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... but if you become interested and study it, maybe it will become clear.

 

Created history

In 2000 and in 2006 I published already some ideas about the age of the earth in a Dutch newspaper. There I explained why I disagree with the Creationistic Young-Earth ideas, because the bible in Genesis 1 makes clear that the earth was created with an apparent history. I also show that it is not possible to accept an apparent age, but not an apparent history. Finally I address the emotional objection that is often heard, that God would fool us if a history preceding the creation would have been created.
Defenders of such objections state that God would be a deceiver if fossils would have been created of animals that never lived. They do not explain why God is not a deceiver when he created fruits in trees, which seemed to have grown before the creation, or when trees have annual rings from years before the creation, or when Adam saw light from stars that left the stars far before the creation, light that contains a history.
In the first half of 2007 there was supernova visible in the nightly sky. It was from a star that exploded 200 million years ago, so, in the time of the dinosaurs. Is God a deceiver if the creation took place not that long ago and, therefore, this star never existed and never exploded?
The same argument that God would be a deceiver s used by defenders of the theistic model, saying that God created the universe with a Big Bang and the subsequent evolution. But why would God be a deceiver if He needed billions of year for the creation and at the same time says that he created the world in six days? Does it make a difference if the text of the bible is taken literally, but the observed history has not really happened (as Young-Earth creationists say), or if the observed history is taken literally, but the text is not what it says (according to the theistic model)..
I cannot see how this argument can be used in favour of the young-earth creationists' view, or in favour of the theistic view. My impression is that these objections are used because of emotional feeling, which lack a scientific basis..
In this book I use an alternative interpretation, in which both the six days of the text in Genesis is taken literally and the long history of the universe and of the earth can be explained without contradiction, simply by using the fact that even in human creations the time of the creator is different from the time of his creation.

Actually it is a strange inconsistency that usually there is little objection against a created history in the world of stars, or even in sediments, but severe objections are raised when the same reasoning is applied to fossils. Two reasons are used for these objections:

Death started after the first sin, but fossils indicate that death belongs to the creation.
It is important to carefully read what the bible says. Genesis does not speak about the death of animals or plants. It is clear that plants die when they are eaten. Genesis only tells that human beings would die if they would eat the forbidden fruit, but that they would live eternally if they would eat the fruit from the other tree. Genesis does not say anything about the state of human beings before they made this choice. Genesis does not describe the fate of insects that do not eat in their adult phase, either. That death entered the world after sin should be applied to human beings. For me it is clear that that is what Paul means when he says that death came through the sin of one man. (Rom. 5:12).
God said that his creation was good (Gen 1:31), how can it be that fossils show us death and disasters in the history of the earth?
Indeed, God said that his creation was very good. Who are we to say that he history we see is not good? Can we judge it? In other parts of the bible we also read things that are against our feelings of good or evil. Is it a good thing if a crocodile turns off a leg from a wildebeest? But read how God admiringly describes his creation of a crocodile in Job 40:25. The reasoning behind this argument seems to be that we, human beings, are able to determine what is good or evil in God's creation. However, this is something that needs much care. Genesis 3 describes that we once made an fatal mistake in this matter. Remember the name of that tree?

Maybe the story of the creation in Genesis 1 can be compared with the "Making of", a bonus video found on DVDs with a movie. At the same time, the story that science tells us about the history of the creation can be compared with the movie itself. Those two stories cannot be used against each other. If the movie describes a period of several years, but the "Making of" says that the movie was made in one year, we cannot say the the maker of the movie is a deceiver. The time and the history of the two stories are different, but should not be used to create contradictions.

Therefore, I see neither the young-earth creationistic model , not the theistic model as a satisfactory explanation. Both models assume that the creation took place on our time-line. The first one places the creation on our time-line a few thousand years ago, in a short period of 6 days, the second one places the creation on our time-line billions of years ago in a period of billions of years. Since time itself is part of the creation, it makes no sense for me to place the creation on our own time-line. For me it seems to be a better explanation if the six days of the creation are not placed on our time-line, nor before our time-line, but outside our time-line, maybe on another time-line. This is how we do it for our own creations, books, movies, etc. Why should we do it differently for God's creation? At the same time that solves the paradox between the story of the creation and the scientific facts.

See also my presentation.

Latest change 27-mrt-2021