The Gap Theory

Pastor explains Gap Theory

Question: Please explain the Gap Theory associated with Genesis 1.

- Doug Street,

Taipei, Taiwan

Answer: Some Bible students believe there should be a gap, time-wise, between the first 2 verses of Genesis 1. They summarize this theory as old earth/young life. In the King James Version those verses read, "(1) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (2) And the earth was without form, and void ..." (Some versions use the original Hebrew dual form, "heavens." This refers to the atmospheric heaven where the clouds are, as well as the spatial heaven where the stars are.)

Those who say there may have been a gap of perhaps thousands of years base their theory in part on a word in verse 28 which the King James translates as "replenish." They say for something to be replenished, first it had to be "plenished." However, that word simply means "to fill." Also, they point out that the verb "was" in the second verse can mean "became." So, they read that after God created the heaven and earth, the earth became without form and void. The reason for this, they say, was a cosmic cataclysm resulting from the rebellion of God's angels.

Advocates of this theory believe that the accounts of angelic rebellions and their resulting fall happened in an earlier age before man was created. Here, they place such scriptures as Isaiah 14:12, Ezekiel 28, and Luke 10:18. This fits well with those who hold to theistic evolution, i.e., that God created everything but used the process of evolution over thousands of years. They say dinosaur remains and other extinct fossils actually came from this pre-human age. Those same teachers usually believe the 6 days of creation were 6 indefinite periods of time. Knowing some people would think that, God clearly stated that an evening and a morning made each 24 hour day. And, the Bible repeats it in Exodus 20:11 spoken by God's own mouth.

The problem with these theories is that they add to the record God has spoken and preserved for us. Jesus said in John 17, "Thy word is truth." Further, Paul wrote in Romans 5:12 that sin and death came into the world by Adam. Yet, if the angels' sin caused death in the world thousands of years before Adam, then Paul is lying. The more we try to change the Bible to make God say what we want him to say, the deeper we dig our own pit. Surely God is capable of saying what he means and meaning what he says.

- Dr. Tom Lovorn is pastor of God's Storehouse Baptist Church in Richmond, and writes a weekly column on religion for The Progress-Index. You may send your Bible questions to Dr. Tom in care of this newspaper or via his web site at www.tomlovorn.us.

PowellsBooks.Blog – Right-Handed Cats and the Gap Theory of ...

Are cats right- or left-pawed? Do they favor a paw the way we favor a hand?

If you're like me, this question made you curious. So let's leave the world of cats for a second and consider the meta-question: What kinds of things make people curious?

Psychologists have wrestled with this mystery for many years. In 1994, George Loewenstein , a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon, came up with a theory of curiosity. He called it the "information-gap theory." He said that curiosity is simple: It comes when we feel a gap between what we know and what we want to know. And he goes further: He said that the gap actually causes us a kind of pain — like an itch that we need to scratch. And that's where the "fire" of curiosity comes from — we are driven to fill the gap, to scratch the itch.

Notice that to create curiosity you've got to focus people's attention on the gap. For instance, there's a book called, Why Do Men Have Nipples? That's a solid question. Chances are, you don't have an immediate answer. And yet you weren't frothing with curiosity about the man-nipple-problem until the book title called attention to the gap in your knowledge. You know something: Men have nipples. You don't know something: Why. That's a gap.

Are cats right- or left-pawed? It's another information gap. You know something: People are "handed." You don't know something: Does that apply to cats, too?

And the gap creates the itch. That's why teachers, in particular, should get familiar with the information-gap theory. If students feel the itch, they'll expend effort to scratch it — and effort is a precious resource. The cat-paw mystery, for instance, can be used to teach the scientific method. Here's an experiment that teachers can assign to their students to investigate the matter.

So are cats left- or right-pawed? The consensus seems to be that, yes, any individual cat has a paw preference. Opinion is mixed about whether cats, as a species, favor one paw over another, the way that humans skew right-handed. (Although, confusingly, this Turkish study seems to imply that most cats are right-pawed.) Bottom line: If you dangle string in front of your cat, it will probably tend to favor one paw with its swats.

Here's a confession (or perhaps a testimonial for the information-gap theory): Once I started researching cat-handedness (or pawedness) I couldn't seem to stop. This is the kind of unfortunate behavior that the internet enables all too well. So here's another gratuitous information gap: How would you go about testing whether a chimp is left-handed or right-handed? (Again, notice that you'd never lose a minute of sleep worrying about this until the gap is opened, and then you start to wonder...

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