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This could be an interesting discussion. By young earth history we're talking about a few thousand years which is what the major of people believed a couple hundred years ago. An old earth history is the acceptance of scientific input from geologist, astronomers, etc. but one in which you still retain your belief of a God who played a central role in creation. Also, for those young earth believers, are you actually aware of the contrary evidence that undermines your point of view or are you sticking to your belief in spite of it?
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According to a genealogical standpoint based on the evidence of the Scriptures the earth is about 13-14 thousand years old. However, before Adam scholars are divided as to a literal six days of creation (the position I hold) and an unlimited amount of time that leaves open the possibility of thousands of more years.
One this is for sure, evolution is a total fabrication. Creation is a fact for believers and many respected creation scientists as well.
One this is for sure, evolution is a total fabrication. Creation is a fact for believers and many respected creation scientists as well.
Right, just as evolution is a fact for many atheists and scientists; Creation is a total fabrication for us. I appreciate your views but could you elaborate a little more than just telling us how wrong we are?
Marks, you're totally wrong I'm afraid. Are you aware of some of the processes that occur on the earth and how long it takes them to happen?
Here's a simple one to understand that I'm taking from a website.
Quote:
Coral Reefs: Indicators of an Old Earth
Viewed from the air, Pacific coral reefs generally appear as circular islands called atolls. They have a shallow lagoon in the middle and the open ocean lies toward the outside. Other features include: (1) a steep slope towards the ocean outside that descends into the depths; (2) a flat reef-platform between the island and the steep slope; (3) faster-growing corals on the windward, outer side; (4) storm-broken pieces of coral on the windward side, many of which have fallen partway down the slope and become fused to the reef; (5) slower-growing corals on the leeward (down-wind) side of the island.
The reefs are built by living organisms, primarily corals. The corals contain green algae in their interiors that provide oxygen the corals need to live. The corals, in turn, provide protection for the algae - a mutually supportive relationship that is called a symbiosis. The algae produce the oxygen by photosynthesis, so they need sunlight. This requirement limits reef-building coral to the upper 65 feet or so of water where sufficient light exists for photosynthesis. Of course, the dead carbonate "skeletons" of the coral can continue to exist at much greater depths.
The most reasonable explanation for coral growth begins with a volcano. Volcanoes can build themselves thousands of feet upward from the ocean floor, and some of them will grow tall enough to break through the surface of the water. During periods of volcanic inactivity, corals and lime-secreting algae colonize the areas just below the shoreline around the volcano. The corals and algae cement themselves together with lime as they grow, thereby constructing a circular reef around the volcano. Eventually the volcanic peak erodes to sea level. Further, as a result of tectonic activity, the volcano slowly sinks into the ocean depths. If the rate of sinking is slow enough, the reef-building can keep pace and continue constructing the reef. In this way a reef can be built that is several thousand feet tall, even though living corals can only survive in the upper layers of the ocean. Deep sea drilling at several atolls in the Pacific has confirmed this theory of reef growth, revealing volcanic rock below the corals.
We will here concentrate on one atoll - Eniwetok - as an example of how we can determine the age of a reef. This reef was thoroughly investigated by deep core drillings in preparation for its use as a test-site for a hydrogen bomb explosion. This atoll is roughly circular with all the standard characteristics of a growing reef. It rests upon an extinct volcano, as expected, and the volcano rises about two miles above the ocean floor. The reef itself is 4,610 feet tall. Examination of the material from the bore holes reveals that this is a normal reef that formed from the cementing together of corals and lime-secreting algae. (This algae is different from the kind that lives within the corals.) In addition, three unconformities (discontinuities in the growth of the reef) were located at depths of 300, 1000, and 2780 feet. These unconformities contain pollen from seed-bearing shrubs and trees, which indicates there were periods when the reef surface was above sea level (and so no coral growth at the surface) which lasted long enough for land plants to colonize the surface.
