Age of the Earth
 

So on the topic of the age of the earth, I'll use my man Dawkin's reasoning: Creationists estimate the earth's age to be 6000 years. Scientists estimate the earth's age to be 4.6 billion years. If the scientists are correct, as several radiometric dating methods would suggest, the creationists' estimate is off by a factor of a million. This "is equivalent to believing that the distance from New York to San Francisco is 7.6 yards." (Dawkins)

On the question of the survival of flying and swimming species (and mammals): There is obviously no definitive explanation of how some creatures survived when the asteroid that is proposed to have wiped out the dinosaurs struck. One plausible explanation is that the creatures that survived were those that were able to burrow into the ground or immerse themselves in water when the environment turned extremely hot for hours after the strike.

I still say the great flood is what killed the dinosaurs

/is obviously a creationist

Shanifaye, please don't take offense to this, because I am genuinely curious, but I don't gather that you're one to believe that god or the devil are "testing" or "tricking" us with science. You also don't strike me as one to attribute some vast atheist conspiracy to the scientific community as a whole (that would be one gigantic, well-structured conspiracy!). If this is true, and you don't believe those things, why do you believe 1) that a flood killed the dinosaurs, 2) that the earth is not millions of years old, and 3) that humans, essentially, have not evolved? (I realize you say you believe species evolve, but if homo sapiens has always been homo sapiens, there hasn't been much change in our evolution at all.)

Are religious leaders somehow more equipped to understand rocks, bones, and other things than scientists who dedicate their lives to the study of very specific things are?

How do you explain the fact that, with the exception of a very small handful of people in the scientific community (who almost always have questionable conflicts of interest between their science and their evangelism), the overwhelming majority of scientists accept and are relatively certain of things such as the age of the earth and the evolution of humans?

Are hundreds of thousands of scientists all wrong? All unable to properly conduct experiments? All less interested in the truth than they are interested in promoting disbelief in a literal interpretation of the bible?

What about the majority of world religions who also see and accept the scientific findings and incorporate such findings into their belief structure, such as the Catholic Church which is fundamentally opposed to Intelligent Design and, for all intents and purposes, accepts evolution as fact (granted, fact set into place by god), and has cautiously done so since Darwin published his Origin of Species?

How is it that when experiments have repeatedly shown, with more and more accuracy, and an increasing accuracy which almost always moves even further away from the literal-biblical approach, that these many thousands of experiments, and hundreds of thousands of scientists doing research, are all wrong?

How is it that religious leaders, most of whom have simply gotten their information from reading a single book and choosing to believe it literally, are more equipped at discerning scientific truth than the scientific community which is hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people strong?

Finally, to touch on something that was said in the other thread, if theologians are not more equipped at science than scientists (which I would hope you'd agree to - which would you prefer to deliver your baby, a priest or a doctor?), and you are admittedly not a scientist, why would you not defer on scientific matters to the incredibly overwhelming opinion of people who actually are scientists?

I don't mean any offense by these questions - I'm honestly curious as to the answers. I just see no way to reject the overwhelming scientific evidence without resorting to explanations such as, "god's testing us," "the devil is tricking us," or "all those hundreds of thousands of scientists hate religion and are on a crusade against it." So, I'm really curious to hear what your reasoning is, especially if it doesn't fall into one of the three aforementioned categories.

When it comes to the "age of the earth" debate, it is really important to remember there are typically three camps of Christian creationists and to just say creationists is unfairly lumping them all together. It does not surprise me that Dawkins would do that, he's a smart guy who knows a ton about evolution, but sometimes he lets his hatred of religion get the better of him.

The major division is old world/new world. Old world creationists believe the in a non-literal interpretation of the bible and the earth could be any number of years old (aka who the hell knows how long a day is to God?). The others are new world creationists who believe in a literal translation of the bible (aka the universe was made in 7 days).

There is also a division of new world creationists, ones who say scientists are full of crap and the other who says that the scientists are right, but the earth is still only 6000 years old. The earth was just made to look older (rewind to science's picture of the earth 6000 years ago and that is how God made it).

Of course there are more positions than this, but most of them fall roughly into one of those three categories. So saying that you are a creationist doesn't inherently mean you think science is wrong. I think at last poll most non-literal creationists fall into a watchmaker type of belief. Saying science is right in evolution, but God is the grand mover, which is also more to the belief of the Catholic church than a strict evolutionist position.

Generally speaking, at least in my experience, and in America, "creationist" pretty much always refers to what you call "new world" creationists. I can't say I've ever seen views such as the Catholic Church's described as creationism. In my mind, that's simply balancing faith with science. No doubt, creationism technically can mean any belief which involves a god in creation, but that's not how it's popularly used by any means. Indeed, I see nothing wrong with what you call "old world" creationism. If someone wants to believe that some sort of metaphysical force was involved in creation, while also accepting everything science has to tell us, more power to them. This is commonly referred to as the "Two Books" approach, which refers to scripture and nature: one cannot contradict the other, and if they do then our interpretation of one is wrong. What bothers and confuses me is seeing people reject actual knowledge in favor of what is unknowable, rather than seeking to find balance between the two.

EDIT: I just realized I totally missed your point on "old world" creationism. It's been awhile since I've seen that thought process talked about, so I apologize for that. My original post is still correct in that the Catholic Church does not fall into "old world" creationism. The reason for this - and the reason "old world" creationism is almost equally as invalid as "new world" creationism - is because science has also shown us that the universe, and life on earth, did not come into being in the order described in the first creation story of Genesis (the 7 days one). Not only did creation not follow that order, it did not follow those equal time spans, making the "7 days = ??? years" approach even more incorrect.

SOMEtimes? You're being too kind. I got the distinct impression from his book that he thinks religion is stupid and anyone who even thinks about believing in it is a moron.


That argument suggests some quite nasty things about god doesn't it. Let's review:

1) The earth is really 6,000 years old.
2) we're supposed to have faith in what God tells us.
3) God purposely makes all evidence point to the idea that the earth is a lot older in an attempt to trick us.

Well, to be honest, if a supreme being is out to trick me all the time, I'm really not interested in hanging out in his house after I die.

This argument also lends some interesting philosophical thoughts on god vs. the devil. I thought it was Satan that was supposed to be the dishonest trickster, not God.

The point about Dawkins (somehow I knew that quoting him would start an argument) in interesting. After The God Delusion came out, a firestorm of essays were written basically asking why he couldn't play nice and have some respect. But why should he if he honestly thinks that belief in a higher being is unfounded, dangerous and blatantly stupid? Yet from the other side of the coin, the heads of big name churches will publicly condemn non-believing "sinners" without rebuke, so is there a double standard? We all walk on eggshells in our respect for religion, but what warrants that? Why do religions reap benefits that atheists do not?

I'm confused by your 3 questions, shakran. All 3 are curious, but number 2 in particular strikes me. Aren't believers supposed to take God at his word? Isn't that was it's all about?

You could look at is as God is the trickster, or you could look at it as God never intended that we go 'check his work' and see if we were correct. We shouldn't have to 'find out' how old the world is, we should accept on faith that he didn't lie to us when so and so wrote Genesis.

God wasn't always thought to be the 'nice guy' people think of today, in fact he did some pretty mean shit in the old testament (Job anybody?). Nobody likes the idea of worshipping the wrathful, vengeful, mean God though, so most churches and even some newer versions of the Bible soften God up quite a bit. You could say that the new testament came around and God had a sort of 'change of heart' but the newer, nicer God didn't make the world did he?

Because to think that is in itself stupid. Look at it this way. You've been told since you were a toddler that lightbulbs emit light. What if some jackass comes along and writes a book that says they suck dark instead? Are you supposed to suddenly believe him just because he says so? Are you to go against years of indoctrination to the idea that lightbulbs emit light?

Silly example (with apologies to MIT) I know, but the same holds true for religion. Whether there is or is not a god, if you've been told by everyone you know since you were a toddler that God exists, it's going to take some doing to decide that he doesn't. It's certainly not *stupid* of people to believe what they're told by their parents, teachers, and others they look up to while they're growing up. To decide that someone is stupid simply because he happens to agree with the majority of the world is the height of arrogance.

Plus, Dawkins is displaying his utter lack of understanding of the social graces. If I want to convince you to vote democrat, I'm not going to start off by calling you a blithering idiot. That won't exactly put you in the frame of mind needed to listen to my points and come around to my side.

Dawkins then goes on to display his ultimate arrogance by saying that we agnostics are just as stupid as the religious people because only he and his ideas can be right. Frankly, that proves he's just as stupid as he claims the religious crowd is. He doesn't KNOW there is no god. He doesn't really KNOW what comes after death any more than anyone else does. Yet he's decided nothing comes after death and he must be right, while those of us who are courageous enough to admit that we don't know if god exists or not, and that we don't know what happens when we die, are morons.

that's pretty much why I don't have much patience for Mr. Dawkins.


No. Anyone who takes their faith and attempts to prove it to others or who decides that those who do not believe in what they themselves cannot know or prove is just as arrogant as Mr. Dawkins.

They don't. If someone wants to believe absolutely that there is definintely a god, that's fine. Nothing wrong with that. If they then want to tell me that I'm a halfwit because I'm not so sure, well then that's pretty stupid on their part.



That's my point. How can you take God at his word when his word isn't consistant?

Actually the Bible isnt God's words, it the words of men that were inspired by God, Big Difference. These Old Testament types lived 5000 years ago, so they're not well versed in scientific principles. If Einstien were born 5000 years ago, do you really think he would have come up with his ground breaking theories??? Very Doubtful.

Uh oh. Better be careful here. Once we acknowledge the bible was written by man and not god we must acknowledge that man's imperfections could have introduced errors into the text. We therefore cannot trust the bible. the biblical earth could, for example, have been created in 4.5 days instead of 7, and god's day could equal one billion of our years, and therefore the fossil record would be supported by the bible if only the damn scribes hadn't made a conversion error.

Good Point.....just imagine you were a man, let alone God, and had the chance to go back 5000 years. You could then try to explain the history of the earth, the nature of the universe, tha fact that out bodies are made up of billions of individual cells, matter is made up of atoms, or quarks, or maybe even strings.......all of that would be a tough sell, to say the least. Even if you did explain it to the best of your ability, and then an old testament type wrote a book about it................wonder how that would turn out???

And you bring up another interesting philosophy. What if we DID go back in time, even just 2000 years to Jesus's era? WE would be considered gods. We can create light. We can cook food without fire or heat. We can travel from Nazareth to Rome in a few hours. We can heal the sick. Hell we can even turn water into wine - it's called Koolaid.

It's a common tenet that any sufficiently advanced civilization or being would appear magic to a primitive one.

If Jesus somehow had access to technology (and let's not forget that there are some VERY VERY interesting archaeological finds that suggest we might not be the first technologically advanced society on this planet - look up the Baghdad Battery for one small example) then he could easilly pass himself off as a divine being, and the primitives of the day would be convinced of his divinity. After all, thousands of years later we still don't know how the hell the Egyptians managed to build the pyramids - - Clearly they had some sort of comparitively advanced construction technology - you're not gonna lift those giant blocks without it. and if they had advanced construction technolgy, they probably had advanced other technology.

first off, I dont take offense...I am old enough and intelligent enough to know that not everyone thinks like me, and its not my passion in life to make others think like me. I have always accepted there are people that think what I believe is whooy. If someone wants to be an atheist and make fun of my "invisible friend" then more power to them. I am not one that feels the need to explain why I believe what I believe in my spitirual life.

In fact, its almost an impossible thing for me to "explain". I am not a, for lack of a better word, definable christian.

Let me explain THAT....I believe in God, I believe he is the creator, I believe Jesus was the son of God. I believe God made man pretty close to what we are today and thats why I dont believe we came from the slime of the oceans or primates. I DO believe humans have evolved over thousands of years (hence we have body parts we dont need anymore that were at some point vital to our existance).

The bible was written by man, it was written by people that picked and chose what they wanted the masses to "hear" to back up the religion they were setting up at the time (hence the more controversial books being left out of the new testament)

"Religion" to me is a joke...I have oft posted that religion is like message boards. (and Halx, this is NO shot at you personally..this has been my theory way before I ever knew Tilted existed). You have one person that decides he/she is going to "lead" a group of people. Rules and mission statements are made to give that group something to shape their behavior by. Things go along good for awhile, then you have a faction that decides the rules are stupid and meaningless and cant understand why the "leader" thinks he's all that, especially when he/she wont listen to new ideas. That group decides THEY can do it better and break off and start a new group, redesigned for their own thinking of the "way things should be" and so on and so on.

I am spiritual, I am not religous. I respect the scientists greatly, I just CHOOSE, out of my faith, to believe what I stated previously about creation. God gave man free will to pick and chose for themselves who/what/when/where. I dont see why I have to believe every single theory a "scientist" comes up with. Just like I dont see why I have to believe every word MAN put in the bible.

I cringe anytime I read something was done in the name of religion, Im sorry but I am not vain enough to believe I know what God wants, (hell I dont even know what I want sometimes, how can I claim to know what an omni being wants?)but I have faith to believe he does exists and the human race was made in his image.

I hope this helps you understand some. There are just some things I cannot tell you "why" about, to me, it just IS

In my opinion......Scientists are on the right path, and the earth is probably even older than they suspect. Religions that teach and insist people believe their own little make believe stories about earth's past are wrong, and harmful. They waste valuable time that could be used doing things for the betterment of people living today (and future generations), propping up their ridiculous fairytales of times gone by.
Honestly.....I am always amazed people actually allow themselves to get suckered into believing such fiction. Wishful thinking might be a fun exercise, but is a far cry from reality. For me, time is too valuable to waste "arguing" about such sillyness.

I agree with Dawkins....HELLO! :rolleyes: :wave: :thumbsup:

I have no interest in talking about religion past my own views on a message board as I think it's almost as pointless as talking about politics, but I do definitely think God doesn't like sheeple. I think God gave us the cognative skills to think for ourselves for a reason. I also think that the "why" of what you believe is much more important than what you believe, anyway. In other words, I don't care whether people believe the earth is 6000 or 29375782754498753 years old. I care whether they have a good reason for believing what they do - and I think believing things because you believe them is just such a waste.

Thanks for your response ShaniFaye. If you don't mind, it did raise a few more questions for me...
I think part of the reason I find your particular case so difficult to understand is because you are "spiritual, not religious." Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me as though you acknowledge that the creation story, as it exists in the bible, was put there by man, but you choose to believe it, while you may choose not to believe in other things in the bible. If that's correct, can you explain why you choose not to believe some moral teachings of the bible (of which there can be no evidence for or against, only your own gut feeling), but still choose to believe pretty much all of the historical teachings of the bible (of which there is plenty of evidence, almost all against)? I definitely understand "picking and choosing" from the bible. Most people understand, for instance, that the biblical teaching that women must cover their heads while in church, in subservience to men, is not something we should still follow today. What I have a hard time understanding is why one would only pick and choose from moral codes and resist doing the same for historical accounts, even when the majority of humanity recognizes they are not true. Why is the bible more authoritative in its teachings on science and history than it is in its teachings on morality?

If I may touch on one other thing, you also said "I don't see why I have to believe every single theory a 'scientist' comes up with." I think it's important to point out the difference between scientific theory and the general interpretation of the word. This difference is exactly what I was referring to when I commented in the other thread about how science's specificity gives people an easy way out of believing what science tells them. Let me just provide a short list of other scientific theories I'm sure you do not choose to disbelieve:

• gravity
• electricity
• magnetism
• plate tectonics (the cause of earthquakes)

I think you see my point. In science, a "theory" makes falsifiable or testable predictions about things not yet observed. We cannot *SEE* the force of gravity, so it remains a theory. It will forever be a theory, unless we discover some gravity particle. We cannot *SEE* electric charges, only their effects. We cannot *SEE* magnetic fields, only their effects. We have not observed plate tectonics, only felt its effect. Likewise, we cannot *SEE* the Earth come into being, only observe the effects of it. We cannot *SEE* evolution take place, only observe the effects of it. Literally speaking, the theory of evolution is as true as gravity, electricity, and magnetism. This is why the overwhelming majority of scientists accept the findings on evolution and on the earth's age, and also why I have a hard time understanding the concept of choosing to not believe in those findings.

I'm not anti-spirituality by any means. I think spirituality can provide many benefits to people, provided it does not prevent people from understanding or accepting knowable reality as well. Most people who are in such a situation have a fair degree of consistency. Onodrim's family, for example, is made up of mostly young earth creationists. They are also strictly conservative and follow most teachings from the bible regarding a woman's place relative to men. What I find confusing in your case is this lack of consistency: the willingness to reject moral teachings from the bible, despite those being its primary purpose, while choosing to believe historical and scientific teachings from the bible, despite there being falsifiable or testable predictions which place the validity of those stories into question.

I respect that you say you're not one to explain why you believe what you believe, but I have to agree with some of what Toaster126 says. What you believe isn't nearly as interesting as why you believe it. I'm interested in hearing what the logic behind your beliefs are. So, while I recognize you may prefer not to respond to my questions and that you don't feel the need to explain the "why," I do hope that you'll choose to do so.

I'm not a creationist, but was one as a child, and so know the arguments a bit. One of the objections is that, if the earth is only 6000 years old, God must have created the earth with the appearance of age to trick us/test our faith/whatever. The story I always heard was that, just as when God created Adam and Eve, he created adult humans, so when He created the earth, he created an adult earth.

I've got a really bad headache right now....so Im going to make this shorter than my other post. I never said I wouldnt explain, I said I couldnt explain. Big difference. I'd like to know though, what I said that ever made you say I reject the moral teachings of the bible.

well, there are people that dont think like you, its as simple as that. I dont have to know why the sky is blue for it to look blue to me, I dont have to know why grass is green to know that it is.... Just like there are people in the world that have to know the why's there are people that dont. I happen to think its a waste of time to know the "why" of everything so that makes us even :)

My apologies if I misunderstood, but this statement seemed to me like acknowledging that not every word in the bible is necessarily to be followed. If you do believe the biblical moral teachings are all to be followed, such as women remaining subservient to men as Paul dictates, then I stand corrected. I just got the impression that, with acknowledging man chose what to include and not include in the bible, you were also acknowledging that not everything in the bible is necessarily "god's word."

Regarding wouldn't vs couldn't explain, again, sorry for the misunderstanding. In that case though, I have to ask, why believe something that you admittedly can't provide any basis for, when there are things to believe which have falsifiable or testable predictions, i.e. proof?

Can't say I think that view has any basis in reality, but I have to at least respect the fact it is an explanation which avoids a trickster god. Then again, if God is omnipotent, he knows exactly what effect creating an "adult" earth will have on people. Perhaps I was hasty in characterizing that God as not being a trickster. If he knows his creation will unnecessarily mislead people, he is indeed choosing to trick them by still creating it in that manner.

Sorry, but this is a false comparison. You can see that the sky is blue and the grass is green. As far as I know, I'm pretty sure you didn't see God create Adam and Eve, or the Earth less than X billion years ago. A more proper comparison is that you don't need to know that chlorophyll is involved in making grass green to know that it is green. That much is true. It also makes the comparison irrelevant to the discussion. This is not about why the earth is old, it's just about the fact that it is and that there is a mountain of evidence that it is.

I guess I just dont get how a person is supposed to explain the "why" of why they believe in god....and Im going to have to leave it at that. I simply dont know how to give an answer other than, I have been given the information, and I believe it. It makes sense to me and it comforts me.

I've asked several other people today to tell me why they believe in God, they say the same thing I do....I just do...thats faith.

I dont see how I could make someone understand it anymore than someone could make ME understand why THEY dont. To me the "miracle of god" as I have read things about all my life exists everywhere.

or maybe its all the tea parties I had with Jesus when I was a kid....I have no idea other than just like people who choose NOT to believe, I choose to do the opposite.

And as far as my "moral" belief's....I believe in the 10 commandments and the beattitudes . I do not believe things like....Im an adulteress because Im divorced and remarried or that Im "less" of a person because Im female (I have a BIG problem with Paul's attitude towards women)

Hell people cant even decide if eggs are or are not bad for you and you want me to believe a time frame testing system that HAS been proven wrong. As far as "creation" stories.....I've never said the "big bang" didnt happen....that very well could have been the way God set about creating.

conversations like this always end up making me feel extremely stupid because I am just not capable of putting into words why I believe something.

Is there ANYONE else here that believes in God that can do better than me and answer the "why"?

But no one here is asking why you believe in God. The question is why you believe that something written by man (which you admit) in the bible is necessarily true, despite evidence to the contrary. Plenty of people believe in God, but do not believe in the historical or scientific descriptions of the bible.

I noted in the other thread, before this one, that carbon-dating is not used for objects older than 45,000 years. For older objects, there are other forms of radiometric dating to be used. So, I understand why you question carbon-dating - there have been well-publicized errors in the past (and barely publicized adjustments for those inaccuracies) - but I'm not sure why you are so certain that something has been "proven wrong." If it had been even remotely proven wrong, it would not be used and accepted today by, well, every scientist that isn't trying to promote a particular religious view on creation. That, by the way, is barely an exaggeration. Something that has been proven wrong should have at least a significant amount of detractors, if not a majority. Radiometric dating doesn't even come close to that.

Simply put, my belief in what science has told us regarding the age of the universe, earth, and dinosaur fossils has nothing to do with choice at all. No more than my belief that matter is made of atoms is a choice. Sure, I could choose to belief that atoms are fictional, but people wouldn't exactly look upon that view with much respect, and with good reason.

Your comment regarding the big bang only further perplexes me though. How can the evidence for the big bang be correct, but the age determined by the same evidence be incorrect? Not to mention, of course, that the age determined by the evidence of the big bang comes from very different methods than radiometric dating. Are all the different methods of radiometric dating and all the evidence observed from stellar radiation incorrect? That's a whole lot of mistakes in a whole lot of accepted scientific methods, all followed by a WHOLE lot of scientists. What I'm trying to convey here is that by believing that the Earth is not billions of years old and that dinosaur fossils are not many millions of years old, and that evolution has not taken place in the way science describes it, you are literally saying religious leaders are smarter than scientists and despite the fact there are hundreds of thousands of scientists who affirm the validity of these methods, they are all less intelligent than the religious leaders who reject their findings. Personally, I wouldn't tell the entire medical profession that I'm more intelligent than them simply because I believe it to be so, and I'm not comfortable with the idea that people do that to the scientific profession.

I want to reiterate, because I think this is an unnecessary point of contention if I'm reading your post properly, believing what science tells us does not negate belief in God. This conversation has absolutely nothing to do with why you believe in God and everything to do with why you believe in a specific story in a specific book written by, as you admit, human beings. Unlike belief in God (which one can neither prove nor disprove), this discussion is about something which one can prove or disprove, so please forgive me for not understanding an inability to explain. Even fundamentalist Christians at least recognize that it is a topic which requires at least some answer to science, so they say they believe the bible is the inerrant word of God. It's a logically false argument (since the Bible is the only thing which verifies itself as the inerrant word of God), but it is at least something. Since you clearly do not believe that (or else you would follow Paul's teachings), you don't have the luxury of that argument. This is precisely why I'm so curious to hear some sort of explanation as to WHY you choose to reject the findings of hundreds of thousands of scientists (who, I'm sure you'll admit, are far more educated than you or I in their fields of study). Hearing on the news a decade or so ago that carbon-dating (which has nothing to do with dinosaur fossils, btw) had some accuracy issues is not a very credible argument. First, because if that remained to be true then science would have rejected it quite quickly, and second, because those issues were resolved.

the basic problem for creationists is the decision to take the biblical account "literally"---i put the quotation marks around it because, frankly, i dont understand how 6,000 years is a "literal" interpretation of the story of the creation taking a week (with a day off at the end).
each day=1,000 years?
where does that come from?
maybe there are more recent versions of the king james translation of the bible that have footnotes defining a day that i haven't seen.

speaking of translation---the king james version is a 17th century invention, a collective translation project---was god speaking through the translation team? i have never understood this. people talk about the various author-functions assigned to the texts included in the king james bible as being divinely inspired, but they ignore the king james translation team itself. were they also agents of god?
what about the books of the old testament that they edited out?
had there been a mistake in the order of the divinely inspired book that they caught?
are the editors of updated versions of the king james bible all also divinely inspired?
how can one make claims about "literal interpretation" without thinking about the versions of the text?
unless the assumption is that translations are transparent.


anyway, let's think about this for a minute:
this god character is infinite, so is atemporal.
so for god-activities, time as we understand it would not obtain---(another way: if finitude means anything, it means time-bound)---so the notion of days....um.....well, if there is no time then there can be no temporal cycles (you know, sun rise, sun set) and if there are no temporal cycles then there are no cycles to be named and if there are no cycles to be named, then there are no days. no nights.

unless in order to preserve a literal interpretation, folk who believe are willing to imagine that god is finite so the creation story can make sense in a literal manner. but this creates all kinds of other trouble. for example, this move would trivialize the incarnation.
you could say that god, who is infinite, gets to be finite if he wants to--but that isn't really true.
does the infinite include the finite?
who the hell knows?
it may be that infinite and finite are little more than semantic inversions of each other.
but we do know that this relationship was a real problem for many christian theologians, particularly augustine, who frankly i have far more respect for as a thinker than i have for anyone whom i have encountered who runs out literal readings of the bible and creationist claims based on that. augustine was at least worried about consistency: enough to recognize where it wasnt.
read his stuff on the origin of time.

from all this:

(a) this literal interpretation business is not a majority position within christianity. it is pretty much the exclusive purview of fundamentalist protestants in the united states.
most denominations argue, at one level or another, that the creation story is an allegory.
to my mind, it cant be anything else.
seriously.


(b) the obvious premise for creationist arguments has nothing to do with modern science: it is rooted in assumptions about and a particular reading of the bible. so the arguments are not about science, as no particular interaction with the contents of scientific arguments is required for the position to be internally coherent (on its own grounds).


aside: even if you do interpret the bible literally, what is the problem with the creation story as a allegory? what possible basis could there be for imagining that god would have only one way of communicating, woudl use only one form--that god could not be allegorical or ironic or generate fiction and documentary? where does this one-dimensional god who speaks in a one-dimensional voice come from?

basically what it boils down to as this

going by the genealogies listed in the bible, creationist believe there is 2000 years between genisis chapter 1 verse 3, 4 and 5 and the Great Flood

Then there is another 2000 years between the flood and the birth of Christ, then another 2000 years between the birth of Christ to today. If you read from what I quoted to Genesis Chapter 2 you will see each of the seven days, is indeed a day...evening and morning were the same as they are now.

What a lot of them DONT take into consideration is the time period between Genesis Chapter 1 verse 1 and verse 3

There is nothing there that says that was the first day and nite, that comes later. THIS time period could have been anytime at all, the billions of years that the scientists say the earth could be, or as I've stated above, those of us that believe its more in the thousands. Nothing in the bible states what that time period is, but the people that believe its only 6k years dont acknowledge it. Its clear from the scripture that the creation of the earth itself was NOT day one.

I guess my "problem" is that billions or millions of years seems like an AWFULLY generic time frame and I have a hard time believing things to have been 100% without a doubt tested accurately.

Does that explain a little better for you Secret? (Sorry bout yesterday, my headache was really getting in the way of making me coherent)

Excellent post roachboay, but I must correct you on one point. Or, more accurately, answer a question of yours.

The 5-7,000 year range for the age of the earth does not have to do with the 7 day creation. For those who view the earth as being that young, the 7 day creation is taken literally as 7 days. They get 5-7,000 years from the ages given to various persons mentioned in the bible - particularly those in the Torah, who "begat X" and "lived Y years."

To add to your point about translation and the question of whether or not the compilers and translators were also divinely inspired, it is interesting to note that the books of the Tanakh are presented in a different order than the books of the Old Testament. This was done so as to specifically shape the Old Testament story as a prophetic journey culminating in the New Testament.

I think I may be at fault for speaking generically in that case - you're right, "millions or billions of years" is a generic time frame. What science tells us is actually rather specific: the earth is approximately 4.567 billion years plus or minus 100 million years (which, in science terms, is a very short period of time). Again, the idea that science admits the dating methods have not been 100% tested accurately isn't exactly something we should use to place doubt on their findings, because gravity is also something science admits has not been 100% tested accurately, but we still expect what we throw up to also come down. Scientists are as confident about the range I mentioned above for the age of the earth as they are confident that what we throw up will come down, and that gravity is the reason why.

I'm in the camp that say scientists that go into a field with a predetermined outcome can find something to support that outcome, even if it means using faulty methods of getting there. Take radiometric dating, for example. There are several assumptions one has to make in testing a rock to get an age. One must assume the beginning condition is known. There is an assumption of the ratio of the daughter to the natural state. A constant decay rate must be assumed. There must no leaching or addition of parent or daughter during the intervening time, but it isn't possible to KNOW this, so it must be assumed. Finally, all previous assumptions must be valid for billions of years.

Yet, even with all the variables that must be subjectively plugged into the equation, those that are looking for an answer that yields an old earth cling to such dating as though it yields real answers instead of the theory it gives.

I believe in God and the Genesis account. That, however, is a theological belief. I recognize the difference between faith and fact. And the fact is, neither evolution (which requires an old earth) nor creationism can be scientifically proven--both are models of what one believes happened or had to have happened. When I compare the facts we do know--the fossil record, the geological column, the laws of thermodynamics, the amount of uranium accumulation in the ocean, the amount of pressure in oil reservoirs, the number of humans on the earth, the amount of sediment on the ocean floors, etc.---I am convinced that what we are seeing is more in tune with a young earth rather than an old one.

And a young earth can only come about through the work of a Creator. I'm aware there are some creationists that try to straddle the fence--accepting some of the theories of those that must be true in order to accommodate an old earth and agreeing that the earth must be billions of years old, but I'm not one of them. I cheerfully affirm that God could have done it that way had He chosen to do so--but it's not consistent with the evidence I've studied.

The age of the earth has been figured as reliably as the age of the universe.
Okay, let's say more so...

you're partly right, neither can be proven, that is because they are both theories, and a theory cannot be proven true, like gravity, however, evolution has withstood a barge of criticism and always came out on top, where as creationism, has been disprove scientifically time and time again. evolution is the best fit model to describe the way the world works, it may not be 100% correct, but that is why scientist continually adjust it to fit the new evidence that is discovered through research, unlike creationist, who start with the answers and find evidence to support it, ignoring the evidence that does not.

Yes, the religious text in the Bible which tries to explain the scientific basis of it's claims is outdated. Would it not, then, seem logical to be more open minded to backed scientific fact than a 5000 year old explanation written by men?

I wanna' know where the Bible says that the Earth is only thousands of years old... In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, I do remember that the Bible stating that "A thousand years to man is one day to God (Or something along those lines)", signifying that the way God relates time is vastly different than that of what we humans measure time.

I'm surprised you didn't already know this. Can you not find any reference to this on the "internets?"

Apparently, there are various genealogies throughout the Old Testament, including their ages. Did you know that people used to live past 900 years old? It says so in the Bible so it must be true! Anyway, this coupled with the few references to history, such as the reigns of various kings and rulers, and you can build an approximation to the age of the Earth! At the very least, you can determine an upper bound for its age...

Are you convinced, yet?

or, how do we know that the earth was made to look exactly like it has been around for billions of years.

Authentic recreation? :)

[sarcasm]pfft didn't you guys know that radioactive decay used to be a whole lot faster? i think we can all trust the Institute for Creation Research to be fair and unbiased...[/sarcasm]

http://www.icr.org/pdf/research/rate-all.pdf

i think i'm about atheisted out with all this recent discussion on the topic and the tangential side topics. i guess this has been somewhat of an interesting thread, but honestly i'm not sure i understand the precise point of the op. at one point in time, i believe the various creation myths were as good as we could do; that shit was the old school version of the journal nature. time went on, we learned more, etc. so i have huge respect for the religious point of view; it served us very well for a long time, in as far as such a thing can help. its just outdated. my opinion, best of luck all comers.

Well, you see, I might be crazy and all but I could have sworn I read somewhere where the Bible states that time relative to man is different to that relative to God on two or three separate occasions which is why I never understand the "But-the-Bible-says-the-earth-is-only-6,000-years-old!" argument.

*Shrugs*

But I guess people seemingly only note what they want to note.

(And, for the record, I basically repeated my first post because you forgot the part about time being measured differently in God's eyes than in man's eyes.)

So, perhaps the 6 days of creation, represent 6 billion years, each day a billion years. That would let creation and science coexist almost peacefully. What a strange concept......

except one number we have an actual scientific basis for, the other is bascially apologetics.

If a day can represent a year, a thousand, or a billion years to 'God', it seems to be more mathematical than apologetic. I have no problem blending science and theism, strange what on open mind can accomplish.

i don't know dave, once you start the mumbo-jumbo with the "in god's world" intros...well, then all bets are off. 7 could be twelve could be monkey could be johann strauss's little toe. to me, this starts to rapidly become a game of "god is whatever you like". i guess i just don't see the point.

The point is simple, the 6 days of creation, could represent 6 billion years, each day a billion years. That would let creation and science coexist almost peacefully. What a strange concept......wait, I already said that!....no need to overcomplicate a simple concept.

yeah, but it could mean anything? it could mean the period of time it takes for a monkey to remove the skin of a banana, it could be slutbimwallawalladango, it could mean 1.21 giggawatts - Great Scott!!!. i'm not really arguing with you here; you're reconciling your religious beliefs and science in a way that makes sense to you. in that sense, you can meld your religious beliefs to whatever system of beliefs conflicts with it; which i suppose is fine. it just strikes me as making it a little less useful i suppose. but if it works for you, then i say go for it.

I think there has been a misunderstanding, here.

The argument I just gave you for the age of the earth is not my argument! I do not think that the Earth is 6000 years old. I was only explaining to you why it is that creationists think the Earth is only 6000 years old despite how that number is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, as per your question posed in the first sentence of your post.

If you want a response to your theory that time moves differently for God than for mortal man, that may very well be so but time is still measured in mortal units in the Bible. So, when the Old Testament claims that Adam lived for 900 years, even if those 900 years went by slowly (or quickly, whatever you believe) for God, 900 years still went by. That's the whole point of units of measurement; so that we may measure things regardless of the perceptions of the observer. Consider it a gift from God...

Problems:
1. As I understand it, the genealogies may well have skipped steps, due to an ambivalency in one of the words. If I recall correctly (and I probably don't), the same word means 'is the father of' and 'is the ancestor of'.

2. Sure, the timeline works out okay if each day in Genesis is a billion years. Unfortunately, the Bible says each day is to the Lord as a thousand years (and, actually, I'm not even sure off hand it says that). Moreover, the time frame is wrong. Land mammals haven't been around for the last billion years, I'm pretty sure.

The silly part is, as I'm sure I've said here before, the first chapter of Genesis was being interpreted metaphorically as long ago as St. Augustine. The fundamentalist interpretation of the passage as referring to literal 24 hour days is a modern invention.

I completely agree.

If someone's reason is, "because I do", then I have to question why they take me to task over my own, thought-out, belief. Also as Toaster said, I don't think He wants us to be sheeple, or else He would have just made us sheeple- it's really as simple as that.

All notions of creationism vs. evolution aside, I don't understand how anyone can disagree with the age of the planet stated by scientists, as multiple different methods of scientific measurement have yielded the same answer on the age of the planet.

I wonder why those who believe in "6,000 years" see fit to chant prove it to the scientific community when "science", not "religion", is the methodical, testable theory- whose tests all currently stand together.

Of course, Believing that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old instead of 6,000 years old has nothing to do with believing in God, it just requires that you once again look at the Bible as a book that is meant to teach through stories and lessons, not a manual to be followed literally.

Here's a question for the "6,000 years" people- if you truly believe God made the Earth, how much different to God do you think it is for Him to make a planet by blinking its entirety into existence, or make a planet by creating the right conditions in the universe for a planet to form? Why do you insist He created man, when He could just as easily have created the first single-celled organisms, kicking off an evolutionary process which would naturally yield all the plants and animals He planned it would? Why argue that He spawned entire planets at will- maybe the "Big Bang" really DID happen, and he's the one who created that?

The point is, there's no reason to believe God micro-managed every last blade of grass on the planet just because the Bible says He created the Earth. Yes, I also believe He created the Earth- but by creating the right conditions that would ultimately form our existence.

No, land mammals didnt exist a billion years ago, but there is an order to the story, first the earth, then plants, sea creatures, and then mammals and humans. It doesnt say mammals, I think it says cattle, but there is a simplistic evolution of events. Plants, Animals, Humans....

I dont recall the Bible saying each day is to the Lord as a thousand years, but I do recall the day to a year. If it can be a year or a thousand then why not a billion???

