Why Do You Believe That The Earth Is 4.54 Billion Years Old? (churches, evolution)
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This is an excellent thorough-yet-concise overview of the age of the Earth and the evidence that indicates such, as well as common Young-Earth claims to the contrary.
What? You're not understanding the omnipotence of God. Did Jesus turn water into wine? Multiply food by a thousand? Raise the dead? What can science tell us of these events after the fact?
Nothing, because those events don't leave behind physical evidence. Creation does. What you're arguing is the Omphalos theory. It's based on the question did Adam have a belly button. If he did, it's a deception since he wasn't born of a woman and had no umbilical cord. By the same token, we see scars on the Earth and in the universe that broadcast to us its age and how it formed. If it didn't form in the way we can study and see, then it's a deception.
And if you're going to argue Genesis is literal, why don't you believe the Sun revolves around the Earth and that the Earth is stationary? Both are stated in the Bible and both are disproved by science.
What? You're not understanding the omnipotence of God. Did Jesus turn water into wine? Multiply food by a thousand? Raise the dead? What can science tell us of these events after the fact? If we found a vial of wine that we knew for sure was the wine created from water, would science 'prove' that the event happened? No, science would say it is a liquid made from fermenting grapes grown from the ground. Is Jesus a deciever? Of course not. Your argument is false.
First of all, I honestly cannot believe that this is still a debate. WHY are we still arguing that the earth was poofed here with a big magic spell created by an all-powerful entity who put us here just so he can watch what we do in our bedrooms and then fry us or love us based on that?
Secondly, anyone who actually thinks the earth is only 6,000 years old essentially proved the universe doesn't exist. So bye-bye. You can wink out of existence at any time. Oh, still here? That shows how wrong you are.
Because ... for the earth to be 6,000 years old, science would have to be 100% wrong on so many fundamental and foundational points that the universe as we know it could not exist.
And thirdly, no, his argument is NOT false. Yes, Jesus WOULD be a deceiver if he knew beforehand (omniscience) that we would eventually find a vial of wine that was magically created miraculously from water. By deliberately creating the wine in such a way as to make it indistinguishable from regular mundane wine is essentially throwing us off the trail. Jesus is deliberately masking his own existence as if he were a criminal and science was the police.
By the way, the "omnipotence" of God is just a built-in escape hatch whenever believers are inevitably backed into a corner by rationality and reason.
It's also odd how God's omnipotence only comes into play when it needs to in order to thwart a logical argument. Where God's omnipotence does NOT come into play is when God does incredibly idiotic things like making Noah gather up all the animals and squeeze them into a tiny ark - instead of just recreating all of the animals after the flood. Or making plants before making the sun. Or confusing our languages thereby making it that much harder for God's religion to spread - and why didn't this omnipotent God or his son go anywhere else beyond the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea? The list of facepalming moments given to us by an omnipotent but horribly inefficient God is staggeringly long.
For some odd reason God is super-duper omniscient at just the right time in a YEC debate to allow YEC people to say anything they want without having to verify it, prove it, or give evidence for it. Yet the Bible seems to suggest that he doesn't use it the rest of the time. Why create people who he knows will burn in hell? Why not just poof the Israelites to the other side of the Red Sea? Why not simply use magic to convert all of the Canaanites to Judaism instead of having Joshua murder them all? On and on and on, the evidence for God's LACK of omnipotence grows longer and longer.
This is an excellent thorough-yet-concise overview of the age of the Earth and the evidence that indicates such, as well as common Young-Earth claims to the contrary.
Thank you. The various methods references (which, when put together, agree in their results) could presumably be looked up to see how they work and how the result can be relied on.
It is worth reading also because a lot of space is given to YE evidence, not so much dating methods that give a YE date (I have never seen a single one presented outside Bible genealogical lists) but argument as to why the earth cannot possibly be old because of helium accumulation etc. The faulty reasoning is shown up (e.g that helium escapes from the atmosphere is either not known or ignored) and so YE is left with no evidence for YE and not even a sound case to argue against OE.
First of all, I honestly cannot believe that this is still a debate. WHY are we still arguing that the earth was poofed here with a big magic spell...?
Why? Because some continue to engage in exercises in futility, wall head-banging, and spitting into strong winds.
You will NEVER change 99.9999999% of those that hold these preposterous beliefs. And even if you did...the "effort to effectiveness ratio" puts in the "incredible waste of time" category.
If you must engage...adopt a "for entertainment only" attitude about it, and view it as amusement.
Personally, I'd like to see what would happen when a bunch of 6,000 year believes get locked into a room with a bunch of 10,000 year believers.
Will they all come out believing 8,ooo years. Or will it be a last man standing kind of thing?
One of my favourite stories was when I was searching for the Evidence FOR Creation, because no Creationists had even tried to do so at my invitation.
