[_ Old Earth _] For Christians only: Do you accept a 6 day creation 6,000 YA

[Khristeeanos]

No hard feelings, but I think I will be moving on from this particular back and forth in this thread. Sometime 2 participants have different expectations about what constitutes a productive debate....

Your choice.

But I still think that we should look at the world through the Bible, and not allow the world to tell us how to intrepret the Bible.

We should look at the world through the Bible. We shouldn't blind ourselves to the world because of our misconceptions about the Bible. The Earth is not 6000 years old. If God had wanted us to ignore the evidence of creation, he would not have said "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, (being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." The creation is supposed to be a witness for all of God's power. However, when Christians such as yourselves deny the reality of what God created, and instead spout fairytales of the Earth being 6,000 years old, you make a bad name for Christianity by implicating that God's truth is in opposition to the natural world and that we can't trust the testimoy of the natural world. The truth of Genesis doesn't change if it isn't historically factual. Just as Jesus' parables contain the truth without being factual accounts.

We shoulndn't go to God's word with a bias toward proving it to be in error.

We should just allow God to tell us what He has done and leave it at that.

There is absolutly no evidence (let alone any proof) that the creation account is not meant to be obviously literal and that the Bible allows for billions of years.

It is just not there. Ask any Hebrew scholar, the language of Genesis teaches a young earth.

If we allow for this old earth hypothesis to take hold, what we do is say that we can intrepret the Bible in any way we choose. God won't change the truth simply because of man's opinion, will He?


Again, what is happening is that we are allowing man's opinions (based upon bias and faulty assumptions) to ignore solid Biblical evidence.

 

[cubedbee]

We shoulndn't go to God's word with a bias toward proving it to be in error.

Nor should we approach it with the bias of thinking we know the one and only way to correctly read a passage.

We should just allow God to tell us what He has done and leave it at that.

Yes, we should. Unfortunately, God tells us apparently contradictory things. When this happens, it is our intepretation, not God's testimony, which is in error. God speaks to us of creation both through the Bible and through the creation itself, and these testimonies are apparently contradiction. We must reconcile these.

There is absolutly no evidence (let alone any proof) that the creation account is not meant to be obviously literal and that the Bible allows for billions of years.

Yes, there are millions of bits of scientific data that all point to a earth far far older than 6000 years. This evidence is the observation of what God actually creaetd, and God's creation cannot lie.

It is just not there. Ask any Hebrew scholar, the language of Genesis teaches a young earth.

Hebrew scholars are wrong about the meaning of much of the OT, why should they be right about this?

If we allow for this old earth hypothesis to take hold, what we do is say that we can intrepret the Bible in any way we choose.

How are we to intepret the Bible? The way you choose?

God won't change the truth simply because of man's opinion, will He?

No he won't, nor do I claim he will. The truth has always been the same.

Again, what is happening is that we are allowing man's opinions (based upon bias and faulty assumptions) to ignore solid Biblical evidence.

You are allowing man's opionion (based upon bias and faulty assumptions) to ignore solid scientific evidence. Science and the Bible are not opposed, but complimentary.

 

[Collier]

I use this illustration quite often when dealing with this topic and now is a good time to use it again.

• People say that evidence shows that the earth "appears" to be billions of years old. How do we handle this?

Here is a simple question. How old was Adam when God created him? The answer is 1 DAY old. However, how old did Adam APPEAR to be? Well, we don't know actually but we do know that he was a MAN. What does all this mean? It shows that God can create things which appear to be older than they actually are. When God created the animals, where they as newborns or where they fully grown? I see God creating a MATURE earth and everything in it. Can we not just have faith in what God has said and know that His wisdom far exceeds our own?

 

[Free]

Collier,

Do you believe that God has deceived mankind? Why would God create things to appear older than they actually are? What would this accomplish other than mass confusion?

The language of Genesis does allow for an old earth and the science is pretty solid that the earth is older than 6000 years. Of course, this doesn't mean that evolutionary theory is true.

One thing to always keep in mind is that salvation doesn't hinge on belief that the earth is 6000 years old.

 

[Collier]

Free:

• I agree that salvation is not dependent upon that but we are to live by every word of God. As to why He created things that appear older than they are I don't know. All I know is that He did. Adam was older than he appeared, the fruit trees and so forth. My only point is why can't the earth be the same?

 

[Free]

Free:

• I agree that salvation is not dependent upon that but we are to live by every word of God. As to why He created things that appear older than they are I don't know. All I know is that He did. Adam was older than he appeared, the fruit trees and so forth. My only point is why can't the earth be the same?

Hmm...It seems that those things necessary for the propagation of life were originally created mature so they could reproduce and fill the earth. But does this mean that the earth itself would also be created to look old?

I don't know, just some thoughts.

 

[Collier]

Hey Free:

• I am not saying you got to believe what I said or your going to hell. No, I was simply giving a reasonable explanation as to why there is a difference between the actual age and what it appears to be.

You are right those things would need to be mature in order to reproduce but would it not be logical to carry that thought out and see the earth as mature? If everything else seemed older, why not the earth?

 

[unred typo]

Free wrote:

Hmm...It seems that those things necessary for the propagation of life were originally created mature so they could reproduce and fill the earth. But does this mean that the earth itself would also be created to look old?

How old does a 6,000 year old earth look? Do we know? We have a case just this spring of a “dating disaster†where a human skull being dated at 27,400 years old that was a little more than 250 years old.* Since we only have been seriously looking at these things for a couple hundred years now, maybe we don’t know what 6,000 years can do to an active planet like ours. All we know for sure is some pretty drastic things have occurred.

*We had decided to subject many of these finds to modern techniques to check their authenticity so we sent them to Oxford [University] for testing," one of the researchers told The Sunday Telegraph. "It was a routine examination and in no way an attempt to discredit Prof. von Zieten." In their report, they called Protsch's 30 years of work a "dating disaster."
Among their findings was an age of only 3,300 years for the female "Bischof-Speyer" skeleton, found with unusually good teeth in Northern Germany, that Protsch dated to 21,300 years.
Another dating error was identified for a skull found near Paderborn, Germany, that Protsch dated at 27,400 years old. It was believed to be the oldest human remain found in the region until the Oxford investigations indicated it belonged to an elderly man who died in 1750.

 

[reznwerks]

carbon 14

Free wrote:

Hmm...It seems that those things necessary for the propagation of life were originally created mature so they could reproduce and fill the earth. But does this mean that the earth itself would also be created to look old?

How old does a 6,000 year old earth look? Do we know? We have a case just this spring of a “dating disaster†where a human skull being dated at 27,400 years old that was a little more than 250 years old.* Since we only have been seriously looking at these things for a couple hundred years now, maybe we don’t know what 6,000 years can do to an active planet like ours. All we know for sure is some pretty drastic things have occurred.

[quote:851c8]*We had decided to subject many of these finds to modern techniques to check their authenticity so we sent them to Oxford [University] for testing," one of the researchers told The Sunday Telegraph. "It was a routine examination and in no way an attempt to discredit Prof. von Zieten." In their report, they called Protsch's 30 years of work a "dating disaster."
Among their findings was an age of only 3,300 years for the female "Bischof-Speyer" skeleton, found with unusually good teeth in Northern Germany, that Protsch dated to 21,300 years.
Another dating error was identified for a skull found near Paderborn, Germany, that Protsch dated at 27,400 years old. It was believed to be the oldest human remain found in the region until the Oxford investigations indicated it belonged to an elderly man who died in 1750.

[/quote:851c8]
Carbon 14 dating alone throws your belief in a 6000 year old earth in the toilet. If you still want to believe in a 6000 year old earth you do so despite the evidence to the contrary.Believing doesn't make it true.

 

[reznwerks]

carbon 14

Free wrote:

Hmm...It seems that those things necessary for the propagation of life were originally created mature so they could reproduce and fill the earth. But does this mean that the earth itself would also be created to look old?

