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Age of the Earth questions you may have for a Bible literalist

AvalonXQ said:
I think I basically look at the data and ask, "How well does this fit in with the Biblical account? How well does this fit in with the naturalist account? Which explanation fits better? Does this evidence cause problems for either account or bolster either account?"
Occasionally my conclusion has been "this evidence is a real challenge to Account X," but more often my conclusion is "both accounts have a reasonable explanation that fits with this evidence".
What's important to note, though, is that there is a WHOLE LOT of evidence out there that I haven't examined or studied. I'm not a geologist or an archeologist; I'm no expert.
And I have no way of knowing what each additional piece of evidence will tell me until I see it.
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Fair enough. :)

So basically, it's more of a complementary thing with both rather than a mutually exclusive thing if I understand what you're saying.
 
sadhatter said:
You know, beyond internal inconsistency i have a huge question for YEC'ers.

The bible states that god can not or will not lie. Now the only explanation for yec is that god created the earth, including signs of antiquity.

But, if he created said signs in order to trick us, he is lying to us. Which would flatly contradict that statement.

So either god can and does lie, or YEC is not a position that can be defended. And if god can lie, that is going to shake the hell out of the foundations of christian teachings.

So the question to put it more clearly, is how do you explain god lying to us by making the world look very old, when the fact that he cannot lie is taken into effect?
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The idea that there is a "natural life cycle" for suns, planets, etc., and that God created some suns and planets in the middle of their life cycle rather than the beginning, does not imply dishonesty on God's part.
Consider Adam and Eve. It is normally assumed that God created them as adults. Someone that knows human biology and examines the five-minute-old Adam would conclude that Adam is thirty years old -- does this imply dishonesty on God's part? Or does it just imply that God created some things in a "finished" state rather than creating everything in an infantile state?
Because God created Earth life in its adult forms, showing signs of previous growth and development that in fact did not occur, it's reasonable to assume that he did the same with non-living parts of the universe as well.
 
trentwray said:
So basically, it's more of a complementary thing with both rather than a mutually exclusive thing if I understand what you're saying.
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I think that's a reasonable assessment.
I start with the assumption that any piece of evidence could provide a challenge or a reinforcement to either theory, and then I ask myself whether either or both is true in this specific case.
 
a3sigma said:
All very interesting, and all pointless. If a person will believe in miracles, without evidence, then no amount of evidence will convince him that a miracle did not occur.

Believers tell me that god created the universe, and everything in it, exactly as it appears today, including all the evidence of antiquity, some few thousand years ago.

There's no arguing with such an irrefutable hypothesis, it's a fool's errand to try.

"The bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it." It does.

DC
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Time was, theologians didn't like that idea, as it suggests God is a deceiver, putting in place, deliberately, apparently legitimate evidence that suggests things that never happened.

Some theologians at least tried to maintain God's purity by suggesting the Devil planted dinosaur bones or, in the case of actual ancient writings, precursors to holy texts that just look like they happen to have the Bible evolve from them.


Today's theologians are so lazy. :mad:
 
One of the things that has always puzzled me is why most Jewish rabbis accept a non-literal reading of the Torah and are content with a universe that has existed for billions of years, but many Christian groups require a literal reading of the Old Testament. It looks like there is a fundamental difference between the basic philosophies of these two religions that surpasses any minor quibbles over a man named Yeshua.
 
AvalonXQ said:
The idea that there is a "natural life cycle" for suns, planets, etc., and that God created some suns and planets in the middle of their life cycle rather than the beginning, does not imply dishonesty on God's part.
Consider Adam and Eve. It is normally assumed that God created them as adults. Someone that knows human biology and examines the five-minute-old Adam would conclude that Adam is thirty years old -- does this imply dishonesty on God's part? Or does it just imply that God created some things in a "finished" state rather than creating everything in an infantile state?
Because God created Earth life in its adult forms, showing signs of previous growth and development that in fact did not occur, it's reasonable to assume that he did the same with non-living parts of the universe as well.
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That is not what i am saying, i have no problems with the adam and eve story, because god didn't make adam and eve think they had a childhood by the evidence. If for example, god had made it look like they had a childhood ( lets say faking grafitti on a tree that would indicate adam carved it as a child.), then i would have an issue.

My problem is that god specifically created evidence on the world and through the solar system that would lead us to believe that it is older than it is. When he could have omitted said evidence and gave us some evidence that the world is only 6000 or so years old, and if he omitted said evidence then there would be no inconsistencies with scripture. But having made the world to look older than it is ( which we both seem to agree is the case. Whether this is true or not is the point we seem to be debating) he is lying. And as we both know, according to scripture god does not lie.

The difference being that at no point did god tell adam and eve that they had a childhood, or for that matter give them any signs they did. While on the earth and in space, there are plenty of pieces of evidence that would indicate that 6000 years is not the amount of time the world has been around.
 
