24 Hours?
Sometimes you will read or hear a creationist mention that each day of creation were literally 24 hours long. This begs the question, “were the days of creation 24 hours long?” That’s an important question. Theistic evolutionists contend that the earth is roughly 4.6 billion years old, and they argue, “therefore, the days of creation cannot be a 24-hour day period.” Many times I have read creationist say, “based on the plain reading of the Genesis creation account the days had to be a 24-hour day for each day of the Genesis creation account.” This begs the question could it be a literal 24 hours? There is simply too much science and evidence against the deep time theory, see other discussions regarding that topic. Here we will focus on whether the days of creation were literally 24 hour days.
Well let’s go to Scripture, perhaps you are already aware of which passage I am going to turn to to prove that each day of creation was literally a 24 hour period. Did you guess what chapter and verse directly says that days of creation were 24 hours in the Genesis creation account?
Think about this for a moment, there is not one verse that says the days of creation were 24 hours. In fact, the phrase “24 hours” does not appear in the Bible one time, and folks it is a good thing and here is why:
Right now the earth is spinning at a 1,037 miles per hour, and the lunar gravitational force causes our ocean tides twice a day on the earth, and these ocean tides take away angular momentum from the earth’s spin, which means the ocean tides are slowing the spin of the earth. The moon uses this energy taken out of the earth’s spin and uses it to slowly recede away from the earth. This is at very slow pace today, the moon is moving away from the earth on average at about two inches per year. Although that is not a significant pace today, it still equals that the earth is fractionally slowing each year, and the duration of the day is progressively getting longer.
The rate of recession of the moon away from the earth is not linear. This means that the rate today is not the rate a millennia ago. The reason that the rate of recession is not linear but is parabolic is because of the inverse square law of gravity.
The inverse square law means that the intensity of something is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. For this discussion it means that the further away an object is from a gravitational source, the weaker that gravitational effect is on nearby objects by a factor of 1 divided by the square of the distance. For example, if an object is 2 miles further away from earth than when it started, then the gravitational intensity of influence is ¼ of the original distance. And if the distance is three miles away from its original position from the source of gravity then the gravitational intensity of influence is 1/9th of the original distance.
Image Credit: Tutorvista.
As we go back in time the moon would be closer to the earth, and since the moon would be closer to the earth its gravitational affect on our ocean tides would be proportionately greater. And since the ocean tides take away angular momentum from the spin of the earth, then as the moon was closer the further back in time we go, the greater ocean tides, which then results in a greater slowing of the Earth’s spin, and this is why the rate of lunar recession is not linear but is parabolic.
The further back in time we go, the faster the earth spin. Likewise, in lock step, the further back in time we go, the rate of recession of the moon away from the earth was greater. This means that the rate of recession today, two inches annually, was not the rate a millennia ago. In fact, the rate was parabolic, which means that the rate of lunar recession from the earth during the days of Adam and Eve was more like 20 meters annually. That is what it means to have a parabolic rate, that there was exponential change to the rate of recession as parameters changed.
And for this reason, this means that the days for Adam and Eve were shorter because the earth was spinning faster.
In the book Origins, The Origins Of Matter, Space, Time, and Life, I did the calculations and concluded that the length of a day for Adam and Eve, and creation was roughly 17 hours. Today’s rotational velocity of the earth is spinning at a 1,037 miles per hour, and a 17 hour day, in the days of Adam and Eve, results in a rotational velocity of around 1,600 miles per hour. This increased rotational velocity reduces the gravitational force by 1.4%.
This is why someone cannot say that the duration of a day in the Genesis creation account was 24 hours. That notion is wrong, and science illustrates that as one goes back in time the earth spun faster, the days were shorter, and this is demonstrated by lunar gravitational force from the moon affecting the ocean tides.
Other Contributing Factors:
There are also other factors to consider that affect the rotational velocity of the earth. For example, volcanic activity, which fractionally disrupts the rotational velocity of the earth.
Also, China’s largest dam, the Three Gorges Dam, when they finally completed the dam and stopped the flow of the river, the stoppage of the flow of the river fractionally slowed the rotational velocity of the earth. The point being is that the duration of the day is not constant, environmental conditions affect the duration of the day and one cannot extrapolate back to the Genesis creation account, to the days of Adam and Eve and contend that they were 24 hours. It is wrong to say there were 24 hours to each day of creation, and it is wrong for theistic evolutionists to reject the Genesis creation account by saying, “I reject creation because I can’t accept a 24-hour day period.”
In addition, each earthquake, volcanic eruption, asteroid impact, and ocean tide is slowing the earth’s rotational velocity. It is possible for an asteroid to strike the earth with the exact vector, trajectory, and speed to accelerate the earth’s spin, but that would require such a precise glancing impact that the odds are very unlikely. Look at a basketball player spinning a ball on their finger, only a precise tap of the ball with a precise vector, trajectory, and speed can increase the speed of the ball. This takes a lot of practice and intelligence to accomplish.
What are the implications for theistic evolutionists? These are those who accept God but they say that God did it as atheists say things happened in the beginning and God did it by a long and slow process of molecules to man. Since the science and evidence tells us that the days progressively get shorter as you go back in time, then the days of the Genesis creation account become even more literal rotations of the earth. What I mean is that the science and logic above further establishes that the days of creation were literally six rotations of the earth and not eons of time for each day. That the further one travels back in time, the closer the moon is to the earth, which means that one cannot go back too far in time, such as past ten thousand years because then the moon would be close enough to the earth to cause too great of ocean tides, which would adversely effect life. There is a location on Earth, called the Bay of Fundy. The ocean tides are so severe there that they rise and fall 40 feet twice each day. This adversely affects life in that location. Life thrives above that tide line and below in the ocean, but when you have such a severe ocean tides, it adversely affects life. This illustrates that with severe ocean tides, life suffers in that area.
Therefore, one cannot go too far back in time, such as one hundred thousand years, because then the moon would be too close to the earth and cause too severe of an ocean tide, and that would disrupt the entire surface of the globe.
There is another factor to consider, it is called the Roche Limit. The Roche Limit is a term in cosmology, and it means that when one celestial body gets too close to another celestial body their gravitational forces cause disintegration of the surface and eventually destroys the celestial body. We know that the further we go back in time, the closer the moon gets to the earth, well there is a point where you cannot go too far back in time otherwise the Roche Limit will just cause the destruction of the moon.
Now, at today’s rate of recession, if one extrapolates a linear rate backwards in time, in other words the rate we see today (two inches annually) is the rate the moon receding away from the earth throughout its resonant history, then one could come up with a billion years ago the moon was at that Roche limit. But that would be denying the fact that the moon’s gravitational force is causing our ocean tides, and thus, the closer the moon is to the earth the greater the ocean tides, which means the more angular momentum is taken out of the Earth’s rotational velocity, which forces a parabolic rate of recession. And for this reason, the rate of lunar recession is estimated to be roughly 20 meters (60 feet) annually during Adam’s and Eve’s days.
That is why creationists should not use the phrase “24 hours” for each day of creation, and instead should simply say that “each day of creation was literally a rotation of the earth.” I am thankful that God the Holy Spirit, with all of His wisdom and knowledge of science, wrote an inerrant Bible and infallible Word, and did not use a 24-hour nomenclature for the Genesis creation account. Remember, science is a dear ally to the Bible, and it is never science versus the Bible, but it is science and the Bible versus the opinions of evolutionary scientists.
If you are still not convinced, then consider this, we do not even have a 24 hour day today. The duration of the day today is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.1 seconds.