How old does a 6,000 year old earth look? Do we know? We have a case just this spring of a “dating disaster†where a human skull being dated at 27,400 years old that was a little more than 250 years old.* Since we only have been seriously looking at these things for a couple hundred years now, maybe we don’t know what 6,000 years can do to an active planet like ours. All we know for sure is some pretty drastic things have occurred.

[quote:bebba]*We had decided to subject many of these finds to modern techniques to check their authenticity so we sent them to Oxford [University] for testing," one of the researchers told The Sunday Telegraph. "It was a routine examination and in no way an attempt to discredit Prof. von Zieten." In their report, they called Protsch's 30 years of work a "dating disaster."
Among their findings was an age of only 3,300 years for the female "Bischof-Speyer" skeleton, found with unusually good teeth in Northern Germany, that Protsch dated to 21,300 years.
Another dating error was identified for a skull found near Paderborn, Germany, that Protsch dated at 27,400 years old. It was believed to be the oldest human remain found in the region until the Oxford investigations indicated it belonged to an elderly man who died in 1750.

[/quote:bebba]
Carbon 14 dating alone throws your belief in a 6000 year old earth in the toilet. If you still want to believe in a 6000 year old earth you do so despite the evidence to the contrary.Believing doesn't make it true.

 

[unred typo]

Reznwerks wrote:

Carbon 14 dating alone throws your belief in a 6000 year old earth in the toilet. If you still want to believe in a 6000 year old earth you do so despite the evidence to the contrary.Believing doesn't make it true.
Carbon 14 dating alone throws your belief in a 6000 year old earth in the toilet. If you still want to believe in a 6000 year old earth you do so despite the evidence to the contrary.Believing doesn't make it true.

Saying something twice :wink: or a million times doesn’t make it more true, either, although it may make more people believe it. Your Carbon 14 dating will probably be in the toilet soon. Don’t fear though, the people who have such a stake in making evolution appear to be undisputed fact will come up with an even better method of proving it ‘true.’ Since most people are intellectually apathetic cowards, they will help add validity by their sheer numbers as they placidly accept everything that is fed them. A mind is an easy thing to lose and a brain is a cumbersome thing to use. The evidence is in favor of a famine, an extensive world tsunami flooding followed by a catastrophic world wide flood, followed by plate shifting upheavals, mud slides, volcanic activity, planet tilting wide-ranging freezes of the poles and more shifting and tsunami as the planet settled down for 4000 years of relative calm.

 

[reznwerks]

believe

Reznwerks wrote:

Carbon 14 dating alone throws your belief in a 6000 year old earth in the toilet. If you still want to believe in a 6000 year old earth you do so despite the evidence to the contrary.Believing doesn't make it true.
Carbon 14 dating alone throws your belief in a 6000 year old earth in the toilet. If you still want to believe in a 6000 year old earth you do so despite the evidence to the contrary.Believing doesn't make it true.

Saying something twice :wink: or a million times doesn’t make it more true, either, although it may make more people believe it.

Do you follow your own advice when it comes to Christianity or the bible? Outside of the bible none of the fantastic claims can be verified. Did you ever wonder why it is so important to "believe"?
Carbon 14 dating is very accurate to around 70,000 years and no one disputes that . The only ones making any kind of a big deal about it are those that want to stick to a 6000 year earth. If Carbon 14 dating is going to be replaced it will be replaced with something that can accurately date BEYOND 70,000 years old.
As to your other claims of earthly catastrophies no one doubts that they have occurred and it should be no big surprise to anyone. However to link them with a God and maybe the bible is wishful thinking at best.

 

[Free]

Carbon 14 dating is very accurate to around 70,000 years and no one disputes that .

I'm pretty sure it is somewhat accurate to only about 30,000 years.

 

[reznwerks]

dating

Carbon 14 dating is very accurate to around 70,000 years and no one disputes that .

I'm pretty sure it is somewhat accurate to only about 30,000 years.

http://www.answers.com/topic/radiocarbon-dating

Regardless ,if we accept 30,000 (50,000 years is still considered very good) years as accurate it still throws out the idea of a 6000 year old earth in the toilet.

