This was a compromise invented by men who wanted to make both sides of the evolutionary debate happy but ended up making neither side happy. (This is more generically referred to outside the Catholic Church as "theistic evolution" or "progressive creation".) This recently invented concept is comparable to patronizing Jesus as simply a "good man". But good men do not claim to be God unless they really are, otherwise they are liars and hence not good. So there is no middle ground on whether Jesus was God or an idiot, nor is there middle ground on this issue. Mitigated evolution was invented to make the Bible "fit" our modern society's evolution-based paradigm of the world and is not based on scripture. Jesus warns us of taking seemingly neutral, or appeasing, attitudes towards lies and falsehood (Revelation 3:15-16).

This is again just another compromise. Let's count the reasons.

• Notice that at the end of days 1-6 (chapter 1 verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23 and 31) it says "there was evening, and there was morning" (NIV). No other length of time is separated by an "evening" and a "morning". Why would it say this six times in a row if it was not trying to be painfully clear that the days are referring to literal 24 hour days as we know them now?
• If you want to attempt the stance that the people of Moses's day were "simpletons" and could not understand evolutionary timescales, then consider these verses that describe astronomical numbers without cryptically and inconveniently reusing another word (like "day"): Genesis 16:9-10, 22:15-18 and 41:47-49. Contrast that to John 4:10-15 where Jesus cryptically reuses the term water.
• If the six days of creation were just philosophical representations of larger time period(s), then why is it never explained later (consider the harmony of the Bible) yet consider how ridiculously strongly God ties the modern seven day week to the literal week of creation in Exodus 31:12-17.
• Four of the authors of scripture took Genesis 2:7 (which says God formed man directly from the dust of the earth) literally: Job 10:9, 34:15, Psalms 90:3, 103:14, 104:29, Ecclesiastes 3:20 and 1 Corinthians 15:47. That's not even including how Moses also quotes Abraham in Genesis 18:27. Zero even hint at any other origin of man, especially not biological evolution of proteins to people.
• If the six days of creation were just made up hypothetical references, why would God keep referring back to them as literal days and never once clarifying them as nebulous, astronomically long "time periods"?
• If you think the reference to death in Genesis 2:17 is only spiritual then perhaps you didn't notice that thorns (Genesis 3:18) and returning to dust (Genesis 3:19) didn't come until the curse.

As usual the question is really just "can we take God at his word", or to rephrase "can we take God seriously"? Because then there is the opposite problem that in chapter 5 the Bible does a 180 and describes how six of the nine people in the lineage from Adam to Noah lived over 900 years and the rest lived over 300! Either the record is right or it is not. The Jews are not a people group who accepted such blatant inaccuracy, if that is what it was. At the very least someone in the thousands of years between Moses and the orthodox church would have fudged the numbers to make them more reasonable if anyone did not believe them to be literal and accurate.

[ AIG: If evolution over millions of years was the way God created, He could easily have said so in simple words. ]

There is allegation that the first two chapters of the Bible contradict each other in their orders of creation. The straightforward answer is Genesis 1:1-2:4 is an account of the creation of the universe, the Earth and everything on the Earth, which happened in seven days (including a day of rest). Genesis 2:4-25 expounds on what happened on day 6 and more importantly begins the critical account of the origins of Adam and Eve and the fall of mankind. The key is Genesis 2 is specifically describing the dawn of time from Adam's perspective (even though it is written in the third person) and Genesis 1 was written more broadly.

As usual, this is just another attack on the authority of scripture (Psalm 11:3) for the pupose of removing God's perceived ability to speak into our lives (John 3:12, John 5:46-47) so that we can think we can do whatever we want without accountability (Judges 17:6 and Judges 21:25).

[ Are there two creation accounts? ]
[ Genesis contradictions? ]
[ Two Contradictory Creation Accounts ]

You need to understand how naive it is to blend flat-out contradictory religions. One definition of religion is "a set of strongly-held beliefs, values, and attitudes that somebody lives by." The origin of the universe, the earth, and human life was not observed by any human alive today nor has anything comparable been observed so any belief about how it really happened requires faith. People who do not want to believe in any God usually find comfort in the concepts of the big bang succeeded by biological evolution. This has become those people's religion, an anti-god religion where God is simply not necessary and not wanted (Judges 17:6, 21:25). Most people who call themselves Christian believe the Bible when it claims to be the inspired word of God. (It does this explicitly in 2 Timothy 3:16.) But this is not a blind faith because we believe that the God of the Bible is a living God (Daniel 6:26) and that He is actively involved in our lives. At some point (especially if you are a follower of Christ) we must stop asking ourselves what God could have done (used millions of years/evolution) and we must ask what God says He did. Let's take a close look at what God says in Genesis 1:1-2:23

