The Geneis account of Creation should be read literally

======= CONTEXT ======= My opponent continues to bring out that the facts of modern science confirm a much older universe than a literal Genesis allows for and is using this as evidence affirming his interpretation. However, the reliability of science is a separate issue that should deserves a separate debate. My opponent is drawing attention away from the purposes of this debate and has made it into a ‘science has already proven Genesis wrong' thing. As my opponent has pointed out on MULTIPLE occasions, the historical context is VERY important, as I emphasized in my example in R2. For example, if the historical context of the author of Genesis was that humans had scientifically affirmed that the earth was billions of years old, it would make sense to interpret the text as the use of some literary device, knowing that a learned and educated man would not think the earth was only a few thousand years old. However, that was NOT the context in which the author was writing! The conclusions of modern science have NOTHING to do with the MEANING that an author intended for readers to get out of his now ANCIENT text! As I've explained before, people used to think the earth was flat. Do we think that by ‘flat' they really mean ‘spherical' because of what we NOW know? ======= 7 DAY MOTIF ======= "As it stands, both my opponent and I are standing on the likelihood of our assumptions." If my opponent believes I have made any assumptions in my reasoning, he should point them out clearly. What I have done is read the text and referred to the knowledge of Hebrew scholars for a deeper understanding of it, which does not require ANY assumptions. If the 7 day calendar week actually came from 7 dwarves that Adam saw in the garden, my argument does not fail. I contend that the text teaches literal days, and my opponent contends that the literal grammar uses a literary device that may ultimately be based on a literal creation week. He must make the assumption that it DOES NOT come from the creation week, whereas my argument requires no assumptions. ======= LITERAL GRAMMAR ======= "My opponent commits the Black-or-white fallacy. Essentially the Bible must be either wholly literal or wholly non-literal." For the record, I never stated that the entire Bible is either literal or non-literal, although my opponent thinks my argument must call for this. When it is clear that poetry (as in the Psalms and other places) or parables (as in many of Jesus' teachings) are being used, we understand the meaning of the text as non-literal and simply teaching a lesson, as my opponent pointed out. This DOES NOT, however, mean that any literal statement can be taken non-literally. Genesis does NOT contain poetry (Hebrew poetry has nothing to do with rhyming words), it does NOT contain parables, NOR does it contain similes or the like [1]. My opponent has asserted that the literary device it does contain is a 7 day motif, which has already been established as quite possibly being a teaching that is derived from a literal creation week, which is why I repeat that this argument holds no water. ======= TWO CREATION ACCOUNTS ======= My opponent has asserted that there are two creation accounts in Genesis and that the literalist is faced with which one to take literally. However, the "second" account makes no mention of days because it is clearly referring only to day six. Genesis 1 gave a streamlined and chronological view of all 7 days; Genesis 2 (beginning at verse 4) gives more details of a very busy day, day 6. "In the first creation account, God creates both the man and the woman simultaneously (1:27-28)…" My opponent is referring to "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." (NKJV) This statement does not demand the understanding that God created man and woman at the same moment in time, as it does not follow the construction "God said…and it was so" that is used throughout the rest of Genesis 1 (see v. 3,7,9,11, etc.). The lack of this construction indicates that something a little different is taking place than the rest of the creating in chapter 1, and we are given these details in chapter 2. The perceived contradiction between chapters 1 and 2 is heightened in chapter 2, as it almost sounds like God creates animals after Adam and before Eve, but in chapter 1 the animals were created before Adam and Eve. This is best seen in 2:19, "Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them." (NKJV) However, in a translation that predates even the KJV, the verb for "formed" was correctly translated as "had formed" due to the use of the pluperfect tense, and the NIV still carries this rendering. [2] The correct understanding of day 6 is therefore: 1. God creates animals, 2. God creates Adam, 3. Adam names the animals and does not find a suitable helper, 4. God creates Eve. This is consistent with both chapters. ======= LIGHT BEFORE SUN ======= On day one God said "let there be light"; He never said where the light came from. My opponent says that the fact that no luminaries were created until day four clearly demonstrates that Genesis was never meant to be taken literally, but I think a more plausible interpretation is in order. According to Revelation 21:23, when God creates the new Heaven and new earth there will not be need for stars for light, as "the glory of God illuminated it." Biblically speaking, there is nothing wrong with understanding light existing before the stars. A possible reason God created in this order was so that people would not be able to confuse a powerful thing like the Sun with a god that should be worshiped. The order of creation was in effect a polemic against future Pagan sun-worshipers. "If a day, by definition, is the average time of a single rotation of the earth in respect to the sun, then from day 1 we could never have arrived at day 2 - insofar as the measurement cannot predate the metric." However, in Genesis 1 the author did not directly use the same metric for days we use today. Genesis 1:5 reads: "God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. So the evening and morning were the first day." (NKJV) It should be noted that the definite article "the" before "first" is inserted so that it reads more smoothly in English, although the article does not appear in Hebrew. Dr. Andrew Steinmann, Associate Professor of Theology and Hebrew at Concordia University, points out the meaning of this: "Therefore, by using a most unusual grammatical construction, Genesis 1 is defining what a day is…It would appear as if the text is very carefully crafted so an alert reader cannot read it as "the first day." Instead, by omission of the article it must be read as "one day", thereby defining a day as something akin to a twenty-four hour solar period with light and darkness and transitions between day and night, even though there is no sun until the fourth day… Another evening and morning constituted "a" (not "the") second day. Another evening and morning made a third day, and so on." [3] Before the author numbers any of the days, he shows that God's definition of a day is a period encompassing one period of light and one period of dark. As God uses the word, we need not a sun, but simply light. Furthermore, the fact that the same word (day, Hebrew yom) is also used to refer to a normal solar day in the rest of Genesis every single time it is combined with a number (as in "one day") [4] means that the periods of light and dark referred to in Genesis 1 were the same length that they currently are, as Dr. Steinmann noted. [1] http://creation.com... [2] http://creation.com... [3] Sarfati, Refuting Compromise, 77-8 [4] http://www.answersingenesis.org... (section II)