Tolleson, DL. “Creation in Seconds, Days or Years.”
DLTolleson.com, 2013.
http://www.dltolleson.com/commentary/creationinseconds.php.
Tolleson, DL. “Creation in Seconds, Days or Years.”
TheLighthousePress.com, 2016.
http://www.thelighthousepress.com/dltolleson.com/commentary/creationinseconds.php.
I’ve long-heard biblical-based arguments that Genesis’s version of creation in 7 days could have just as easily been 7,000 years or more. The supposition is grounded in a biblical verse (rendered in a different context) indicating that for God, a day is as a thousand years. Looking at it that way, science can more easily tolerate a creation wherein God implemented creation through “natural laws,” thus accommodating the geological record.
Now there is a new aspect to that discussion. Apparently the March 11, 2011 earthquake—which reportedly moved the Japanese mainland by as much as 8 feet—caused a change to Earth’s mass, thus shortening the length of a day by 1.8 Microseconds. One source for this information, CBS News, ran a story claiming that “Earth’s Day Length Shortened by Japan Earthquake” and indicated that this wasn’t the first earthquake-induced shortening of the day. This article suggested a total shortening of the day by 9.86 microseconds after tabulating the effects of the 8.9-magnitude Japan earthquake, the 8.8-magnitude Chilean earthquake of 2010 and the 9.1-magnitude Sumatra earthquake in 2004.
This got me to thinking. The world is covered in volcanoes popping-off throughout history. Regardless of whether you ascribe to God utilizing geology, who is to say that world-wide volcanic eruptions have not affected the passage of time (as we understand it). Maybe, in the beginning, the planet was spinning like a top! Perhaps there was one huge continent and the “spreading” factor of erupting volcanoes moved or redistributed the earth’s mass, thus slowing the passage of time that constituted, “a day.” Or maybe it is the other way around and, just like the story reported above, Earth’s days have been continuously sped-up since the planet was first formed.
Otto Muck, the author of The Secret of Atlantis (Analyzed Here) postulated that an asteroid struck the mid-Atlantic ridge, opening an ocean-wide rift along the submariner floor. If even partly true, surely the impact on the passage of time could have been massive.
If geological upheaval has altered the Earth’s mass to the resulting tune of also altering time (or the speed at which time passes), then it stands to reason that throughout the planet’s history (be it thousands, hundreds of thousands or billions of years) our “days” have not remained at a fixed duration. And depending upon the severity of alteration—or of numerous alterations—we may have geological and biblical histories that are more malleable than the definitive records that they heretofore represented.