Genesis 1 and 2 ~ Creation

Job 38:4-7 "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me,
if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone- while the morning stars sang
together and all the angels shouted for joy?"

YES and YES again at last someone on site is on my wavelength!!

.
• Gen 1:3 . . Then God said "Let there be light" and there was light.

The creation of light was a very, very intricate process. First God had to
create particulate matter, and along with those particles their specific
properties, including mass; if any. Then He had to invent the laws of nature
to govern how matter behaves in combination with and/or in the presence
of, other kinds of matter in order to generate electromagnetic radiation.

Light's properties are curious. It propagates as waves in a variety of lengths
and frequencies, and also as quantum bits called photons. And though light
has no mass; it's influenced by gravity. Light is also quite invisible to the
naked eye. For example: you can see the Sun when you look at it, and you
can see the Moon when sunlight reflects from its surface. But none of the
Sun's light is visible to you in the void between them and that's because
light isn't matter; it's energy; and there is really a lot of it.

Space was at one time thought to contain absolutely nothing until radio
astronomers discovered something called cosmic microwave background. In
a nutshell: CMB fills the universe with light that apparently radiates from no
detectable source. The popular notion is that CMB is energy left over from
the Big Bang.

The same laws that make it possible for matter to generate electromagnetic
radiation also make other conditions possible too; e.g. fire, wind, water, ice,
soil, rain, life, centrifugal force, thermodynamics, fusion, dark energy,
gravity, atoms, organic molecules, magnetism, inertia, momentum, color,
radiation, refraction, reflection, high energy X-rays and gamma rays,
temperature, pressure, force, sound, friction, and electricity; et al. So the
creation of light was a pretty big deal; yet Genesis scarcely gives it passing
mention. That's no doubt because Genesis is mostly about origins rather
than mechanics.

2Cor 4:6 verifies that light wasn't introduced into the cosmos from outside in
order to dispel the darkness and brighten things up a bit; but rather, it
radiated out of the cosmos from inside-- from itself --indicating that the
cosmos was created to be self-illuminating by means of the various
interactions of the matter that God made for it; including, but not limited to,
the Higgs Boson.
_

.
• Gen 1:4a . . And God inspected the light, and saw that it was good

God didn't see the light until He said let there be light; meaning of course
that natural light didn't exist until God made it.

God declared that light is good; but He didn't declare that darkness is good.
In point of fact, darkness typically represents bad things in the Bible; while
light typically represents good things. It's been a rule of thumb from the
very beginning.

NOTE: It's curious to me that most Bible students have no trouble readily
conceding that everything else in the first chapter of Genesis is natural, e.g.
the cosmos, the earth, the atmosphere, water, dry land, the Sun, the Moon,
the stars, aqua life, winged life, terra life, flora life, and human life.

But when it comes to light they choke; finding it impossible within
themselves to believe that Genesis just might be consistent in its description
of the creative process. I mean, if all those other things are natural, why
wouldn't the light be natural too? In point of fact, without natural light,
planet Earth would become a cold dead world right quick.
_

.
• Gen 1:4b-5a . . and God separated the light from the darkness. God called
the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.

Defining the properties of day and night may seem like a superfluous detail,
but comes in very handy for organizing the three days and nights related to
Christ's crucifixion and resurrection per Matt 12:40.

• Gen 1:5b . . And there was evening and there was morning, a first Day.

NOTE: There are two kinds of Days in the first chapter of Genesis. One is a
creation day and the other is an Earth day. It's very important to keep those
two kinds of days distinct and separate in our thinking because they are as
unalike as sugar and salt.

Anyway; when you think about it; a strict chronology of evening and
morning doesn't define day, it defines overnight; viz: darkness. In order to
obtain a full 24-hour day, you'd have to define creation's first Day as a day
and a night rather than an evening and a morning.

Well; thus far Genesis defines Day as a time of light rather than a 24-hour
amalgam of light and dark; plus there was no Sun to cause physical
evenings and mornings till creation's fourth Day so we have to come at this
issue from another angle apart from physical properties.

According to Gen 1:24-31, God created humans and all terra critters on the
sixth Day; which has to include dinosaurs because on no other Day did God
create beasts but the sixth.

However; the sciences of geology and paleontology, in combination with
radiometric dating, strongly suggest that dinosaurs preceded humans by
several million years. So then, in my estimation, the Days of creation should
be taken to represent epochs rather than 24-hour events. That's not an
unreasonable estimation; for example:

"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were
created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven." (Gen 2:4)

The Hebrew word for "day" in that verse is yowm (yome) which is the very
same word for each of the six Days of God's creation labors. Since yowm in
Gen 2:4 refers to a period of time obviously much longer than a 24-hour
calendar day; it justifies suggesting that each of the six Days of creation
were longer than 24 hours apiece too. In other words: yowm is ambiguous
and not all that easy to interpret sometimes.

Anyway; this "day" thing has been a stone in the shoe for just about
everybody who takes Genesis seriously. It's typically assumed that the Days
of creation consisted of twenty-four hours apiece; so Bible students end up
stumped when trying to figure out how to cope with the 4.5 billion-year age
of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic, Jurassic, Mesozoic,
Cenozoic, Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass extinction events.

BTW: The epoch theory is only a second opinion, so to speak. There are
other theories out there to choose from; people aren't stuck with this one as
if it's the only possible explanation.

NOTE: Galileo believed that science and religion are allies rather than
enemies-- two different languages telling the same story. He believed that
science and religion complement each other-- science answers questions
that religion doesn't bother to answer, and religion answers questions that
science cannot answer.

For example: theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking understood pretty well
how the cosmos works; but could never scientifically explain why it should
exist at all. Well; in my estimation, the only possible answer to the "why" is
found in intelligent design; which is a religious explanation rather than
scientific. Religion's "why" is satisfactory for most folks. No doubt most
scientists would prefer something a bit more empirical.
_

.
• Gen 1:6-8a . . And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the
firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the
waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the
firmament Heaven.

In this case the word for "heaven" is singular probably because we're only
looking at the Earth's atmosphere.

We can easily guess what is meant by water that's below the sky. But is
there really water that's above it? Yes, and it's a lot! According to an article
in the Sept 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine, Earth's atmosphere
holds roughly 3,095 cubic miles of water in the form of vapor. That may
seem like a preposterous number of cubic miles of water; but not really
when it's considered that Lake Superior's volume alone is estimated at
nearly 3,000.

Our home planet is really big; a whole lot bigger than sometimes realized.
It's surface area, in square miles, is 196,940,000. To give an idea of just
how many square miles that is: if somebody were to wrap a belt around the
equator made of one-mile squares; it would only take 24,902 squares to
complete the distance; which is a mere .012644% of the surface area.

Some of the more familiar global warming gases are carbon dioxide,
fluorocarbons, methane, and ozone. But as popular as those gases are with
the green crowd, they're bit players in comparison to the role that ordinary
water vapor plays in global warming. By some estimates; atmospheric water
vapor accounts for more than 90% of global warming; which is not a bad
thing because without atmospheric water vapor, the earth would be so cold
that the only life that could exist here would be extremophiles.

How much water is below the firmament? Well; according to the same
National Geographic article; the amount contained in swamp water, lakes
and rivers, ground water, and oceans, seas, and bays adds up to something
like 326.6 million cubic miles; and that's not counting the 5.85 million cubic
miles tied up in living organisms, soil, ground ice and permafrost, ice sheets,
glaciers, and permanent snow.

To put that in perspective: a tower 326.6 million miles high would exceed
the Sun's distance better than 3½ times. It would've exceeded the distance
between Mars and Earth on July 27, 2018 by 5 times.

• Gen 1:8b . . And the evening and the morning were the second day.

At this point, there was no Sun in place to cause physical evenings and
mornings; so we can safely assume that the terms are merely place-cards
indicating the completion of one of creation's six-step processes and the
beginning of another.
_

You provided much good information in your post. It’s unfortunate that you summarized it with unwarranted speculation. God created light on day 1; there is no reason to conclude that the light was substantially different from sunlight.

.
• Gen 1:9 . . And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered
together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

At this point, dry land as yet had no soil because at first it would've been
bare rock; and there's not only a lot of it, but quite a bit of it is very scenic
too.

One of my favorite geological wonders is Arches National Park in Utah USA,
and another is Canyon Lands National Park, also in Utah. Some very smart
people have yet to figure out how nature formed the amazing features in
those areas; but I guessing that God, the most skillful painter/sculptor that
there is, did it because He wanted to leave His mark on the Earth by creating
something spectacular.

"He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You
covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the
mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took
to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you
appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they
might not again cover the earth." (Ps 104:5-9)

That passage is stunning; and clearly way ahead of its time. Mountains
rising, and valleys sinking speaks of magma pressure and tectonic plate
subduction-- on-going titanic forces that keep the Earth's surface in a
perpetual state of alteration.

Now, it's right about here that young-earth theorists have a problem
because it's obvious from physical evidence that much of the Earth's higher
elevations were inundated for a very long time before they were pushed up
to where they are now.

Take for example Mount Everest. Today its tippy top is something like
29,029 feet above sea level. The discovery of fossilized sea lilies near its
summit proves that the Himalayan land mass has not always been
mountainous; but at one time was the floor of an ancient sea bed. This is
confirmed by the "yellow band" below Everest's summit consisting of
limestone: a type of rock made from calcite sediments containing the
skeletal remains of countless trillions of organisms who lived, not on dry
land, rather, underwater in an ocean.

Anyway; soil formation is a very slow process, sometimes taking as long as
a millennium to make just one inch; which at first would consist of little
more than powdered rock. In order for soil to become really productive, it
needs organic material mixed with it. So it's my guess that the very first
vegetation that God created were species that thrive on stone, and little by
little their remains would amend the powder to increase its fertility.

Some of the lyrics of one of AC/DC's songs says: "It's a long way to the top
if you wanna rock 'n roll". Well, it was an even longer ways to the soil from
which human life was eventually brought into viable existence.

• Gen 1:10 . . And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together
of the waters He called Seas: and God saw that it was good.

"good" meaning not that the dry ground and seas are morally acceptable,
but rather, perfectly suitable for the purposes that God had in mind for
them.

NOTE: There are Hebrew words in the Bible for marshes, rivers, and
streams; but I've yet to encounter one for lakes and ponds. In other words
"seas" suffices not only for oceans; but also for smaller accumulations. (A
rather curious sea is located at 1Kings 7:23-26)
_

.
• Gen 1:11a . . Then God said: Let the land produce vegetation

The Hebrew word for "produce" appears in only two places in the entire Old
Testament; here and Joel 2:22. It basically means to sprout. Here and in
Joel, it refers to species of plants where none of their kind previously
existed.

The variety of Earth's vegetation is boggling. It's estimated between
250,000 to 315,000 species-- that's the plants we know of but doesn't
include the ones that may have existed in the past prior to catastrophic
weather conditions and extinction events.

• Gen 1:11b-12 . . seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth
that bear fruit with the seed in it. And it was so. The earth brought forth
vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind
bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that this was good.

According to Gen 2:4-5, the land's vegetation was dormant in the beginning;
it didn't actually flourish until the atmosphere began producing moisture.

NOTE: It's believed by science that there was an era in Earth's youth called
the Carboniferous period when it was blanketed by dense jungles and
forests. As those plants and trees died, and were buried beneath layers of
sediment; their unique chemical structure caused them to be "cooked" into
solid coal; and there is really a lot of it.

Why isn't the Earth currently blanketed by dense jungles and forests? Well;
the earth's conditions today cannot produce enough humidity, nor enough
rain, nor enough global warming to sustain the kinds of heavy vegetation
that once existed in the Carboniferous era. In other words: the Earth, over
time, has managed to give itself a remarkable make-over; and at least one
element of its make-over are the mountains.

The ranges now in existence; e.g. the Andes, the Himalayas, the Rockies,
the Urals, the Appalachians, the Cascades, the Brooks Range, the Alps, etc;
and the various minor inland and coastal ranges weren't always in place
where they are now. Those were shoved up over time by the forces of
tectonic subduction, volcanism, and magma pressure. Even Yosemite's
massive granite monoliths haven't always been there. They were formed
deep underground and then somehow pushed up to where they are now.

Anyway, point being; those ranges have a very great deal to do with the
Earth's current weather systems.

• Gen 1:13 . . And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
_

I think it all went down, just like it was described in Genesis. No reason not to.

Magenta is correct here. Angels were created before the creation account of Genesis. We need to remember that there are 10 creation accounts in the Bible (just like there are 4 gospel accounts), in which some accounts mention details that others do not.

Why don't you stick with the Ten Commandments? It is entirely possible that angels were created at the same time as the stars (since the term "stars" is often used for angels). Thus they could observe all the others creatures including man being created. But NOTHING was created outside those six days of creation.

EMBEDDED IN THE 4TH COMMANDMENT: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Job 38 depicts the angels as rejoicing when the cornerstone of the earth was set (day 3). But the stars were not made until day 4. So they were not created at the same time as the stars, because they were present to observe the creation process of things made before the physical stars.

