the year in books [VIII]

These four books advocate what's been called the Young Earth Creationism viewpoint, in which Genesis 1-11 is taken as literally as possible. By dating backwards through the Bible (and assuming no genealogical gaps), they put the date of creation (which occurred over the time-frame of six solar days) around 6000 years ago. Shortly after creation, Adam and Eve fall in Genesis 3, and 1,656 years later, the Lord floods the entire earth. Noah's Flood was global in extent, and it caused the rifting of the continents and created new mountain ranges. After the Flood, mankind began rebuilding, and about 120 years later, they tried to build a tower into heaven and were scattered throughout the earth with different languages. This would've been around 2350 BC. Three hundred years after Babel, the Lord calls Abram out of Mesopotamia.

I used to mock Six Day Creationism. It's funny, too, because up into my senior year of high school, I was a staunch Young Earth Creationist. I started having doubts about the literal interpretation of Genesis - my biggest hang-ups were, and continue to be, the nature of the fossil record and geological strata - and was comforted when I discovered during college that the creation accounts needn't be read absolutely literally. You can disagree with Six Day Creationism and still be an orthodox Christian, since the biblical text can be interpreted in a different manner. It was around this time that I began cozying up to Theistic Evolution, the idea that evolution certainly happened but that it was directed by God and not by random processes. The evidence for macro-evolution is scant, however, and it's filled with all sorts of problems and holes, raising more questions than it answers and generally making a mess of things. On top of all this, macro-evolution is mathematically impossible. As I began to see this in clearer detail, I shifted more towards Old Earth Creationism, in which the earth is billions of years old and God has been creating through that time - not by 'working through' evolution but by creating different species according to His whims. This is what the fossil record seems to entail.

All this aside, I still have my doubts. Genesis 1-11 is sort of an enigma for me, and I've never come to 100% certainty in any opinion on the matter. While I believe theistic evolution is bankrupt for the simple fact that the theory of evolution is incompatible with physics, mathematics, and the knowledge we've accumulated, I find both Young Earth Creationism and Old Earth Creationism to be justifiable interpretations of the creation accounts and scientific data. Both have their own host of problems. As for the moment, though I find the idea of Young Earth Creationism fascinating, I'm leaning more towards the Old Earth interpretation of Genesis 1-2. That being said, I still believe in a rather recent special creation of humankind, an historical Adam and Eve, an historical Flood - whether global or regional, I'm still on the fence about - as well as an historical Tower of Babel. When it comes to Genesis 1-11, then, my take is like a quasi-historical approach. I'm an odd duck.