Perhaps God did create a single celled organism which carried the genetic code that would eventually evolve into an untold multitude of life forms. Even if that organism was brought here by a comet it just makes the story that much more interesting. The whole galaxy may have been seeded that way, but where did the original organism come from??? Science hasnt been able to replicate life, only manipulate it.

I never said it was your argument, but you're acting as if all-- Or even the majority-- Of Christians believe the earth is only 6,000 years old. It's been generally accepted that the story of the creation is anecdotal. The beliefs of the minority doesn't constitute the beliefs of the majority.

the current estimated age of the universie is 13.7 billion years. so maybe one day is 2.28 billion years. or maybe as pigglet said, one day to god is sour cream. i used the term apologetics in my previous post because that is what trying to reconcile your faith in the bible with the world outside the bible is (at least to my knowledge, correct me if i'm wrong!).

the big problem with this entire topic, imho, is that you are trying to say that 1 god day could equal 'x' human years. but why go that extra step? why not just say that to get where we are today, it has taken 'x' years (13.7 billion in this case). why does god have to be involved? because if you're going to try to reconcile the scientifically determined age of the universe with '6 days', then you also have to reconicle where that dome of water went (gen. 1.6), etc. why are you so sure that your god is the correct god? how can you be sure that it isn't vishnu or odin or any of the number of other gods that didn't have such good marketing in the western world? maybe the god that created the universe simply set things in motion and left? or maybe god never existed. is it more likely that moses and noah and jesus and many other biblical characters existed as described or is it possible that most of these characters are mixtures of real people and previously existing mythology from that region (hint: look to sumerian mythology and you find a lot of similarities dating back before judiasm).

i realize that this is possibly a bit off-topic, but i think the discussion of believing in a book for an explanation of the age of and creation method of the earth versus current (and evolving) scientific knowledge calls into question the credibility of both sets of evidence. as toaster126 and analog mention earlier in the thread, the why of what you believe is more important to than what you believe. and i personally can't understand why anyone would choose to believe something so specific as the bible when all other evidence really seems to point in other directions.

I'm so sorry if a possible explaination of the 6 days of creation bothers you so! And Yes, you are way off-topic with most of your post. Perhaps you should read some of my other posts before making such huge assumptions. 13.7 billion huh??? And 4.6 billion for the Earth??? All that amounts to, is the latest best guess by scientists. Thats all, an educated guess. The Earth may be 3 billion or 6, the universe may be 100 billion....the current best guess isnt always correct.

Dude. Calm down. Seriously.

Everyone else in this thread is participating with good expression of opinions that don't include yelling at others in a disrespectful way. Your tone and overall decorum could cause this otherwise pleasant debate into a yelling match, and we don't want that. So let's keep in mind how we express our opinions, and if they can be expressed without berating others for theirs.

- analog.

I am calm, who's yelling??? Berating others??? I missed that.....

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geez. you don't need to be snarky. the explanation you gave doesn't bother me. it just doesn't make any sense. you're trying to reconcile your beliefs with reality. and that's all well and good. but maybe you wouldn't have to if you didn't take the stories of illiterate goatherders as fact rather than story.

the earth, to the best of our current knowledge, is 4.6 billion years. the universe is 13.7 billion. most likely, those numbers will get refined in the years to come, but they're not going to be far off from what we currently believe. the nice thing about science is that there's no problem with updating our level of knowledge and refining our information. there is no need for apologetics.

i think politicophile sums up what i want to say much better than i would be able to.

Thank you. If I may get side-tracked for a moment of speculation, I suspect that the fundamentalist interpretation stems from how easily accessible the written bible is today. Not that easy access to the bible is a bad thing - quite the contrary - but having a physical book, with the text written in stone such that it is, makes it very easy to consider it the end-all and be-all, even when concerning metaphorical stories which run contrary to modern knowledge. This is the best explanation I can come up with for why literal interpretations are so vehemently defended today when metaphorical interpretations have been prevalent for such a long time.
Again, an important point. I've mentioned the concept of "two books" before in Tilted Philosophy - that is, that the divine is revealed through nature just as much as it can be revealed through scripture, and thus, the "book of nature" must necessarily not contradict how we read scripture. When there is a contradiction, one is being misunderstood. Increasingly, as science progresses, that misunderstanding falls on our reading of scripture rather than our understanding of nature. Another way to look at it is that nature's primary revelation is of god the creator, whereas scripture's primary revelation is of god the redeemer. We wouldn't expect nature to tell us how god redeems, and we shouldn't expect scripture to reveal to us how god creates.
You are right to point out that our current best guesses are not necessarily exactly correct. In fact, very very very few things in science are ever considered to be exactly correct, and scientists are pretty careful to acknowledge this fact. However, we're a lot more sure than you let on in the above statement. We're not talking about a range of 3-6 billion years old for the age of the earth. The range science has determined for the age of the earth - with a good degree of confidence - is between 4.467 and 4.667 billion years. While not exact, that's pretty damn precise.

As has been touched upon already, there is a significant problem with the "god day = ? man years" argument for biblical interpretation (which, to fit in with modern scientific knowledge, would be written as "1 god day = 1.64 billion man years" if we're to use the lower limit estimation for the age of the universe, which is ~11.5 billion years)...

For one, the order of creation is incorrect. Reading the account, it works under the assumption that the Earth already exists within the void of space on day 1 (there can't be a day or night without a planet's horizon for a star to rise and set over). Then we get to the second day, which has already been dealt with: where'd the dome of water go? On the third day, vegetation was created. Interesting since a large number of plants rely on insects for pollination, and living creatures do not exist yet. If a day = 1.64 billion years, those plants would have died out rather quickly. Then we get to the fourth day - and my favorite. Apparently, the earth was created *before* it had a star to orbit around. An amusing concept since planets are created from debris caught in the gravitation pull of stars. I don't think I need to continue.