I have homework to do, so I'll lead you in a direction to study out.
Simply put, "the heavens and the earth" is our domain, but not the only domain.
There are 3 "heavens" in the Bible: (1) the atmosphere, (2) outer space, and (3) the dwelling place of God and the angels.
When the Bibles refers to "heavens" (plural), it refers to the 1st and 2nd heavens (together, they equate the physical universe). When the Bible uses "heaven" (singular), it refers to the third heaven (the domain beyond time and space).

Genesis 1 is the account of the "heavens and the earth", a term for the physical universe. But there certainly were sentient beings created beforehand, in the third heaven, which is where God's throne is, and where the fall of Satan and the fallen angels happened. Some relevant passages to the fall of Satan are Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, in which Satan is called "Lucifer" and "the prince of Tyre"

Study that out and let me know what you think

.
• Gen 1:15-18a . . and they shall serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to
shine upon the Earth. And it was so. God made the two great lights, the
greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night,
and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the
Earth, to dominate the day and the night, and to distinguish light from
darkness.

Gen 1:3-5 defines day as a condition of light, and defines night as a
condition of darkness. Gen 1:14-18 defines day on Earth as when the Sun is
up and night on Earth is defined as when the Sun is down; and that's how it
was when Christ was here.

"Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does
not stumble, because he sees the light of this world." (John 11:9)

The "light of this world" is the Sun.

At this point in biblical history, "stars" no doubt indicates all luminous
objects in the heavens seeing as how it would be a very long time before
humanity began categorizing some of the stars as planets.

I think it's important to emphasize that in the beginning God "set" the stars
in the sky just as he set the Sun and the Moon in the sky, i.e. celestial
objects didn't arrange themselves all by themselves sans any intelligent
supervision whatsoever; no, they were placed; and not only were they set in
place, but also set in motion-- nothing in the entire cosmos is standing still,
though many things appear to be.

According to Gen 1:15, stars illuminated the Earth on the "day" that God
made them.

Well; the only stars whose shine is of any practical use as illumination are
those of the Milky Way; which is estimated 100,000 to 180,000 light years in
diameter. Obviously then; if left entirely up to nature, light from stars
nearest our location in the galaxy would begin dousing the earth with
illumination long before those at the far side.

For example, light from Alpha Centauri takes only about 4½ years to reach
Earth while light from Alpha Orionis (a.k.a. Betelgeuse) takes about 640.
There are quite a few stars whose illumination reaches Earth in less than 50
years. But whether 4½ years, 50 years, 640 years, or 180,000 years; the
time involved is insignificant if we but allow that the days of creation were
epochs rather than 24-hour events.

But what's the point of putting all those objects out there in space? Well, for
one thing, they're not only brain teasers; but they're actually quite pretty.
Celestial objects decorate the night sky like the ornamentation people put up
during holidays. The night sky would sure be a bore if it was totally black.
Decorated with stars; the night sky is like a beautiful tapestry, or a celestial
Sistine Chapel.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky proclaims His handiwork."
(Ps 19:2)

Stars makes better sense that way than to try and find some other meaning
for them. The universe is simply a magnificent work of art-- just as
intriguing, if not more so, than the works of Picasso, Rembrandt,
Michelangelo, Monet, Vermeer, and/or da Vinci --testifying to the genius of
an engineer-artist without peer.

Sadly, a number of very intelligent people like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse
Tyson look to the sky for the wrong reasons. Why not just look to the sky for
inspiration instead of only exploration and discovery? What's so bad about
visiting the sky as a Guggenheim or a Louvre displaying your maker's many
faceted talents?

"For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it
evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes
of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived
in what He has made." (Rom 1:19-20)

• Gen 1:18b-19 . . And God saw that this was good. And there was evening
and there was morning, a fourth day.
_

.
• Gen 1:20-21a . . And God said: Let the water teem with living creatures,

One of the essential elements for the construction of organic life is carbon.
Well; seawater contains that element, along with several others too; and
there's plenty enough seawater that's for sure.

The word for "creature" is from nephesh (neh'-fesh) which refers to
consciousness, individuality, and self awareness. It never applies to
vegetation. For example: though saguaro cacti are alive, they aren't
nephesh because vegetation lacks a sense of individuality and is neither
conscious nor self aware, i.e. nephesh refers to all critter life great and
small; but never to non critter life.

Nephesh shows up first in Gen 1:20-21 as sea creatures and winged
creatures.