I read a report on a meeting to discuss the scientific data regarding this matter, which got of to a great start by a general prayer (it may have R.A.T.E but possibly C.A.R.M, but anyway, they seemed to N.U.T.S). What stuck out in my mind was that they had apparently given up trying to argue for an 8,000 or 10,000 year old earth, or even a 15, 000 y.o one but they had to accept now a 50,000 year old earth. And the reporter heard a frisson of dismay run around the audience at this announcement. They may have realized immediately that this almost fitted the time scale of apes to Humans better than it fitted Genesis.
Of course, that was probably in the days before the 2nd earth theory was developed to soak up those inconveniently early rocks, leaving RATE vainly trying to turn science inside -out to suit Bible -myth while happily leaving the 2nd earth with the pesky 4 billon year -old rocks out of the way, and able to get on with a 6,000 B.C creation, just like it says in Genesis.
The Scripture I quoted specifically says that the water covered the entire world, dry land, the mountains and then above the mountains. Scripture also states quite clearly that all men at the time of Noah were the descendants of Adam. Who else would they be descendant from?
I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but it just makes zero sense and cannot be accepted as a logical or raitonal argument according to the clear Word of God.
I believe there is more to the story than you describe. I'm not trying to change your mind, but I think there is information of note in the same scriptures you are reading.
There were two different kinds of people on the earth - the sons of God were Adam's descendants (Adam was formed and the breath of life was breathed into him) and the daughters of man were those who were not Adam's descendants (these were the "creations").
The "face of the earth" was the small area where the Garden of Eden was. What we now know as Israel was the setting for the Bible. The Bible follows one family - Adam and his descendants - and everything we read in the Bible pertains to them. The planet earth was not included in this story. Why would a global flood be included? Nothing else global is included once Creation ends and Adam begins. It was just the story of Adam and his descendants in a place we now call Israel.
I know that you are not looking for any answers that differ from your own. That is perfectly fine with me. I'm not trying to change your mind. But there may be others out there who are looking for a different answer. An answer that does not compete with science or an answer that can make more sense to them than the standard Catholic and other church answers. The Bible is very open to interpretation. That is why we all are so different in our beliefs. That is why there are 40,000 Christian denominations who don't agree on much of anything. Each person has to struggle to read and find understanding. You found yours and I found mine. Each of us who searches finds an answer.
We are arguing over the existence of a global flood. Really, what difference does it make at this point? If one doesn't care about reconciling the Bible with the world around us, who cares? It doesn't make any difference in our salvation. It doesn't make any difference in our love for God or the acceptance of Jesus. The only difference it makes is to some one who is struggling to read and find an answer that satisfies them. Now, they have your interpretation and they have mine. They can read using both or neither until they find the right answer for them. That is why a journey to the Lord God is a solitary one. One can go to church and worship and fellowship and praise all he/she wants to, but in the end each has to walk the path to God alone. Each has to find his/her own way, by him/herself, for a relationship with God. One trying to prove that he/she is right and everyone else is wrong and that theirs is the only "way" doesn't help anybody. We certainly aren't helping God when we do so.
Last edited by Ella Parr; 12-11-2014 at 12:05 PM..
Rifleman would have chimed in now with a colourful post no doubt...
My contribution to these discussion comes from my neck of the woods where most YEC have never visited.
Starting with the Victoria waterfalls that has 9 gorges that date to around 100,000 years old, based on known erosion rates and in a relatively flat area of Africa devoid of any volcanic activity (at least in the last 6,00 years. Cited as one of the 7 wonders of the world in times past.
Seen here from the air from the upstream of the falls in a very dry season.
Not enough evidence?
We move onto cave formations and in my back yard we have the two oldest formations. Sudwala caves (around 1.5 billion years old) and the Cango caves which is still active and a tad younger. None of the aforementioned ice bridge theories work in South Africa as the antarctic is too far away.
Which brings us ironically to THE most solid piece of evidence against a global fludd. I dunno about the USA, but back home here, ice does this;
Now those pesky scientists have taken Antarctic ice cores and the dating varies between 400,000 and 780,000 years. Bear in mind, precipitation of snow here is about two inches a year. Soo the WWII planes in Greenland (a glacier, different ice) does not negate the layers which recorded known volcanic eruptions in recent history. Pity that ice floats no?
In the back yard of the US, you have some of the oldest living trees and yuppers, we do not have to chop 'em down to count the rings, we also core into the trunk. These are older than the alleged bible creation of 6000 years. The oldest known tree is 9000+ years old and is in Switzerland.
Now my dearly departed friend Rifleman was always on about lake varves which are are annual sediment layers formed in lakes in certain environments. These are everywhere and river deltas also record sedimentary deposits over millions of years.
Lastly, that damn rainbow.... Well we all know now about light refraction and the spectrum of light. So no it was not a covenant of gawd with capt. Noah. Rainbows exist everywhere there is sun and water present and (gasp) even in oil slicks on a wet tarred road.
With all this real evidence, how can any sane person believe in YEC or a global fludd makes me feel like this
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