What is next for you? Agnosticism? Your revolt against legalism has been too radical. You've simply taken the extreme antithetical position against Slavic legalism. Read Scripture without eisegetically inserting human philosophies.

Hello Yuriy, thank you for your post. If you already haven't heard of The Biologos Foundation, founded by Francis Collins, MD, PhD, it will be worth checking out! They promote the concept of 'evolutionary creationism' as opposed to 'YEC'.

In one of my favorite passages from the Bible, God spoke to Job and asked him a series of questions. It's recorded in Job 38-42. This passage shows the greatness of our Lord and the humans lack of knowledge. In Job 38:4-6 (ESV), the Lord speaks: Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, Job rightfully acknowledged that "[God] can do all things and that no purpose of [His] can be thwarted" (Job 42:2). He also repented in dust and ashes (Job 42:6).

Great post, love the honesty, thanks for writing. I am also coming around to realize there is no big conspiracy to suppress the truth about human origina unless you count answers in genesis.

Yuriy....You are a young man. You have many questions and so few answers. I understand this. The problem is you are looking for Godly and spiritual answers by applying human understanding and theories. Remember, a theory is just an unproven guess. Did God create the universe in 6 days? Yes...he rested on the seventh. What is one day to God as compared to man? 1,000 years? 2,000 years? 1,000,000 years?? We don't know. We also can not understand things of God in our own minds. We are unable to perceive these things. Did God create us? Yes. Did he destroy the earth by flood? Yes Did he scatter all the remaining creations across the earth? For sure. Do things adapt to life living in harsh enviroments? Most definitely. When it is hot we put on shorts and a T-shirt...Go swimming. When its cold we put on heavy jackets and sweaters and cuddle with the loved ones at home. We adapt as animals adapt. That is not evolution it is adaptation. Don't abandon your faith(,believing in something/someone you can't see, feel, interact with) for human answers. Remember who created us. Have the trust and faith in God to know that some answers we will figure out and some we will learn on our day of glory. You have faith that there is oxygen in every breathe you take yet you can not see it. Yet it has the ability to move rivers ,mountains , and structures created by man. Why are you letting your faith in God be challenged? Even tho you don't see him doesn't mean he isn't there! Stop looking so hard to find the answers and Let Jesus lead you to the water you so desperately crave....The water of life. You can't be luke-warm my brother... God deals in absolutes. You are either with him or with the world. NOTW!!!

Yuri: If you don't have an agenda, why didn't your article mention any of the problems associated with Darwin's theory of evolution?

Because all of these creationist claims are false, repeating them does not make them true. Remember I say this as one who spent my life repeating them and reading them, yet they are not true. www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

You fail to mention any issues with evolution. Now you mention that ALL of creationist claims are false. Question: Do you believe there was a flood from which God saved Noah?

I agree that YEC is ridiculous. However theistic evolution doesn't fit the data very well either. What's wrong with old earth creationsim where God specially created species over billions of years? Over those billions there are many life exterminating events and he creates again. Finally he creates man and then rests. He has been in "rest" from acts of creating new species since the creation of man. That's why there has not been one new species appear since man came on the scene. This model fits the biblical data and the scientific data very well. There are many good old earth creation ministries out there but I think reasons.org has the best info. Also Hugh Ross has a number of great books on the subject - my favorite being Creator and the Cosmos. I like the fact that you used your brain, something YEC doesn't encourage.

"That's why there has not been one new species appear since man came on the scene". How could you possibly know that? We discover new species all the time. There are parts of the ocean we've never even been to. How can you be sure at all that we haven't missed the "appearance" of a new species? Having said that, the fact is humans have only been around in our present form for 200,000 years or so. Evolution is a gradual event, so it's not as though we witness it happening in a few generations. For a new species to occur would, according to evolutionary theory, take a very long time. New species don't suddenly "appear" in evolution.

