Really a conflict between Christian Creatinism & Evolution?

The bible is very explicit how God created adam and eve - and he tells us that a day was the equivalent of one morning and one evening. The word "monkey" does not appear in scripture.

Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Gen 1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Gen 1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

I don't believe Darwin ever used the term "macro evolution".

The only problem with reinterpreting Genesis in the light of scientific discovery is that it contributes nothing to the science. It only helps to prop up the religion. This makes it unverifiable. In fact, the sequence of creation is scientifically problematic. One can't honestly describe the "creation" of light, THEN of a "sky", THEN of the sun, without indulging in some dodgy speculation about "fog canopies" or other visibility tricks. (And the "firmament" does not operate the way the Bible describes anyway.)

So all you can really do is say the Bible sequence is only approximate and that what matters is that God lit the fuse for everything. But that is not necessary. You are merely sticking a magical event onto the beginning of a natural event, with no logical connection. God is superfluous. It's like typing an extra sentence at the beginning of someone else's book and then calling it yours.

The Bible may be okay for postulating WHY the universe might have come into existence, but it is clearly not suited to explaining HOW it did.

The idea that the creation "days" could be any convenient, long time period and thus match or support evolution is unsupportable. For example, the Bible claims that the earth was created first and then the sun, stars and moon. This was clearly not the case as the earth and moon are formed from the "remains" of many stars that formed and "died" in the billions of years before the earth. Further, it suggests that the heavens were formed from water - obviously this is not the case.

While one can "believe" in theistic evolution, there is no evidence to suggest that any supernatural being or force was involved with evolution or the formation of the universe.

Although I do not believe in God nor do I see any evidence for one, I would favor your view on the Bible over that of fundamentalists.

Indeed, there are hints in Genesis 1 and 2 that evolution is compatible with the Bible, as it says the Earth "brought forth" grass and other lifeforms.

However, one could also argue that God would make the Bible as clear as possible, and this would require a literal reading of the Bible to be correct. But at the same time, the KJV version has likely numerous translation errors and other translations might be possible.

Creatinism

I wonder if there were another hebrew word for day/period that could have been used to clear up the confusion.

If you treat it like "DAY" because there was another word for an unspecified time period that would have worked.

Then again, why didn't they say... "God created the earth over many ages? Or thousands or hundreds of years? I'm sure the concept of a year was in hebrew... It could have been infinitly more accurate by using any other structure than... "6 days, rested on the 7th".

That doesn't really leave much room for an error in meaning.

If you want to rationalize it away and suggest that they really mean 7 unspecified periods of time and rested on the 7th...

Well with the age of the universe and how many billion years it took earth to form... God would still be in the 7th day resting.

14.7 billion years... earth 4 billion...

So 14.6 / 6 to create the earth.... is 2.4 billion years each period... So god should be resting for another 2.4 billion years.

Then again, even if we use 2.1 billion and assume the rest is over, man wasn't on the earth 2.1 billion years ago... so... uhh... man it really is hard to reconcile the dates with how it was written.

Damn, god sucks at writing and making sense. He could have just spelled out evolution right there in the bible with a few short words to at least make it clear.

But we're left with that whole 6 days and rested on the 7th garbage.

A 5th grader could explain it better.

Many Christians rationalize the creation myth in the same way you have (the last few popes among them). But if you look at the text, there are other things that clearly show it to be meant as a literal day. Mixed in with the things that could be explained as you have there is also the talking snake and the woman from a rib. These things do not fit into your rationalized view. So we move the entire thing into metaphor. Now it can mean anything an that is why it has managed to stay around as long as it has.

well some christians differ with your interpretation of genesis... they seem to think that it _does_ describe how god created the world, or at least specifically precludes common descent evolution (that bit about plants and animals being 'created after their kind'... I think I have got that right).

another potential problem is that evolution doesn't need to mention god, and that bugs some people too I guess... but the same kind of people seem to get ticked off that god isn't mentioned in mathematics textbooks, so I'm not sure what could really be done to appease them... they just want god front and center in everything.

Yes "periods for days" would work except it says "evenings and mornings"

In addition The Bible is also very clear what constitutes evenings and mornings by explaining which items we use to identify with the evenings and mornings (Sun and moon)

These people are leading others astray... Sorry I dont want to sound rude or anything but that is not from the Bible

It's the split between moderate christians and fundamentalists who interpret the bible literally. From the (completely insane) fundie standpoint, Genesis itself "denies" (and I say deny with air quotes, because, let's face it - Genesis is BACK ASSWARDS) evolution. @Paul M: Uh.. you didn't pay attention in history class, did you? If you read Mein Kampf, Hitler's own words will tell you that his antisemitism was very religiously motivated. Furthermore, evolution has no "intent", descriptions like "lesser" are labels that we as humans apply, which turns out to be very subjective. So please, do yourself a favor - go back to high school and take history and biology. The idea of Eugenics goes back as far as Plato.