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Gap creationism
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“”In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then nothing happened for 4.5 billion years. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
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| —What a gap creationist reads on the first sentences of Genesis. |
Gap creationism (also gap theory and ruin-Restitution) is a form of old Earth creationism. It attempts to harmonize the Genesis account of the creation of the universe with the actual age of the universe by claiming there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. Basically, it shoehorns a vast timespan of millions or billions of years into the "gap" between the creation of the heaven and the earth and the rest of creation. This allows gap creationists to accept that the universe is billions of years old, but still leaves the problem of a history of life on Earth being only a few thousand years old and that they are still denialists when it comes to evolution.
Holders of this idea claim the earth somehow became ruined and was then repaired during the six 24-hour days of creation.
In some versions, the earth was ruined as a consequence of a battle between God and Lucifer — in more complex forms of the myth, the destruction resulted in the death of the dinosaurs as well. While this would make an awesome heavy metal song,[note 1] there is, of course, zero geological evidence for any of this. The gap creationist position tries to account for fossils of lost species to belong to the first period — so they can accept the scientific dating for them. But, the problem is, the fossil record does not show any abrupt disappearance of species just at second creation time — 4000 BCE.
After the supposed "gap", many believers add beliefs about Young Earth Creationism; others follow it up with concepts associated with Progressive Creationism.
The gap theory was popular with nineteenth-century old-Earth Creationists, but has given way to day-age creationism and progressive creationism.
Interestingly, the Qur'an, considered by many to be the fourth book in a tetralogy, states that a day with God is equivalent to 50,000 of our human years, so that would put the Earth age at 300,000 years.
Also, Jesus Is Savior's position on creation is gap creation. He has stated his acceptance of traditional scientific dating of dinosaur fossils.
External links[edit]
- Formless and Void:Gap Theory Creationism at the National Centre for Science Education Creation/Evolution magazine archive
- The Gap Theory Page
References[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ↑ Indeed, Marvel Comics uses a variation of this idea; in their main comics universe, the dinosaurs were driven extinct by a battle between Atum the sun god and Set the serpent god.