>>I agree completely with the comment on the two-book approach.
>>However, I can't reconcile the sentiment expressed here with the
>>closing sentences in your post:
>>"Genesis 1 can not be understood as miraculous if one believes in an
>>old universe. Plants simply did not appear before the sun appeared."
>>
>
><snip>
>
>This statement never ceases to amaze me. If we disect it, what many
>people appear to be saying is, "Yeah, I can accept that God can create
>the entire universe; the planets, the stars, rocks and even life
> itself.
>But get plants to appear before the sun? Get real!"
>
>I've got enough confidence in our God to believe that He might just be
>able to pull this off :)
I have no problem with God being able to do it. But God didn't do it that
way. The fossil record shows the first algae in rocks dated at around 3.8
billion years old. The first land plants are found in rocks dated around
430 million years (A. Lee McAlester, The History of Life, p. 88). Before
you say that radioactive dating doesn't work, know this. There is a
significant amount of sedimentary rock in between the first occurrence of
algae and the first occurrence of land plants. This rock material took
lots of time to be deposited. It looks like this.
<pre>
tilted strata
time->
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\first land plant
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
first\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
algae\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
<\pre>
Each tilted layer is a different lithology-type of rock.
Now, the sun was required for the survival of the algae in 3.8 billion
year old rocks. So it is unlikely to have been dark for several bullion
years.
If you want to compress all this and say that the algae and the plant were
only a 48 hours apart, you have a problem because the algae died and was
buried before the first plants appeared. This would require death before
the sin of Adam!
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm