How?

Well, God in his infinite wisdom counted the day & night, obviously. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. Ah ah ah! Three Mississippies!

There was still a directional lighting system, but it wasn't tied to an animated skybox yet.

This is a common misconception, but since the universe isn't centered around the "Earth" object but rather an omnidirectional set of rendering layers, the sun already had a reference point, it just wasn't loaded in yet.

I mean, technically, a day passing doesn't explicitly need the sun as it is a measure of the rotational speed of the Earth (ie time), not the position of the sun in the sky. The latter was/is simply used to measure the former.

That's not really a fair/honest argument when the concept of a day existed long before humans knew the earth was rotating. Originally, a day was defined as the rising and setting of the sun
- I'm not really arguing anything, just pointing it out.
- To humans, before we discovered the concept of rotations around the sun, you are correct. But for an advanced being/race that had the power to create universes… I’m sure they understood far greater concepts than the rising and setting of the an orange fireball in the sky. 😊
Without a reference frame, there would be no way to tell when one rotation had been completed.
- What if you were omniscient?
- What about the other stars?
- Maybe god just made the earth rotation fit the the previously existing duration of a day.
- Dude, that’s why our phones tell time. 🤦‍♂️ 😉

First of all, a literal reading is not required but let's read it literally.

God is all powerful. God could have made light circles (days) without the sun.
If days means the time unit... Then... Where is the issue.

This is embarrassing. Like even for a meme.

- Dude, your meme is about logical consistency of the bible. To test for logical consistency, you have to assume it is true to test it against itself.
  
  Also I am not a believer, so I don't believe it is true... But I can argue in favor of something that I am not believing. A basic skill that people need for scientific process.
Literally made light and dark and called them day and might on day one too lol.
God could have made light circles (days) without the sun.

For what reason was the sun created then?
- I'm guessing it was probably for the same reason he buried dinosaur bones all over the place... Or for the same reason he created trillions of stars billions of years before he felt like creating light earlier that week (or are stars actually a lot closer to get their light here so quickly after creation?)
- That is a bit of a pointless endeavor.
  
  For what reason was the sun created if it was created for light cycles? I mean what is the point of light cycles? Whatever the point of it is, what is the point of that? You see the issue.
  
  Also you are asking for a motivation when a motivation doesn't prove or disprove anything. I mean maybe God has multiple personalities and they like to fuck with each other. Maybe it was a creative process and he liked the idea of a sun. Maybe he wanted everything to have a "natural" reason to better test our faith. Maybe he got high and thought the idea of a huge burning ball is funny.
  
  I understand why you ask. But I don't have an answer and I don't think an answer matters for what I propose. Which is, even in a literal reading It is not really contradictory, maybe just a little odd.

I read a Rabbi’s take once, that he believes Genesis 1 is based on a vision that YHWH gave to one of the prophets (it was added later than the second creation story). He argued that it’s not supposed to be envisioned from a cosmic perspective, which is something of a modern take, but a terrestrial one, as if “figuratively standing on the earth - a cloud of dust - as God forms everything around it.” So the creation of light is the sun, but the sun isn’t visible unless the sky begins to clear.

Just thought I’d share that take. I always thought it was an interesting one.

The great thing about rhetoric is that any smart enough person can do any number of mental gymnastics to create a semi-plausible argument. But as a society we need to move away from things which aren’t grounded in reality
- As long as we take it as seriously as Marvel movies I think it's fine.
- this is part of what moved me from agnostic 50/50 to athiest decimal to 99decimal. Its like yeah you can rationalize and tinker and whatnot no matter what the base stuff you start with is. Granted though most of the change for me was qanon.

Atheists 🤝 Evangelicals

Thinking that the Bible

should be read literally

More seriously, did you know that there are two Creation stories in the Bible (in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2) and that these two stories are contradictory? But the people who added the second story did not replace the first with their own. They did not mind that the two stories contradicted each other because they knew perfectly well that these stories were allegories and were not to be read as historical accounts to be interpreted literally. Those who insist on a literal reading do not respect the will of the authors, whether God exists and is the inspiration or not.

Before the sun was created, a day was 4.97 billion years, and then the sun came up and a day was 24 hours. I see no issue with this superstition.

except apparently air, earth, and plants existed before the sun too.

The first day without sun the “day” was timeless so was actually say 1000000 days while the earth was formed 😂

I know what you're aiming for but you're off by a couple of orders of magnitude still.
- There’s always one 😂

He just looked at his watch smh

He's got a watch with a minute hand, millennium hand, and an eon hand

I once heard that it was thought in some circles that “day” was just a mistranslation, and that the original meaning was “a period of time of unspecified length”.

So it was 4 been a minutes?
- Sounds a bit quick, maybe 4 billion years?

Pale Blue Dot was such an amazing read.

Never read it. But I have read Contact. It was really good. 👍

The religion truth is that days were made by god, and it's the sun that rises in the morning of the day, not the day starting because of the sun.

Source?
- God
- sorry, did you ever read the bible?
  
  is there any line that said god created sun on the fourth day?

96h passed

perhaps it was sidereal days?

Time Cube

I feel like the logic goes that the duration as a concept existed to god before creation, and creation was made to match. Makes me wonder if creationists view the duration of a day as a holy measurement

A holy measurement that varies the more you deeper you look into it. Sounds like religion alright.

As humans describe a day, it's how long it takes for the earth to complete a rotation. The sun happens to be a useful landmark in determining how long a day is, but when you think about it the the existence of the sun isn't a requirement for a day to pass. Therefore, the first day would be the third day, when god created the earth.

But either way, I think god's frame of reference for how long a day is must be pretty different from ours. After all, doesn't it say somewhere in there that a thousand years is like a blink of an eye to him?

A day was a day was before we knew it was about rotation of the earth.
I asked God, "what's a million years to you?"

And God replied, "a second."

I asked God, "what's a million dollars to you?"

And God replied, "a penny."

I asked God, "can I have a million dollars?'

And God said, "yes... in a second."
Why would a god need to measure time?
- He obviously had an Apple watch that had the time.
  
  All the gods and demigods had them to communicate.
- According to the watchmaker arguments God needed to be extremely precise to make the our universe capable of manifesting our little life-supporting speck.
- I dunno, you'd have to ask them.
  
  Maybe they've got other things going on, y'know? Like, sure, they were able to get a week off to build the universe. But now they've got to get back to their day job. Rent isn't going to pay itself.

I wager Light is a metaphor for existence, and Darkness is a metaphor for non-existence.