This course seems to be great, but I cannot afford it at this time. There are some questions that I believe are relevant to the course which I doubt will be discussed. One that will probably come up, is the fact that doing a search to see how the Bible uses Morning, Evening or as in Genesis one Morning and Evening, as well as the ordinals first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth you come up with they are in all other occasions in scriptures, (except one single occasion the word Evening refers to a period of time, excluding that single occasion, they refer to a literal day, for Morning and Evening, ordinals always refer to a literal whatever it is they are referring to. That is referring to a day, it is always a day, week, it is always a literal week, year it is always a year horse, it is always a specific horse. It would seem to restrict one's use, unless you are saying that interpretation of Genesis one is an exclusion of the normal rules hermeneutics.
A question you probably have not had posed to you, and I doubt will be in the course, is just what is essential to the idea the earth was created, and life hereon was created? The very bare essentials to the idea. Does this course ignore this initial question? Does this course assume the core to the concept of Creation by God includes some extra stipulations? Are there extra stipulations to Creation, we Christians assume without any thought? My answer is yes there is. First the answer to the core question, what is the essentials for Creation to be a reality? Answer: There must be a Creator. He has to exist at the time of Creation. He must be in the local needed to be the Creator. He must exist outside of that which He creates. Since He must pre-exist that which He Creates, He must exist before it exists, so His existence is independent of and outside of that which He Creates. He must be able to Create the Creation. He must have acted to do so. First addition to Creation, we add, is simple, we assume the Creator is wise, and uses the wisdom to make an intelligent creation. Second assumption we accept, is the Creation was intentional, that is God or the Creator intended to Create the universe, our galaxy, solar system, planet and life. Granting all that, we now assume a couple other things. We assume that Creation in Six days has some meaning. It could be literal, figurative, a framework or whatever. However, the question comes into play, why is there any consideration of six days. You may point out I already answered that in the discussion I put forth about the descriptors connected to Day (yom) at the start. You are correct, but in making the point, you have answered the why I ask the question. This question has nothing to do with the bare essentials of Creation or chance. It has to do with rather we can trust the word of The Creator, because the only reason the question arises is He said that is the time frame He created the universe. Now we are quibbling what he meant in making the claim. I say we need to see why He even said He created the universe in six days. The question also arises why do we have Creation happening six thousand years ago? Te answer is The Scriptures give us several genealogies which when stitched together seems to add up to four thousand years, but end at the time of Christ. Adding the the thousand years from Christ to now, we get six thousand years. Again this is God's Word. Now the question is to first explain why God made these two issues, if they are not referent of literal reality. If they are, the young earth position is the only acceptable, if they are not, what is the purpose of putting them forth in the first place? To say there is cultural and world view issues being addressed, you need to show how using this framework is better then some other metaphor or linguistic expression. I wonder if there will be an answer to this question. Me, I am just a simple person, worked thirty years as a parking attendant, now as a greeter in a liquidation store.