Science and Faith
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good.
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.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
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.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
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.
-King James Version (KJV) biblegateway.com
Holding to the belief that the earth is 6000 years old, some creationists draw from the scripture in 2 Peter 3:8 which states:
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing: that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
While this is a step up from believing each day of creation is the same as one of our own 24 hour days, I believe that one needs to take into consideration that our own seasons were given to us further into the creation process (Genesis 1:14) and that the interpretation of Peter's writings state that one day is as, not simply is 1000 years, showing that it is more a relative timeframe to our own. Counterarguments might point out that the oldest recorded living person, apart from the ages the first man and woman before the original sin may have been, was Methuselah at 969 years old. This would coincide with the promise that on the day the first couple sinned, they would die.
The problem with the scientific evidence as it pertains to dinosaurs could be that the carbon dating method used to date fossils carries a half life of 5730 years meaning that anything over the 10,000 years or so is speculation. Bring to light also that numerous discoveries of fleshy tissue and blood vessels in the leg bone fossils of some dinosaurs have been made, meaning that our science may not be complete. Perhaps the dinosaurs were what the King James Version of the bible relays as ‘great whales’. (Genesis 1:21)
Another theory of mine is that the dinosaurs could have been created alongside the vegetation to manage it’s growth, bringing new meaning to the passage “all flesh is as grass”.
Carbon dating (Wikipedia)
Methuselah (Wikipedia)
All flesh is grass (Wikipedia)
Dinosaur fossils contain blood
Soft tissue in T Rex fossils
