Creation by Evolution?

A large number of people say they believe in God, but a large number of people believe in evolution too.

So there must be a lot of people who believe in both.  Some call it creation by evolution, or "old earth" creationism.   There are many variations to the theme.  

I am going to list some of the claims.   Not all of these claims are held by all of the "creation by evolution" proponents.

*  The process of evolution has been guided by the hand of God. 

*  Genesis should not be taken literally, while insisting that the bible is the inspired word of God. 

*  The 6 creation days in Genesis should be read as 6 periods, each of which could be millions of years.

*  There is a mysterious time gap of billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.  The extinct dinosaurs are said to have lived in the period described by Gen 1:1 or in the gap in-between the two verses. 

I believe this is an attempt by Christians to reconcile their faith to what they perceive as the scientific truth.  It is an effort to find a middle ground that will offend neither their faith nor their intelligence. As I will show, there are serious problems with this.  I need to quote from the bible.  The reason I do this is because the believers of this theory also profess to have faith in the validity of the bible as inspired text.  I am not using the bible to prove creation, I am using it to prove the unworkability of a "creation by evolution" theory..

Literary style in Genesis

The book of genesis in its entirety is written as a historical book.  Why the first chapter or two should all of a sudden be taken with a pinch of salt is nonsensical.  In the first chapter, the bible speaks of "It was evening, and it was morning, the second day".  Why did the writer write it in just that way?  I believe the writer tried to remove any possibility that the reader could misunderstand what he was trying to say.  He did not simply speak of 6 days.  He spoke of six days, each specifically separated by a night.  Think about it.  Moses (the assumed writer) did not have the concept of 24 hours back then.  How else was he supposed to write this part to try and make sure you do not take it for anything other than a literal 24hour period?

Unworkability of 6 long periods

Plants and vegetables were made on the second day.  The sun was only made on the third day.  If the days are separated by millions of years, how did the plants manage to grow?  If stellar evolution forms part of the theory, how could the sun have been created after the earth?  - on day 3? 

Genesis specifically excludes evolution

Genesis speaks of creating creatures "according to their kinds".  They were specifically made separate as separate species.  If evolution was there, why would the bible not say so?  (Since it is Inspired and all)

Where do you draw the line?

If some parts of the bible are not quite true, or should be read as if its merely a book of ideas, where do you draw the line?  If those parts of the bible that do not quite agree with you can be edited out, then you should rather drop it totally and burn your bible.  Or man up and believe the whole thing.

It is clear (to me) that either the entire Genesis 1 is a fairy tale, or it is all true.  There is no in-between.

Of course I will present a lot of evidence that shows evolution is impossible.  I will also show some evidence that shows a 6000-year old earth is impossible..  In my opinion, there is more evidence against evolution that against creation, but we will all make up our own minds based on the evidence we see and the weight we each decide to assign to each piece of evidence..