Created Evolution

Some New Age atheists persist to cling to Middle Age concepts, for example when Christians can't explain something they, the Christians, would argue that it must be God (God of the gaps), but those ideas have long been gone. In stark contrast, Christian apologetics now prove to be more logical and truly analytical in their arguments than many others. If evolution could explain the origin of species, praise God for the way He did it. There is very little, if any, scientific evidence for macro-evolution though, a lot more for micro-evolution, but the final verdict on evolution is still out. 

The more we discover about creation the more we stand in awe and can praise Him for creation, like the creation of Canis Majoris - a red hyper-giant star, currently the largest known star, located in the constellation Canis Major with a radius of 2.7 billion kms. Or we can deny Him as the creator of all that exists and accept that all came to be out of nothing by nothing for no reason. Just a brute fact.

‘… , there is one God, the Father, by whom all things were created, and for whom we live. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created, and through whom we live.’ 1 Corinthians 8:6. And there mere size and majesty of a star of this incomprehensible magnitude we get some idea of the majesty and splendour of our incomprehensible God. 

The evidence for the Big Bang is pretty strong; a moment 13.5 billion years ago when in a split second time, space and matter came into being, out of noting. Nothing, like that what rocks dream of. (Socrates). Everything known to us, have a cause and to believe the Big Bang had no cause is neither logical nor scientific.    As there were no time, space or matter before that moment, it must have been caused by a timeless, spaceless, matterless 'something', but also a 'something' that could have taken a decision for it to happen, therefore a being and, with that, needed to be super intelligent and omnipotent to have caused it all.  The Judeo-Christian God is described as eternal (timeless),   spirit (matterless and spaceless - omnipresent), an almighty, all-knowing (super intelligent), personal God (that could have made a decision to create).

In Genesis 1, the first book of the Bible an account of creation is given. The Hebrew word 'yom' in the original texts is translated into the English 'day' and can have more than one meaning in describing the 'six day'  creation:

1. It can refer to the 24-hour period of time, the time it takes for the earth to rotate on its axis (e.g., "there are 24 hours in a day").

2. Or can refer to the period of daylight between dawn and dusk (e.g., "It gets pretty hot during the day but it cools down a bit at night").

3. And it can refer to an unspecified period of time (e.g., "back in my grandfather's day”).

In the rest of the book of Genesis, the word ‘yom’ or ‘day’ is used in all three of these meanings.

1. It is used to refer to a 24-hour period in Genesis 7:11 'When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky.

2. As the period of daylight between dawn and dusk in Genesis 1:16 'God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night....' and Genesis 1:5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.”

'Day' for dawn to dusk and 24 hour day is used in one sentence. Genesis 1:14 Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years.

3. And used to refer to an unspecified period of time In Genesis 2:2 'On the seventh day God had finished His work of creation, so He rested from all His work' No further creative activity took place and we are still in the 7th day period. Genesis 2:4 'This is the history of [the origin of] the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day [that is, days of creation] that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens—' Genesis 6:4 'In those days, and for some time after, ...'

It certainly seems logical with current knowledge and from the Bible itself that the days of Genesis 1 are unspecified periods of time.  Could God have created the world in 6-24hours days? Of course, He could. He created the universe in a split second 13.5 billion years ago and all the scientific evidence support that split-second creation. The only logical explanation is that He indeed did.  But 'without form and shape', and slowly 'chaos' turned into a very orderly universe and earth over billions of years. Scientific evidence does not support a creation created in 6 - 24 hour days neither it is specifically supported by the Bible passages on the use of the word 'day' or 'yom' only. The rest of the Bible supports the concept of a God who is involved in personal lives, as well as humanity as a whole, over periods of time, sometimes long periods of time, allowing concepts, relationships, events, to slowly develop or evolve e.g. the lives of Abraham, Joseph, David, and many others as they grew in the knowledge and trust of God to get to His purpose with their lives.  And ultimately Christ, the Messiah, over many, many centuries, from Genesis to Revelation spanning thousands of years. Also in our own spiritual lives, we walk long roads to knowledge and of growth.

'It is equally wrong and damaging for the religious fundamentalist to ignore the facts of science as it is for the science fundamentalist to ignore Biblical and spiritual truths.'

The Bible is God inspired and science God created and our task is to figure out this oneness.

MCMLV

More on the word 'yom';

Although yom is commonly rendered as 'day' in English translations, the word yom has several literal definitions:

Period of light (as contrasted with the period of darkness),

A general term for time

Point of time

Sunrise to sunset

Sunset to next sunset

A year (in the plural; I Sam 27:7; Ex 13:10, etc.)

Time period of unspecified length.

A long, but finite span of time - age - epoch - season.

Biblical Hebrew has a limited vocabulary, with fewer words compared to other languages, like English (which has the largest). This means words often have multiple meanings determined by context.  Strong's Lexicon yom is Hebrew #3117 יוֹם [11] The word Yom's root meaning is to be hot as the warm hours of a day.

Thus "yom", in its context, is sometimes translated as:

• "time" (Gen 4:3, Is. 30:8);
• "year" (I Kings 1:1, 2 Chronicles 21:19, Amos 4:4);
• "age" (Gen 18:11, 24:1 and 47:28; Joshua 23:1 and 23:2);
• "always" (Deuteronomy 5:29, 6:24 and 14:23, and in 2 Chronicles 18:7);
• "season" (Genesis 40:4, Joshua 24:7, 2 Chronicles 15:3); epoch, a particular period of time in history or a person's life
• 24-hour day (Genesis 1:5,8,13,19,23,31)