Next it shows up in Gen 1:24 as terra creatures; viz: cattle, creepy crawlies,
and wild beasts.

It shows up again in Gen 2:7 as the human creature.

It shows up again in Gen 2:19-20 as the creatures to whom Adam gave
names.

It shows up again in Gen 9:8-16 as all conscious life aboard the ark,
including Noah and his family.

Some say that animals are people too. Well . . they're certainly not human,
but according to the Bible, they are very definitely just as much a nephesh
as a human being. So I guess we could consent, at least to some degree,
that critters are people too; in their own way.
_

.
• Gen 1:20b-21a . . and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of
the sky. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and
moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and
every winged bird according to its kind.

The Hebrew word for "birds" is 'owph (ofe) which just simply means covered
with wings as opposed to covered with feathers. It's a rather unusual word
because it includes not only creatures with feathers, but according to Lev
11:13-23, 'owph also pertains to bats and flying insects. The English word
"bird" was obviously an arbitrary translation since owph is ambiguous.

What did those early flyers look like? Well; I suggest that at least some of
them had to be Pterosaurs because on no other day but the fifth did God
bring about critters with wings. Precisely when and/or how God phased out
those early skin-winged creatures is one of science's thorniest mysteries. It's
reasonable to assume that whatever exterminated the Pterosaurs should
have exterminated everything else with wings too; but somehow birds, bats,
and flying bugs are still with us.

It's important to note that winged creatures were just as distinct a creation
as aqua creatures. So winged creatures didn't evolve from creatures who
once lived in the sea. Winged creatures are a separate genre of life in their
own right, and absolutely did not evolve from some other order of life.

"great whales" is from tanniyn (tan-neen') and/or tanniym (tan-neem')
which mean: a marine or land monster. Tanniyn is sometimes translated
"dragon" as in Isa 27:1

It wasn't a tanniyn, however, that swallowed Jonah. That creature was
either a dagah (daw-gaw') a dag (dawg) or a da'g (dawg). All three words
mean a fish.

NOTE: The reason I quoted the three Hebrew words for "fish" is because
the fact is: translators are not always confident how best to represent a
Hebrew word with the English alphabet. In point of fact, there are ancient
Hebrew words that nobody really knows what they mean so translators are
forced to take educated guesses here and there in order to fill in the text.

"every living creature that moveth" would include not only critters that swim
but also critters that creep, e.g. starfish, lobsters, crayfish, newts, clams,
and crabs et al.

But what about aquatic dinosaurs? Well; according to Discovery's web site
"Walking With Dinosaurs" paleontologists believe there were some
amphibious reptiles such as plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, but those
creatures didn't have the gills necessary to be truly aquatic like Nemo and
his dad Marlin.
_

.
• Gen 1:21b . . And God saw that this was good.

In other words: He was satisfied.

The Hebrew word for "good" in this instance is towb (tobe) which is horribly
ambiguous. It's meanings range from morally good, to good looking, to a job
well done, to something that's good to the taste; and to a whole lot of other
things in between; e.g. a good show, good food, as good as it gets,
satisfactory, pleasing; etc, etc.

• Gen 1:22a . . God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and increase,

This is the very first place in the Bible where the Hebrew word for "bless"
shows up. It's somewhat ambiguous, but in this case I think it's pretty safe
to assume that it means to furnish freely or naturally with some power,
quality, or attribute; i.e. provide, endow, and/or empower. In other words:
the blessing of fertility was a providential act; and no doubt included
microscopic creatures as well as those visible to the naked eye.

Providence is common in the Bible; especially in Genesis.

• Gen 1:22b . . fill the waters in the seas, and let the winged creatures
increase on the earth.

Winged creatures have the advantage of flight; which, in my estimation,
makes them more fortunate than creatures confined to water. The wingers
get a much better world view from above than those below. Flying broadens
one's horizons, so to speak, and gives us a bigger picture. Amphibious
flyers, e.g. cormorants and grebes, have the best of both environs; they see
things from above as well as from below.

Aqua creatures exist in the most unlikely places. When the crew of the
bathyscaphe Trieste descended into the 35,761 feet Challenger Deep located
in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in 1960, they didn't really expect
to find anything living down there; but to their surprise, they saw a flat fish
similar to sole and flounder.

The video camera on board the Kaiko probe spotted a sea cucumber, a scale
worm and a shrimp at the bottom.

The Nereus probe spotted a polychaete worm (a multi-legged predator)
about an inch long.