With this information we are ready to calculate the age of the Eniwetok reef. All we need to do is divide the height of the reef by the rate at which it grew. This calculation is rather like finding how long it would take to travel a certain distance. The time is calculated by dividing the distance to be travelled by the speed or rate of travel. For example, if one is to travel 150 miles and one's average rate of speed is 50 miles per hour, then the trip will take 150/50 = 3 hours to make the trip, not allowing for stops along the way. Just think of the height of the coral as the distance travelled and the rate of coral growth as the speed.
Research indicates that maximum rates of reef growth are about 8 millimeters per year, determined by examining the present growth rates of numerous reefs in the vicinity of Eniwetok. Admittedly, one may question whether the growth rate wasn't perhaps faster for this particular reef, but there are limits to how fast corals can grow. Growing biological systems obey strict physical and chemical laws relating to metabolism, reproduction, and intake of nutrients. This last item is particularly important because the rate of growth of coral depends on the amount of dissolved calcium carbonate it can extract from the seawater. Calcium carbonate, though, is rather insoluble, so there is not a large concentration of it in ocean water. Thereby reef growth is limited to a fraction of an inch per year.
Thus 8 millimeters per year cannot be far from the actual growth rate of the Eniwetok corals. Using this value, the age of the reef is calculated by dividing 4,610 feet by 8 millimeters (about .3 inch) per year, which is about 175,000 years. But this is a minimum age since we have not taken into account the time periods (represented by the unconformities mentioned above) when the reef was not growing. Nor have we taken into account the time necessary to form the volcanic base on which the reef grew.
Recently, further calculations for the rate of reef growth have been based on the concentration of dissolved calcium carbonate in seawater and upon the rate at which corals can absorb it and manufacture their shells. This rate turns out to be only about 5 millimeters per year, which means that the Eniwetok reef is more like 280,000 years old, not counting pauses in growth. A similar analysis for the much larger Grand Bahama Reef reveals an age of 790,000 years. And again, this is a minimum age, since that reef also contains numerous unconformities.
Young-earth creationists, of course, object to these great ages. They attempt to find alternative explanations for the formation of reefs. One idea is that the reefs formed as calcium carbonate precipitated out of the waters of Noah's Flood. This is nonsense, however, because precipitation involves dissolved calcium carbonate. How can one explain that the calcium carbonate managed to precipitate in the form of a reef, complete with the five characteristic features mentioned above, and the presence of corals that look just like those that were once alive? Besides, the insolubility of calcium carbonate is such that all the ocean waters of the world could not hold enough to construct past and present reefs in a one-year flood.
Another young-earth proposal is that reefs were formed by the piling up of lime during the time of Noah's Flood. But if this were true, how did the raging flood waters just happen to pile up the lime in a structure that has all the appearance of having been a growing entity? And why are the reefs free from the mud, clay, and other debris invariably present in flood waters? Finally, how were the waters able to pile up the reef material only on the upper slopes of ancient volcanoes? This would be the last place we would expect waters to deposit their debris, especially on those that are thousands of feet tall. For all these reasons, the proposal that reefs were piled up by flood waters lacks any credibility.
Finally, one can find statements in young-earth literature that corals can grow as fast as five centimeters per year. This is true for unusual and isolated corals, not the ones that construct large reefs. One also needs to keep in mind that although some individual corals may grow this quickly, the reef as a whole grows much more slowly because such faster growing corals are easily broken by storm waves. In addition, reefs are constantly being degraded by storm breakage, weathering, and dissolution of calcium carbonate back into the ocean water. These competitive processes prevent the reef from growing faster than the rates cited earlier.
In conclusion, the only rational interpretation for the presence of very tall reefs in deep ocean water is that these reefs grew over long periods of time by the natural processes discussed above. As such, reefs are indicators of ages on earth that are far greater than the 10,000 or so years allowed by young-earth creationists.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MontanaGuy
Marks, you're totally wrong I'm afraid.
Right, just like I think y'all are wrong on this. And no, I will not consider your sources seeing that when I offered my sources on creation y'all shot them down So I'm supposed to acquiesce to your "so-called" sources, but y'all wont with mine.
We agree that we each believe or position is correct we leave it at that.
Marks, the only sources I could find in this thread offered by you were scripture. Admittedly, this is faith-based. If you want to parley with atheists and agnostics, you gotta bring more than that.
According to a genealogical standpoint based on the evidence of the Scriptures the earth is about 13-14 thousand years old. However, before Adam scholars are divided as to a literal six days of creation (the position I hold) and an unlimited amount of time that leaves open the possibility of thousands of more years.
One this is for sure, evolution is a total fabrication. Creation is a fact for believers and many respected creation scientists as well.
There is a simple point here.. if God created the earth in 6 days, then humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time. We know that not to be true. Evolution is Scientific fact.
An average high school student that's taken a few science classes could clobber the young earth scenario in a debate. There's not enough room on this forum for me to go into all of the evidence that absolutely proves that the earth is ancient, roughly four and a half billion years old. The earth simply would not be the way it is today if it were relatively young. We have massive deposits of coal and oil that are the result of millions of years of accumulation of decayed plant material, that's why there're called fossil fuels. You can actually see an occational fossil of a leaf or some living thing in coal. To suggest that a God simply created the world in this manner to make it look old is kindergarten talk. The ice sheets in the polar regions have allowed us to look back at least a hundred and sixty thousand years when we take core samples because they contain a year by year record similar to a tree ring. We also know that the continental drift or sea floor spreading is real because we can actually measure it and the evidence is overwhelming that an area in the mid Atlantic is thrusting up newer material and pushing the tektonic plates. I could go on all day but I hope you get my point. Any reasonable person who has any understanding of our world cannot accept a young earth scenario. It simply isn't true.
Marks, the only sources I could find in this thread offered by you were scripture. Admittedly, this is faith-based. If you want to parley with atheists and agnostics, you gotta bring more than that.
Hmmm, put my trust in God (and His Word) OR put my trust in man...I'll take God! Psalm 118:8 It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. Here's the irony in this verse, it is the CENTER of the Bible.
Adding It All Up
* How many chapters exist before Psalm 118? 594
* How many chapters of the Bible exist after Psalm 118? 594
* Add the two together and you get 1188.
* What is the verse at the very center of the Bible? Psalm 118:8*
It makes perfect sense that the center of the Bible would hold such an important message. So yes, Marks and everyone else that quotes scripture is RIGHT ON!
Quote:
Originally Posted by MontanaGuy
An average high school student that's taken a few science classes could clobber the young earth scenario in a debate. There's not enough room on this forum for me to go into all of the evidence that absolutely proves that the earth is ancient, roughly four and a half billion years old. The earth simply would not be the way it is today if it were relatively young. We have massive deposits of coal and oil that are the result of millions of years of accumulation of decayed plant material, that's why there're called fossil fuels. You can actually see an occational fossil of a leaf or some living thing in coal. To suggest that a God simply created the world in this manner to make it look old is kindergarten talk. The ice sheets in the polar regions have allowed us to look back at least a hundred and sixty thousand years when we take core samples because they contain a year by year record similar to a tree ring. We also know that the continental drift or sea floor spreading is real because we can actually measure it and the evidence is overwhelming that an area in the mid Atlantic is thrusting up newer material and pushing the tektonic plates. I could go on all day but I hope you get my point. Any reasonable person who has any understanding of our world cannot accept a young earth scenario. It simply isn't true.
First of all, I really don't understand why it is such an issue of how old the Earth really is. I think this discussion (topic) is the biggest weapon the Atheists and Agnostics have to try and "disprove" Christians and/or the Bible. However, I don't think that the evolutionists have any more concrete evidence that God DIDN'T design and creat the Earth this way than the Christians do to prove that He didn't. (just IMHO)
However, I don't think that the evolutionists have any more concrete evidence that God DIDN'T design and creat the Earth this way than the Christians do to prove that He didn't. (just IMHO)
Evolution leaves a lot of room for religion, which has been discussed much here. What we're trying to combat is the views of people which are "Evolution DOES NOT EXIST."
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So I'm supposed to acquiesce to your "so-called" sources, but y'all wont with mine. 