• God says He made light three days before He made the Sun, moon & stars (v 1:3). Big bang proponents do not believe in any universal light sources other than from stars.
• God says the Earth was at first all water. Then He added the sky and lastly He formed dry ground (v 1:6-10). Big bang proponents say the earth formed from stellar dust/gas, condensed to become all molten rock, and only after it cooled for a long time did water appear.
• God says He made vegetation capable of producing seeds and fruit the day before He made the Sun (v 1:11-16). Old Earth, or "long ages" proponents say the Sun had to come way before any plants.
• God says He created sea dwelling animals and flying animals on the same day (v 1:20-21). Evolutionists believe life originated in the ocean and took a long time to evolve into birds.
• God says He created land animals the day after He created birds (v 1:24). This totally contradicts biological evolutionary chronology.
• God says He formed the first man directly from the dust (v 2:7). Biological Evolutionists want us to believe man evolved from apes, who evolved from smaller animals, who evolved from less complex life forms, who evolved from single celled organisms, who evolved from inanimate/non-living proteins.
• God says He formed the first woman directly from the first man (v 2:22). This contradicts all secularly recorded human history, as no man has ever given birth. The closest thing is human cloning and clearly that requires a lot of intelligence to pull off!

So why did God create things out of order? God is all knowing (Psalm 139:1-4, Hebrews 4:13) and never changing (Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29, James 1:17) therefore He must have done it on purpose. I think He did it this way to discourage us from making up dumb stories like "everything came to be on its own" and so we would not even think about blending those ideas with His word. (Romans 1:21-22, 1 Corinthians 1:19-21)

[ ICR: Evolution Is Religion--Not Science ]
[ AIG: Evolution & creation, science & religion, facts & bias ]
[ AIG: Religion and Evolution ]

There is no scriptural basis what-so-ever for a local flood. There is no way to read scripture and come to the conclusion that it was anything but a global flood. If you think it was local, that belief was 'fed' to you. Read it yourself in Genesis 7:19-24.

• The concepts of 'highest on earth' and 'every living thing on earth' are found six times in those five verses. This would be gross negligence if the author didn't mean what he wrote.
• The apostle Peter believed it was accurate, as stated in 2 Peter 3:3-7.
• From another angle, after it's all done God promises in Genesis 9:11-16 never to do again what He just did. Not because He was wrong to have done it the first time, but because of His plan. This is what the rainbow was and still is a sign of rememberence of. If he was promising never to allow/send a local flood again then He's a liar. If He's promising never to send a global flood again (like He explicitly says when He mentions "all life on earth" twice) then He's truthful (John 3:32-33).
• For external confirmation consider the Biblically sound explanations for the origin of the grand canyon, the ice age, fish fossils in the middle of deserts, etc.

[ Canyon Ministries ]
[ Grand Canyon-what is the message? ]
[ Where Does the Ice Age Fit? ]

Nope. It is only implied (read in) by compromisers.

Yes! Consider these references, besides the dozens mentioned above.

• In the Old Testament a six day creation is explicitly cited and is the only explanation for the 4th of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:11) which were given to Moses written in stone by God himself. If you do not think he was being literal, read his elaboration in Exodus 31:12-17.
• In a gospel account, Jesus himself clearly confirmed that creation was recent when he said Adam and Eve existed in the beginning, not billions of years after the universe and Earth had come into existence (Mark 10:6). If the universe were billions of years old then the entire span of human existence has all occurred in the last 1% of universal time (or "at the end", not the beginning).
• Make note that Jesus warned the Jews of his day to believe what Moses wrote (John 5:45-47). Moses is widely recognized as writing the first five books of the Bible, including Genesis and Exodus, which is where the literal account of creation and the Ten Commandments referenced above are found. If he had to warn the Jews of his day to believe in special creation then it is no surprise we have to remind people today.
• Paul, who wrote most of New Testament, confirms Adam was formed directly from dust, not apes (1 Corinthians 15:47).
• Peter says the flood was absolute (1 Peter 3:19-20).
• Peter warns his friends that in the last days people will deliberately forget that "in the beginning God created" and that He "brought the earth out from the water" (2 Peter 3:3-7).
• The author of Hebrews was unanimously considered an expert in Jewish theology and history and he refers to the literal day seven, not a vague 'end of creation'. (Hebrews 4:3-4).

[ AIG: Jesus Christ on the infallibility of Scripture ]

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