While reading this post, I get a feel for your history, your study of the subject, many disclaimers, and some supporting evidence. I see only the mention of the congruency between this theory and the Genesis 1-2 account. I am willing to question my YEC viewpoint, but I am unwilling to question the inerrancy of Scripture. Would you provide some insight into how your exegesis of Genesis 1-2 led you to these conclusions? Specifically regarding God creating man in His image.

Yuriy...with all your education and study of creation vs evolution...a very uneducated statement from you is the phrase you repeat, a "seven day creation." It was a SIX day creation.

Yuiry indeed you have a lot of questions and your world view answers injected in the mix. Reading your blog post I could not help to think how much of your world view is centered around philosophy and faith in others people inner faith, with titles like Dr, MD and PhD. The Book of Genesis in the Bible says God created the universe, and everything in it, in six days. Some people have tried to harmonize this description with the theory of evolution by suggesting that the “days” in Genesis must have been long periods of time, or ages. But the Bible has its own amazing way of showing that the long “ages” idea is wrong. The days were real, ordinary, solar days of around 24 hours each. Here is why: Reasons why the days were 24 hours Genesis 1:14 says God created the lights to divide day from night, and to be for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years. If the days are ages, then what are the years? If a day is an age, then what is a night? The concept becomes ludicrous when you try to stretch the length of a day. Whenever the word “day” in the Bible is limited by a number (such as the first day, the third day, the sixth day) it always means a 24-hour day. Whenever the word “day” is used with the phrase “evening and morning,” it always means an ordinary night-day cycle. Among the Ten Commandments that God gave to Israel, recorded in Exodus 20, God said that His creation in six days followed by a day of rest was to be the pattern for the Israelites' working week: six days of labor followed by a day of rest. “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work …,” God said, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” This would not make sense if they had to work for six million years followed by a million years of rest. Some people think that a day may mean a thousand years, because the Apostle Peter said that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). But Peter did not say a day is a thousand years, but it is as a thousand years. He is saying that God is outside time, that a thousand years are no more significant than a day in God's eternal scheme of things. People who say Peter meant that a day is a thousand years are ignoring the second part of Peter's statement, which says a thousand years are as one day. How could we count how many days are in a thousand years if a day only means a thousand years? It becomes silly when you try to force a meaning that wasn't intended. Not an indefinite period either The passage about a day being as a thousand years has also been said to mean that a day is simply a long period of time. But that makes nonsense of Peter's statement. It would mean that Peter was saying that “a long period of time is a thousand years.” See how ridiculous things get when you stray from the straight meaning of Scripture? The clear meaning of the days of creation is the obvious one: that they were literal, ordinary, 24-hour days. Nothing more and nothing less.

When Moses, under the inspiration of God, compiled the account of creation in Genesis1, he used the Hebrew word yôm for ‘day’. He combined yôm with numbers (‘first day’, ‘second day’, ‘third day’, etc.) and with the words ‘evening and morning’, and the first time he employed it he carefully defined the meaning of yôm
(used in this way) as being one night/day cycle (Genesis1:5). Thereafter, throughout the Bible, yôm used in this way always refers to a normal 24–hour day.2,3 There is thus a prima facie case that, when God used the word yôm in this way, He intended to convey that the days of creation were 24 hours long.

Let us now consider what other words God could have used, if He had wanted to convey
a much longer period of time than 24 hours.

Dave well said, you just restored my hope :) May God Bless you

Dave I have previously written about this, here are my thoughts http://www.yuriyandinna.com/is-genesis-1-a-scientific-account-or-an-ancient-origins-story/

Did Adam really named all animals in one day?

    Genesis 1:24–27 states that God made the land animals, as well as
the first man and woman, on Day Six of Creation Week.  Genesis 2:18–23 tells us that Adam named the animals before Eve was created. So how could Adam have named all the animals in one day?

The time factor

Day Six of Creation Week began at evening (Genesis 1:31), and so consisted of about 12 hours of darkness followed by about 12 hours of daylight. There is no reason why God could not have made the land animals, and Adam too, during the darkness period of Day Six, so that at first light there they all were!

