a thought experiment for creationists

[conleymon]

Let's say God contacted you in a dream, and said, "thou above all, my child, hast proven thyself worthy of me. I shall take thee back to witness the beginning of things". Then lets say God transported you back in time to the third creative day, to have a seat on the earth and watch him finish his creation.
What would it look like? what would it sound like? Anyone? Well let's go to the bible.

First of all. I think that few creationists have ever really sat down and thought about the time scale of creation, as described in the bible. God said that Adam would die in the day he ate from the fruit. He lived 900 some years. The creational days could have been a thousand, million, or a billion years or more in length. But certainly not 24 hours, or god is a liar. But Let's assume that the days were as short as the bible allows-1000 some years. what would it look like? would chunks of dust and rocks spiral into the earth so that it was created in full before your very eyes? Would you see God planting all the trees and flowers in rapid fashion so that within minutes, a barren desert was now a fruited plain? No. In truth, all you would see is what you see today. Not much going on. You could sit every day and watch creation and get very very bored. If you were put on the earth during creation on the beginning of the third creative day, you could live 99 years, and you MIGHT see some algae, or something.

Secondly, I cannot accept that god is a physically visible thing, and the bible confirms this, that no man may see god and yet live. So in creation, we would not see God's hands at work. We would not see some apparition, or hear some booming voice saying "Let There Be..." (in English of course) whipping about dust and space and light to form the earth and everything on it. These things would seemingly form un-aided over millenia.

Isn't it interesting then that evolutionism and the bible paint a very similar picture of creation? the earth and the heavens appearing over long periods of time, seemingly by themselves? foliage and wild beast growing and forming over perhaps millions of years, on their own?

[Undertow]

Genesis itself alludes to a naturalistsic process of creation, not simply a 'god just went zap' one. Genesis 11 and 24 are the two verses of interest, from memory.

Something along the lines of "And god said let the earth bring forth plants/animals"

Edit:

11)And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

24)And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

[McCulloch]

First of all. I think that few creationists have ever really sat down and thought about the time scale of creation, as described in the bible.

While I disagree with them, I really do not see any evidence that creationists ignore the time scale of creation. In fact, many of them spend a fair bit of attention to the time scale of creation.

God said that Adam would die in the day he ate from the fruit. He lived 900 some years.

With various explanations from spiritual death, to "from that day forward he was destined to die" to day being metaphorical. You really should do your homework.

The creational days could have been a thousand, million, or a billion years or more in length. But certainly not 24 hours, or god is a liar.

Unlike the day Adam ate from the fruit, the creational days had the formula, "there was evening and there was morning, one day". This, to me, is a clear marker that the author was not talking about anything other than regular days. If you believe otherwise, present evidence to support such a belief. Your accusation that god is a liar presupposes divine authorship of Genesis.

Isn't it interesting then that evolutionism and the bible paint a very similar picture of creation? the earth and the heavens appearing over long periods of time, seemingly by themselves? foliage and wild beast growing and forming over perhaps millions of years, on their own?

Only if you ignore the details:

[mrow][mcol]Genesis 1[mcol][row]Before the first day[col]In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. [col]Note that there is earth and water before there is light. No modern accepted cosmologists believe that earth and water predate light. [row]first day[col]Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night And there was evening and there was morning, one day. [row]second day[col]Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. [row]third day[col]Then God said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a third day.[col]Note that we have seeded plants before any sea or land animals. Evolution has plants developing from simple to complex in parallel with animal development. There is no indication of this understanding in Genesis. [row]fourth day[col]Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. [col]Note: the fourth day seems quite out of whack. Sun, moon and stars created after seed bearing plants. Gimme a break! Also notice that the lights get put into the expanse (see day 2) that separates the waters above from the waters below. I don't know how to fit that into any scientifically acceptable format either. [row]fifth day[col]Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens." God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. [row]sixth day[col]Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

[Cathar1950]

Unlike the day Adam ate from the fruit, the creational days had the formula, "there was evening and there was morning, one day". This, to me, is a clear marker that the author was not talking about anything other than regular days. If you believe otherwise, present evidence to support such a belief. Your accusation that god is a liar presupposes divine authorship of Genesis.

That is a good point Mack.
It is much like CS Lewis and his argument that Jesus was either a liar, god or a lunatic.
All we have to go on is the writing of followers and their tradition and stories generations later. It does't mean he was a liar or a lunatic as his later believers may have been mistaken or meant something a small selection of later church fathers accepted or misunderstood.
I can't say the same of Paul as he admitted to deceit and he sounds like a lunatic and possible a trader a couple of times.
Most scholarship agrees that the book was not written by Moses either as it was written a good 100 years after David's time and 100 to 200 years later written by writers in their north, Israel.
Later it was combined and worked over again a few times as a collection of book being created and worked over. Many book and many scholar have worked over these books and the internal and external argument are persuasive while there is not a bit of evidence that either Moses of God wrote the book.

[conleymon]

hmm you're right. I never had realized that the sun moon and stars were created after the plants. What kind of plant lives without the sun? and if there were no sun moon and stars before the first light he created, where was that light comming from? where does light come from but from the stars?

You're right. the only way this scenario might hold up is with a 24 hour day, cause plants can live without sunlight for a day. But then that brings the problem how long was the first day? the first evening and morning happened before the sun was created...so it wasn't based on the 24 hour rotation of the earth. (Besides physics tells us that the earth's rotation is slowing down because o fthe difference between the rotation of the earth and the revolution of the moon. So days were shorter back then. Not by much though, if we're talking about 6000 years ago)

The other problem I have is with an evolutionary stance that animal life evolved in parallel with plant life. How could that possibly be? The plant life had to at least start first.

[McCulloch]

The other problem I have is with an evolutionary stance that animal life evolved in parallel with plant life. How could that possibly be? The plant life had to at least start first.

Of course the first plants developed from even more primitive life before the first animal life. But evolutionary theory is that there had to be some animal life before the more highly developed (seed bearing) plants emerged.