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Is the framework view a valid possible reading of Gen. 1? I would say so. Is it the 24/7 view the only proper way to read the text? No.

However, I still believe the 24/7 view, as I am not convinced by the various framework views. I also am not convinced that a young earth is ruled out by scientific evidence, as the creation science folks have done a lot of work in this area.

Having said that, I'm not a scientist, so I'm not in a position to evaluate their views or the opposing views scientifically. I take their word, as those who have studied the issue much more than I have, that the scientific evidence fits with a young earth view. When I put their views together with my exegetical understanding of Genesis 1, I see that there is a good match. Might I be wrong? Of course. But I simply don't see a need from science or exegesis to jettison the 24/7 exegesis.

Regarding Ra's article, and the reference to genealogies (missing generations, unknown length of generations) I think the Gen. 5 and 11 genealogies are different from others in that they give specific ages. Look at Gen. 5:6-8: "Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begot Enosh. After he begot Enosh, Seth lived eight hundred and seven years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died." So this tells us that, at the age of 105, Seth begot Enosh. Now it is true that elsewhere in Scripture "begot" can mean "became the ancestor of" so that a man could be said to have "begotten" his grandson, great-grandson, or whatever. In other genealogies this may very well have happened. But here the fact is that at the age of 105 Seth begot Enosh. If there is a generation missing in there, it would still mean that when Enosh was born (whether he was Seth's son, grandson, or great-grandson), Seth was 105. Thus the time-span is not affected by a missing generation.

I simply have not seen a valid exegetical reason to deny the obvious conclusions from these two genealogies. Anyone can easily add up the years listed and come up with a total time-frame - in Genesis 5, from Adam to Noah, and in Genesis 11 from Shem to Abram. Once you get a chronology to Abram, there is little significant debate about dates corresponding to our calendar. The conclusion is that Adam begot Seth around 6000 years ago.

I suppose one could say that the time before Adam begot Seth is a long time -- maybe Adam lived 3,000,000 years before begetting Seth. Or maybe (a more reasonable idea) there is a long time before the creation of Adam. But that gets back to the exegetical questions of Gen. 1. I don't see that a discussion of the genealogies allows for much "wiggle room" for long periods of time after Adam. If we're going to get millions of years into Genesis, it's going to have to be before the creation of the first human.