If, however, God used the daylight period, there is no reason to suppose that His
creative acts in making the animals and Adam took any longer than the instant for
Him to command these events to happen.1 So either way it need not have taken any time at all beyond first light on Day Six for all the land animals and Adam to have come into existence.

Adam therefore had most of the daylight hours of Day Six in which to complete his
task. Note that this task did not include his searching out the animal, because
Genesis 2:19 tells us that God ‘brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them’. Presumably this was in some sort of reasonably orderly procession.

Naming the animals

The following points need to be noted:

1. Genesis chapter 1 says that the animals were created according to their kinds,
rather than according to their species—the phrase ‘after his/their kind’
occurs 10 times in this chapter (referring to both plants and animals). Exactly
what the term ‘kind’ (Hebrew min) corresponds to in terms of the modern Linnaean classification system is not clear, but it appears that sometimes the min corresponds to today’s species, sometimes to the genus, and sometimes to the family. It indicates the limitations of variation. What is clear is that numerically there must have been fewer kinds in Adam’s day than the number of species we count today. [Ed. note: for more information, see  Ligers and wholphins? What next?]

For example, it is more than likely that there would have been no domestic dogs,
coyotes, and wolves as such, but rather one ancestral kind containing the genetic
information for all of these to appear under natural selection pressures.

This is not evolution, because no new information is added. In the same way, the
mongrel dog population of a few hundred years back was able to give rise (under
human selection) to the various modern breeds of dog—because the information
was already there in that population, much more than in today’s specialized,
genetically depleted breeds. That’s why you can’t start with a chihuahua
population, and expect that breeding/selection will eventually produce Great Danes.

2. Today we divide the animals into those we call tame (mostly herbivores), and
those we call wild (both herbivores and carnivores), but this distinction did not
apply before Adam sinned.

Genesis 1:30 says, ‘And to every beast … I have given every green herb for food’, and Genesis 1:31, ‘And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.’ From these we conclude that animals did not kill each other for food pre-Fall, and they had no reason to fear man.

This means that we can regard them all as being tame at the time Adam named them.
It also means that they would not have eaten each other, while taking part in any
naming procession!

The animals which Adam named are specifically described in
    Genesis 2:20. They were the ‘cattle’, ‘the fowl of the air’ (birds), and ‘every beast of the field’. This classification has no correlation with today’s arbitrary system of man-made taxonomy (amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, insects), but is a more natural system based on the relation of the animals to man’s interests.

If we compare this naming list with the creation list in  Genesis 1:20–25—birds and sea creatures (created on Day Five), beasts of the earth, cattle, creeping things—we see there are several very significant differences. 2 Adam was not required to name any of the sea creatures, or any of the creeping things. And as the beasts of the field were not specifically mentioned in the creation list, we can regard them as being a subdivision of the beasts of the earth. That is, Adam was required to name only some of the total land animal population of his own day.

There is no suggestion that the naming was meant to be comprehensive. From this
it follows that Adam’s task was not to provide a scientific taxonomy, but
a set of general names of a selection of the animals, for the benefit of average
human beings who would come after him.

So what animals were named?

1. The cattle (Hebrew: behemah)

The Hebrew term used here usually refers to animals which lend themselves to domestication—what we might call ‘domestic fauna’. Though no creatures were ‘wild’
in the modern sense, they would not all have been equally suitable for use by man.

It is interesting to note that most of the different breeds of what we call cattle
today can be traced back to a single basic type, namely the aurochs, which itself
is probably descended from the same created kind as the buffalo and bison group.3

Likewise, all the varieties of dog we have today have been bred from one basic dog/wolf type. Similar considerations may well apply to many other species of animals we use today, such as the horse.

All of this gives a total of a few dozen kinds at the most of behemah for Adam to
name.

2. The fowl of the air

The Bible mentions some 50 different birds, whereas modern ornithologists divide
the bird class into about 8,600 species. Of these, some 5,100 are in the order Passeriformes (perching birds), divided into suborders, families, and subfamilies; and there are about 3,500 species allotted to all other orders of birds in their families. Thus there are 285 species in the pigeon family, 127 species in the cuckoo family, 18
species in the penguin family, and so on. So how many birds did Adam have to name?

It is instructive to consider what Encyclopaedia Britannica says about
parrots. ‘The avian order Psittaciformes [parrots, lories, cockatoos] contains
more than 300 species of generally brightly colored, noisy, tropical birds, to which
the general name parrot may be applied.’

We do not know whether all such ‘parrots’ today are the descendants
of one created kind, or whether the parrots of today descended from a handful of
original kinds, which had (created) similarities to each other such that today we
group them all under ‘parrot’.

If they were from one created kind, then instead of the 300 we have today, there
would have been only one for Adam to name. Even if there were, say, three parrot
kinds originally, it would have been fully legitimate (just as today) for these
all to have been given the general term ‘parrot’. Therefore, only one
representative from the three kinds would have been needed in the naming procession for the name ‘parrot’ (in whatever tongue Adam spoke) to have been given.

By the same reasoning, Adam probably named one ‘pigeon’, one ‘cuckoo’,
one ‘penguin’, and so on.

Colliers Encyclopedia lists a total of 163 families of all living, fossil,
and extinct birds.6 This means that if Adam named only one representing each such modern group, to which the same ‘general name’ could be applied, then there could have been fewer than a couple
of hundred birds involved.

3. The beast(s) of the field

The Hebrew word sadeh, translated ‘field’ in several Bible versions, has the meaning of a flat open plain. The term ‘beast(s) of the field’ occurs several times in the Old Testament. These are all in a post-Fall situation, that is, after sin had entered the world.

They included animals that move in when humans move out (Exodus 23:29), ‘wild asses’ (Psalm 104:11), ‘dragons and owls’ (Isaiah 43:20),7 animals that prey on sheep (Ezekiel 34:8), and a range of carnivores (Ezekiel 39:17). As the condition of sin did not apply when Adam named the animals, the most we can take from these verses is an indication of the variety of animals involved.

It is better to think of sadeh (‘field’) as referring to the habitat, although not perhaps to the extent of asking ‘which field’? or ‘was the field the Garden of Eden?’

Taking all these factors into account, particularly the matter of habitat, the beasts
of the field named were probably those animals which live today in open country
and venture close to human habitation. Not named were probably those animals which live exclusively in forest, jungles, mountains, wetlands, deserts, etc.

On the basis of our earlier discussion concerning birds, it is clear that nowhere
near the number of species extant today would have been involved. Adam presumably needed to name only one ‘snake’ (or at the most possible a few major
anatomical differences, like ‘python’, ‘rattlesnake’, ‘cobra’). Likewise for many types of animals.

It is therefore completely inappropriate to talk of his having had to name the 6,000
species of reptiles or the 2,000 species of amphibians known today.8 Quite apart from the fact that many, if not most, of these have been excluded on the basis of habitat anyway. Thus, even allowing for extinct types, it would seem more than generous to allow for counting of a thousand ‘beasts of the field’—in reality, the figure may well have been in the low hundreds.

Was Adam equal to the task?

We learn language by association, but Adam, from the moment he was created, had
language. Therefore he (and then Eve) must have already had built in ‘programs’
in their memory banks, so that when God said, ‘Don’t…’ (Genesis 2:17), they immediately knew exactly what this meant. It seems that they must also have known what it would mean to die, even though they had never seen anything dead.

It is therefore reasonable for us to conclude that, at the ‘naming parade’, Adam could speak a precise language, using one or two words in place of a long description, just as our one word ‘elephant’ refers to ‘a large, big-eared, trunk-nosed, tusked quadruped’.

It also means that he did not need to ponder each decision. His naming of each different kind of animal could therefore have been both quick and appropriate, and also without confusion, for he would have had the capacity to recall the names he already had allocated with a pre-Fall memory that was crystal clear and voluminous.

So, even in the unlikely event that there were as many as a thousand animals paraded
before Adam, how long would it have taken him to name them?

There are 3,600 seconds in an hour, so Adam could have completed his task in under
an hour. If he did it in a more leisurely and contemplative fashion, it would have
taken a few hours at the most (excluding time out for ‘coffee breaks’!). Surely a pleasant day’s work, leaving plenty of time for God to create Eve from Adam’s side that same afternoon.

Why?

Adam had been given dominion over the animals (Genesis 1:28), and God now provided him with the opportunity to exercise this responsibility in a way which established his authority and supremacy—in ancient times, it was an act of authority to impose names (cf.  Daniel 1:7) and an act of submission to receive them.

This exercise also shows that Adam was not an ape-man, and indeed it was intended
by God to show that he had no ape-like siblings among which to find fellowship or
a mate (cf. Genesis 2:20b: ‘for Adam there was not found an help meet [i.e. helper suitable] for him’).

Contrary to the wishful thinking of evolutionists, the first man was not some stooped,
dimwitted, grunting hominid, separated from his ape-like ancestors by a genetic
mutation or two. The Bible portrays Adam as being essentially different from the
animal world, because he had been created ‘in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:27).

This term refers primarily to man’s God-consciousness—his capacity for worshipping and loving God, his ability to understand and choose between right and wrong, and his capacity for holiness.

A secondary meaning includes such things as man’s mental powers, reason, and
capacity for articulate, grammatical, symbolic speech. In Adam, before sin, these
capacities may have dwarfed anything we know today.

God in His omniscience would have foreknown the rise of humanistic naturalism in
the twentieth century. This episode, way back in the Garden of Eden, highlights
for those who have an eye to see it, the false and unbiblical nature of the evolutionary
theory of human origins!

Great work at copying and pasting an article. You do realize that you weren't even able to ask the question using conventional English grammar? You said "Did Adam really NAMED all animals in one day?" And yet you want to be taken seriously? This article is a very superficial ad hoc rationalization. I guarantee you, someone with the same mindset can rationalize absolutely anything, no matter how nonsensical or illogical or unrealistic. I could use superficial ad hoc rationalization to prove literally every single creation myth of ancient tribal groups. Creationists always play this game. First they say 'kinds' actually has a scientific taxonomic definitition (in the Hebrew there is no such thing). Then they say that 'kinds' does not equal species. Then they say "aha, problem solved." Usually their readers are too ignorant of the scientific data to know otherwise. There are perhaps 8.7 million different species in this world today. This number amounts to about 0.01% of all the species that have ever lived, given the fossil evidence. Creationists trick their readers by whittling that down to a few thousand "kinds" that are never really classified. Then they say these few thousand were able to "microevolve" into billions of species, of which 99.9% died/went extinct. All in a matter of a few years. This is the most ridiculous explanation ever. It's easier to say "magic did it." Animals live in very different ecological zones, temperatures, and environments. You simply cannot have all the animals in the world in one environment and expect them all to survive. Unless you add magic. Then anything is possible. It's even possible that they were one a different planet made out of marshmallows. That is just as easily provable with magic and superficial ad hoc rationalizations. There are vast physiological and morphological differences in family and genera of animals. These "kinds" creationists talk about mean that both the lion and the household kitten are the same "kind" (creationists actually say this). So essentially creationists are left with the following two choices: (Option A) Cats can evolve into lions, both descended from an evolutionary common ancestor in a few thousand years, Adam named this ancestor, and then THOUSANDS of species evolved from this ancestor... and this is not evolution. This is quite frankly a display of blatant inconsistency. Creationists commonly ask evolutionists to show even one species (yes they say species, not kind) that evolved recently. Creationists attempt to use this as evidence against evolution. Then in the next breath they say that THOUSANDS of species, from Tigers to Persians cats evolved from a feline common ancestor in a few thousands years. This is UTTERLY inconsistent. This is a direct admission that evolution from one species and even genera, does happen, and happens quickly. This means creationists believe in inter species and inter genera evolution (cat to tiger, bulldog to wolf), they just believe in a different mechanism (without an inkling of evidence.) (Option B) This type of evolution doesn't happen, all the species or genera were specially created. Then we have another problem, the cat and lion are not so similar that if the two were presented to Adam, he would just call them the same name. This is preposterous when you consider this scenario in real life, not in mythical abstraction: If a household cat, a large wolf and a large tiger were presented to Adam, and he had to put all three animals into only two "kinds" would he really put the tiny cat with the large lion? Would not the outward appearance of the large flesh eating lion and wolf necessitate them to be in the same category? Would not the sharp carnivores teeth and large size make it easier to put the two together than to place the cat and lion in the same "kind"? It's easy to wave away the facts when one is very good at abstract thinking, but much harder when one is grounded in reality. Every step of this repose very literally requires magic. The animals magically came to him. He magically was smart. There was magically less animals. They magically evolved to create the current biodiversity. Magic this and magic that. Have you ever considered that perhaps God is bigger than your ideas of him? Certainly he could have done all these paradoxical magic tricks in the beginning and then stopped doing it all as soon as we invented cameras and science... or maybe he is just grander than you ever imagined?

Excellent blog Yuriy! Thank you for sharing your honest journey. I underwent a similar journey and can relate to most of your experience. I was not as vocal about my creationist beliefs at a young age nor did I run in those circles, so I didn't have the same social backlash that you describe. That said, I've learned as much from the replies to your blog (now 17) about human behavior, as I did about the very poignant and scientific rationale you site in favor of evolution. The whole thing beautifully illustrates the exceedingly glaring problem with religious dogma and doctrine that relies solely on interpretation and revelation. None of which agrees with the next and all of which are poor reasons to believe anything! I'm now a very happy born-again agnostic. That is to say, when I was born (of a non-virgin) I was agnostic and believed in nothing at all, ready to believe in anything, including Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as long as my parents or priest said so. Today, my agnosticism remains ready to believe in anything, but only with sufficient evidence (evolution). Never again will I believe in something purely because of tradition, authority or revelation. No more worries about a benevolent (oft angry), omniscient, gray-bearded man concerned about primate genitals, or a malevolent red-horned boogeyman under one's bed. Best of all, I'm no longer obligated to uphold the weakest positions ever postulated on the origins of life, Earth and the cosmos like YEC and ID.

I've experienced a fun journey in this area. After leaving my fundamentalist community behind, I've encountered two college pastors who have influenced me greatly. One of the ways they have influenced me is in my view of evolution. It was a confusing and exciting time. A decade later I am still exploring the implications of accepting that God could have used evolution as means of creation. This is my current position.

In the Book of Jonah it says that God made a plant grew as a shadow for Jonah. The plant grew like very fast. God didn't "needed" evolution for that. Check out in Jonah that place, I don't know it by heart. With all due respect and love, evolution did not accur on a macro level, only on a micro level, and that is called adaptation and it has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is a lie from the Fathers of Lies, which more and more christians buy. If you love God, He is not pleased with you believing that. Jesus also healed the soldier's ear in like a second, because He is God, the 2nd Person. Not believing the creation account is a very dangerous place to be. That is not the Spirit who is making you not believe that simple true, but it's your flesh and maybe another spirit. Not good man, be careful and believe God, who will create the New Heavens and New Earth, without evolution. To be born again or justified, is the greatest miracle of God's Creation. He creates a new heart and justify, in one moment. We grow in sanctification, but the justification is taking place in a moment, like He said: "let there be light." God bless, praying for you.