1. How did the kangaroos manage to bounce from Aus to the Middle East?

2. How did Noah's crew manage to mutate/evolve into all the racial types we see today, in such a short time?

3. Who put the bop in the bop shee bop shee bop?
 
sadhatter said:
That is not what i am saying, i have no problems with the adam and eve story, because god didn't make adam and eve think they had a childhood by the evidence.
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If we looked at Adam's five-minute-old DNA, and found a reduction of telemeres consistent with DNA that had been reproducing for 30 years, would you then feel God had been lying there too? What differences would we expect to see between Adam and an actual 30-year-old human, assuming that Adam was created as a fully-functioning adult but with no intent at deception?
If I claim that the Earth was non-deceptively created 10,000 years ago as a "middle-aged" planet, what differences would we expect to see between it and a planet that had actually existed for much, much longer?
 
sadhatter said:
You know, beyond internal inconsistency i have a huge question for YEC'ers.

The bible states that god can not or will not lie. Now the only explanation for yec is that god created the earth, including signs of antiquity.
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Where does the bible state that? And what if it does? He's god. He can do whatever he wants to do. He can lie, and he can lie about whether or not he does, has, or can lie. He make make promises, he can break promises. He can change his mind, he can contradict himself. Who are we to say that he can't? See Job.

Again, and again, you just can't argue with magical thinking. Anyone with a mind capable of believing that the universe exists and operates at the whim of some supernatural entity is capable of believing anything, for any reason, or for no reason at all.
 
AvalonXQ said:
If we looked at Adam's five-minute-old DNA,
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As long as we are talking about Adam in the Garden, let me ask: Do you believe that the Tree of Life still grows someplace on Earth and that a flaming-sword weilding cherbum guards it?
 
Ladewig said:
As long as we are talking about Adam in the Garden, let me ask: Do you believe that the Tree of Life still grows someplace on Earth and that a flaming-sword weilding cherbum guards it?
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Why the hell did god even make the damn thing in the first place?

What on earth is the point of it? Especially what was the point when the only beings around who could really have benefitted from it's existance are expressly forbidden from touching it!
 
Ladewig said:
Why do you think the purpose of this thread is to convince AXQ that the universe is billions of years old?
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Because...


  1. This thread started as an offshoot of the Obama-hating baptist minister thread where AXQ brought up his Creationist silliness.
  2. You mentioned him in the very first sentence of the OP in this thread.
 
AvalonXQ said:
I think I basically look at the data and ask, "How well does this fit in with the Biblical account? How well does this fit in with the naturalist account? Which explanation fits better? Does this evidence cause problems for either account or bolster either account?"
Occasionally my conclusion has been "this evidence is a real challenge to Account X," but more often my conclusion is "both accounts have a reasonable explanation that fits with this evidence".
What's important to note, though, is that there is a WHOLE LOT of evidence out there that I haven't examined or studied. I'm not a geologist or an archeologist; I'm no expert.
And I have no way of knowing what each additional piece of evidence will tell me until I see it.
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You are looking at it the wrong way. Consider the Bible and tell me what would qualify as evidence against a young earth to you? Answering that question in advance will prevent intentional and unintentional post hoc reasoning.
 
AvalonXQ said:
If we looked at Adam's five-minute-old DNA, and found a reduction of telemeres consistent with DNA that had been reproducing for 30 years, would you then feel God had been lying there too? What differences would we expect to see between Adam and an actual 30-year-old human, assuming that Adam was created as a fully-functioning adult but with no intent at deception?
If I claim that the Earth was non-deceptively created 10,000 years ago as a "middle-aged" planet, what differences would we expect to see between it and a planet that had actually existed for much, much longer?
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How do you know that your god didn't create the world 10 seconds ago with us and all our memories?
 
You posers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis :)

For Avalon, there are literally mountains of evidence for an ancient earth, but I will give just 1 that is for me extremely convincing.

The hawaiian island chain extends for nearly 5000 miles from Kilauea to Suiko near Japan. (not all are visible above water). We can tell that all of these islands were formed from the same volcanic hotspot that is still actively making new islands based on a backwards extrapolation of the movement rates of the Pacific plate. Also, because all the islands were formed by volcanoes, this allows us to perform accurate K/Ar Radiometric dating of all of the islands in the chain.

Since we know accurately what the rate of drift of the Pacific plate is, we can plot the location of each island in the chain against the K/Ar radiometric dating and see if they agree and to what extent. I have done such a plot, it is shown below.

Since the date of the K/Ar agrees nearly perfectly with the expected age of each island based on the known drift rate of the Pacific plate, to me this is incredibly strong evidence of a minimum age of the earth of about 65 Million years. (please note that there are small error bars for both the dating and the drift rate, but the expected age based on the drift rate agrees very closely with the K/Ar dating and all fall within the error rates)

I can provide you the spreadsheet I used to create this graph and the source references to the K/Ar dating and the list of islands/atolls that are part of the chain if you so desire.

bhlnyr.jpg
 
Achán hiNidráne said:
Because...


  1. This thread started as an offshoot of the Obama-hating baptist minister thread where AXQ brought up his Creationist silliness.
  2. You mentioned him in the very first sentence of the OP in this thread.
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I mentioned AXQ in the context of AXQ's offering to answer questions. I never said or implied that the purpose of asking AXQ questions was to convert AXQ. If I had wanted to discuss that, I would have titled the thread: what ideas would lead a literalist to reconsider the age of the earth.
 
AvalonXQ said:
If I claim that the Earth was non-deceptively created 10,000 years ago as a "middle-aged" planet, what differences would we expect to see between it and a planet that had actually existed for much, much longer?
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I don't understand what you mean in the bolded section. Would you elaborate?
 
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