people insist that “day” means a literal 24-hour day, and that’s that.
I prefer the hard-line interpretation, in a way: the author of Genesis probably did mean an actual day, and was simply wrong.
Posted: October 22nd 2009