• Gen 1:23 . . And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
_

.
We've come now to the sixth day when all terra life was created; including
humans.

• Gen 1:24-25 . .Then God said: Let the earth bring forth living creatures
after their kind-- cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after
their kind, And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their
kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the
ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

The Hebrew word for "living" is chay (khah'-ee) which basically indicates
existing as life as opposed to existing as non life. For example, the structural
elements of Noah's ark existed as non life; while it's passengers existed as
life.

(Some people insist that all things are alive. I recommend leaving that belief
at the door when crossing the Bible's threshold because scripture doesn't
accommodate it; and that kind of thinking only fosters confusion in the
minds of those who entertain it.)

Chay makes it first appearance at Gen 1:20 in reference to aqua creatures
and winged creatures; and many times in the Old Testament thereafter;
including fifteen times in reference to the Creator; e.g. Jer 10:10, indicating
that Man's maker is a living being as opposed to a totem pole or a mythical
fantasy. There is a very large number of instances recorded in the Old
Testament where the Creator speaks of Himself as "I am".

"creeping things" is translated from the Hebrew word remes (reh'-mes)
which, according to Psalm 104:25, tells of not only creatures that live on
land, but also those that live in water. Remes are apparently creatures that
skitter, slither, or hop rather than bound and/or gallop; which suggests that
remes is somewhat ambiguous and not all that easy to classify; in point of
fact, it could even include amphibious critters.

Terra critters weren't created ex nihilo; rather, from the very land upon
which they live; i.e. God used earthly materials and ingredients already at
hand to construct them. Neat-O. Not only are the various plants and animals
indigenous to planet Earth; but they are part of it too and blend right back in
when they die and decompose.

Beasts of the earth, in this instance, simply refers to wild life as opposed to
domesticated life. Dinosaurs would've been in the wild classification.

Cattle refers to mute beasts (a.k.a. dumb animals) --the herd species from
which came those that can be domesticated for Man's uses. They can pull
plows and wagons, provide tallow for candles and soap, and hide and wool
for clothes, meat and dairy for table, carry loads, and transport people from
place to place on their backs. (Probably one of the better things that Spain
did for Native Americans was make it possible for them to have horses.)

Not all herd animals can be tamed. Zebras, for instance, and male elephants
are not particularly suited to domestication.

It's no accident that some of the animals are so useful to Man. God made
them for the express purpose of serving people. Although they're nephesh,
same as Man, that doesn't make them equals with Man. However, although
beasts are below the rank of the image and likeness of God, people have no
right to be cruel to animals. But Man does have the right, by the creator's
fiat, to take advantage of them; and to induct them into slavery for Man's
benefit.

No doubt some of us would be happy if a few of the creeping species had not
been created, e.g. scorpions, centipedes, cockroaches, tarantulas, fleas,
ticks, ants; et al.
_

It is 'Literal" but the word day is the Hebrew word YOWM which simply means "PERIOD OF TIME" and the correct time must then be described. That is why YOWM is described as 50, plus things, Year, Months, Everlasting, Day, Whole, etc., etc. Thus that TIE PERIOD which needed to be placed in the written word for YOWM on the "first day" was 9.2 billion years because it took that long from the Big Bang where God unleashes His creation via the spoken word until the Earth came into existence on Day 2, thus the first day lasted 9. 2 billion years.

But these cats will get to Heaven ad say, Ughhh, well, I didn't know that God? And of course, they will then understand that just didn't think it through. The bible even tells us the proper order of creation. "There was DARKNESS on the Face of the Deep" but do you think they understand that means the first 400 million years was total darkness? As seen below via the WMAP which mapped out the whole universe using microwaves !! SEE BELOW:


NOTICE the Dark Ages for 400 million years? Now look at Genesis 1:1-2

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Without Form means it had only been spoken into existence, it had not yet arrived, what made up earth's crust, etc, etc. was traveling through space at this time with ZERO FORM to it. And there were NO STARS/Suns at this time, which only started happening around 400 million years later.

NOTICE, God moved on the face of the WATERS before He created light, but why? Becaue light in a beam illuminates a lost nothing, it has to be reflected in order to give great illumination, so Gid used Water to do this, our world has a Bio-dome that locks in our ever cycling moisture content when Astronauts leave our atmosphere it all of the sudden becomes much, much darker !! Thus God moved on the face of the waters simply means God used water in order to help illuminate our world.

When we think these things through they all fit, I imagine God looks at us and says, Wow, they can't put anything together, with all of this evidence.