Secondly, there's the issue of the timeline itself. Setting aside the fact the order of creation makes no sense, neither do the intervals. Using the 11.5 billion year old universe and 1 day = 1.64 billion years concept, here's what a more accurate telling would look like (to see a relatively accurate timeline of creation for yourself, click here. Warning: it is a very large image.):

Day 1 - The universe is created
Day 2 - God rested
Day 3 - God rested
Day 4 - The sun is created
Day 5 - The earth is created, as is the first life in single-celled organisms
Day 6 - The moon is created
Day 7 - This is God's busy day. He procrastinated the whole week and now only has a day to finish his project! So, he stays up the whole time and works hard. He creates plants and insects. He creates and destroys the dinosaurs in about 3.5 god hours, all so we can have pretty fossils to look at. He then starts working on the rise of mammalian creatures, barely finishing his project of creation in time by creating the first humans at 11:59:52pm

As you can see, it's quite a bit of a stretch to say that the "1 god day = ? man years" concept allows the biblical creation story and what we know through science to "coexist almost peacefully."

I don't want to get (re-) involved in the whole literal versus anecdotal thing, but I do want to respond to something.

I just wanted to say that this isn't necessarily true. It is the prevailing theory among many, but it's most definitely not set in stone. Currently, Vega is one of a few stars with an observed dust cloud surrounding it, indicating a possible planet formation.

Anyway, it would be possible, in theory, for a 'planet' to form in the absence of a star. Of course, you'd expect it to go shooting off into outer space somewhere until it was caught by an object with a gravitational pull larger than it's own...

Anyway... Sorry for the tangent. Carry on.

True enough, there have been some recent discoveries which indicate the possibility. However, I don't think there is any evidence that the earth may have been created that way. The rest of my post still holds true.

Key word....Educated

Oh boy....I am not trying to reconcile my beliefs. You must show me the post where I say I believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. For the record, I don't. That's why I thought if you checked my other posts you might come to this conclusion. The idea that the days of creation might be representative of a longer period of time was already mentioned in this thread, before I did. There's nothing to explain, except that the day for a year principle is in the Bible, and according to the theory of relativity, if you travel near the speed of light, a day may pass for you while a year goes by on Earth. There's a scientific basis if that helps. I am not conflicted in any way by my beliefs, I accept the Bible for what it is, and science for what it is.

saying that one god day = 'x' human years, which you say might be the case in previous posts, is reconciling your beliefs with observable reality. if the bible says that one god day = 1000 years, then for you to say it's a different number is reconciling your beliefs. trying to explain away the difference between biblical accounts and scientific accounts by bringing up relativity, is using apologetics to trying and reconcile your beliefs.

you may be playing devils advocate. if you are, then i think you're doing a fine job.

Whatever you say dude, but I'm not reconciling anything. Its perfectly logical to assume that those days arent actual days, since the Earth is ancient in the extreme. At least I can post an original thought, a passing thought but still, at least it doesnt sound like it came straight out of Wikepedia. Minds are like parachutes, they work best when open.

This may help you understand.....maybe...the word 'yom' in the original Hebrew text was translated as 'Solar Day', but there are 56 other choices. One of the other possibilities of the 56 choices was, 'an unimaginably long period of time'. Which makes much more sense, but it wasnt translated that way...to bad. I'm sure that many such mistakes were made, so lets all learn Hebrew and then we can discuss this from the original text only.

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*Hops up and down and screams madly for you to read the Bible*

Why take any of it literally?

Why does this even matter? The bible was written by man. Who really cares if God took 6 days or milenia to create the world.

The Bible is just man's interpretation of these things.

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As I've said before, this is because of the health risks associated with eating shellfish and pork. The multiweave deal, I really dont get. I am allergic to wool, so perhaps the ancient israelites were too!:) Its Possible!:)

Yes, I'm aware of what the Old Testament says. Are you aware of what the New Testament says?

Acts 11: 5 - 8

il, i'm guessing at your interpretation of that bit, but in the event that my guess is correct, i don't think that's the only interpretation. could it not also mean that God could take anything, cleanse it, and lo - man should consider it cleansed? i mean, this stuff descended from heaven and all - that's not some ordinary pulled from the sea shellfish, no?

:love: :love:

Hey, Dave:thumbsup:

Isn't God supposed to be unchanging? The New Testament makes him into a flip-flopper.

Most creationist can't even arrive at a concise age of the Earth. The common "6000 years" figure is based on the rough estimates of an Irish archbishop in the 17th century who cobbled together a timeline based on woefully incomplete geneological accounts in the Christian bible. Any real biblical support for this number is virtually nonexistent.

It's a magic number, and not all that different from the arbitrary numbers assigned to the age of creation in various other religious myths. There aren't very many serious theologians who take this figure seriously. Biblical literalism is largely an American Baptist phenomena, and is considered to be contradictory and even heretical by mainstream Christian scholars.

Given that young-earth creationists are incorrect in nearly all manners of science, history, and even theology, I'll never understand why their position is given any real consideration at all.

The mass extinction that occurred during the Cretaceous really isn't even the largest mass extinction on record. The event led to the extinction of around 70% of the organisms existing at the time. There is a great deal of evidence demonstrating that many marine and early mammalian organisms did in fact go extinct during this period. Planktonic organisms suffered especially heavy losses, as well as several species of birds, marsupials, and placentals (the common ancestor of most modern mammals.)

The K-T extinction was widespread, but rather patchy in terms of which organisms were most effected. Organisms that were largely dependent on photosynthesis were obviously effected the most by the amount of dust and debris hurled into the atmosphere by the impact event. This in turn affected the organisms whose food chain depended on other photosynthesising organisms. Omnivores and insectivores appear to have been the biggest winners in the K-T extinction being that they were able to sustain a healthy diet despite the widespread destruction. Most small mammals survived on insects, larvae, worms, snails, etc., which themselves survived largely on decaying organic matter.

The ocean-dwelling survivors also appear to have survived largely by switching to detritus feeding. If the water column was your habitat and you relied heavily on phytoplankton, you were pretty much screwed.

Size was also a big issue. The smaller the organism, the more suited it was for survival in the harsh conditions caused by the impact event. As near as modern paleontologists and paleozoologists can tell, nothing larger than a modern house cat survived. Huge, lumbering dinosaurs that required a hefty amount of caloric intake to survive obviously wouldn't fair to well in an environment where their primary food chain was essentially blown away by a giant meteor. Some small predatory dinosaurs probably did survive the end of the Cretaceous, but it appears that their ecosystem changed so drastically that they were unable to sustain a viable breeding population.

God told me to post this:

As little rats might
we hung around for awhile
and then we diverged