 

[Khristeeanos]

Re: dating

Carbon 14 dating is very accurate to around 70,000 years and no one disputes that .

I'm pretty sure it is somewhat accurate to only about 30,000 years.

http://www.answers.com/topic/radiocarbon-dating

Regardless ,if we accept 30,000 (50,000 years is still considered very good) years as accurate it still throws out the idea of a 6000 year old earth in the toilet.

I should have posted this Christian only thread in the Christian only fourm. ;)

Remember Psalm 118:8
It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to put confidence in men.

I believe God, not man.

 

[Collier]

I guess it boils down to this. Those who believe in an old Earth put their faith in what they see. Those who believe in a young Earth put their faith in God. Christians walk by faith and not by sight.

 

[Asimov]

Re: dating

Carbon 14 dating is very accurate to around 70,000 years and no one disputes that .

I'm pretty sure it is somewhat accurate to only about 30,000 years.

http://www.answers.com/topic/radiocarbon-dating

Regardless ,if we accept 30,000 (50,000 years is still considered very good) years as accurate it still throws out the idea of a 6000 year old earth in the toilet.

I should have posted this Christian only thread in the Christian only fourm. ;)

Remember Psalm 118:8
It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to put confidence in men.


I believe God, not man.

So where does the Lord say the Earth is 6,000 years old and Evolution is false?

 

[unred typo]

From radiocarbon site:

The raw BP date cannot be used directly as a calendar date, because the assumption that the level of 14C absorption remains constant does not hold true in practice. The level is maintained by high energy particles interacting with the earth's upper atmosphere, which may be affected by changes in the earth's magnetic field or in the cosmic ray background, e.g. variations caused by solar storms. In addition there are substantial reservoirs of carbon in organic matter, the ocean, ocean sediments (see methane hydrate), and sedimentary rocks; and changing climate can sometimes disrupt the carbon flow between these reservoirs and the atmosphere. The level has also been affected by human activities -- it was almost doubled for a short period due to atomic bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s and has been reduced by the release of large amounts of CO2 from ancient organic sources where 14C is not present -- the fossil fuels used in industry and transportation.

From reading the above description of things that effect radiocarbon dates, how accurate do you think it is? How many things not listed might effect the rates? How many unknown events might have occurred in the last 6000 years to mess up the radiocarbon clock?

 

[reznwerks]

ask

From radiocarbon site:

The raw BP date cannot be used directly as a calendar date, because the assumption that the level of 14C absorption remains constant does not hold true in practice. The level is maintained by high energy particles interacting with the earth's upper atmosphere, which may be affected by changes in the earth's magnetic field or in the cosmic ray background, e.g. variations caused by solar storms. In addition there are substantial reservoirs of carbon in organic matter, the ocean, ocean sediments (see methane hydrate), and sedimentary rocks; and changing climate can sometimes disrupt the carbon flow between these reservoirs and the atmosphere. The level has also been affected by human activities -- it was almost doubled for a short period due to atomic bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s and has been reduced by the release of large amounts of CO2 from ancient organic sources where 14C is not present -- the fossil fuels used in industry and transportation.

From reading the above description of things that effect radiocarbon dates, how accurate do you think it is? How many things not listed might effect the rates? How many unknown events might have occurred in the last 6000 years to mess up the radiocarbon clock?

So you want to use a lot of ifs to confirm you belief in a 6000 year earth. The fact that something might have happened or that something might have happened that we don't understand its significance or that somehow C14 dating is so way out of whack and no one knows it but you must somehow be confirmation that God exists and your 6000 year earth is valid? LOL

 

[unred typo]

Reznwerks wrote:

So you want to use a lot of ifs to confirm you belief in a 6000 year earth. The fact that something might have happened or that something might have happened that we don't understand its significance or that somehow C14 dating is so way out of whack and no one knows it but you must somehow be confirmation that God exists and your 6000 year earth is valid? LOL

Do you realize how much of your TOE is dependant on the dating methods being believed? :roll: