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Adding millions of years to the Bible

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This is to illustrate that the main reason most theologians (and the general Christian public) do not accept the days of creation as ordinary 24-hour days is because of certain beliefs that popped up in the 18th century.

At that time, most people in the church believed that God created in six days just thousands of years ago. However, the idea of millions of years for the age of the fossil-bearing sediments started to become popularized. Many scientists started to insist that the Earth was many millions of years old and that the layers of rock containing the fossils were laid down over millions of years. The supposed millions-of-years age of these fossil-bearing rocks was devised on the basis of the belief that the layers were laid down slowly over millions of years. In other words, there was no scientific proof for this idea.

Because many scientists started to promote the idea of millions of years for the age of the fossil record, many theologians felt that they also had to accept the millions of years. Thus, the scientists handed the millions of years to the theologians and the theologians basically said, ‘We need to fit the millions of years into the Bible.’ Therein lies the real reason behind why so many Christians question the days of creation. They do not do it on the basis of the Biblical text, but on the belief that they must fit millions of years into the Bible.