Despite televangelist Pat Robertson‘s long history of saying batshit crazy things, he’s always been weirdly pro-science when it comes to evolution and Creationism.
He has said for years that Creationists’ belief in a young Earth “wasn’t inspired by the Lord,” that “you have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to think that this Earth that we live in only has 6,000 years of existence,” and that trying to rationalize a young Earth “just doesn’t compute.”
Last year, he claimed that God didn’t create the Earth in six “literal 24-hour days” but rather six “galactic” days. Whatever that means.
He used that tactic against yesterday when trying to reconcile the differences between the Book of Genesis and reality for a viewer who couldn’t make sense of it:
… I can say that the Short Earth [sic] thing is wrong, but what I’ll say is how do you count a day? What is a day? A day is how long it takes our planet to rotate one time and that’s evening and morning, because it’s the way it faces the Sun. So it turns. And that’s 24 hours. That is a day.
Now, what is a Sun day? The Sun has to turn. How long does it take the Sun to turn? It must take a lot longer. It’s a great big planet. [Note: The Sun is a star, not a planet.]
Alright, now let’s assume it’s the universe. How long does it take for the universe to turn all the way around? A billion years? Ten billion years? How long does it take?
A day with the Lord is a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day. So it’s — you know — you can be honest with scripture and still, if you understand, a Heavenly day, a Universal day, is a long time.
But the truth is, without question, without question, you cannot account for all of the geological phenomenon, all the things that have been discovered, there is no way under Heaven that this Earth that we live in could have taken place in 6,000 years.
He couldn’t have possibly done it. But that’s how you reconcile with scripture.
Got that, everyone? The Bible is true… but when Genesis says God created the universe in six days, the Bible might have been referring to six universal days. Not day days. Even though universal days aren’t really a thing. And “Sun days” are roughly the same length of time as “regular” days.
It’s a strange way to appease the Ken Ham crowd by not denying the validity of Genesis while still denying the core of what it says.
Robertson gave the right answer with the wrong explanation. It’s true the Earth isn’t a few thousand years old, but it’s not because the Bible was vague about how long it took for God to poof it into existence. He should’ve just told the viewer that Genesis shouldn’t be taken literally.
Trying to rationalize a literal interpretation of the Bible just makes everyone a little dumber than before.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
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