[_ Old Earth _] Is the earth billions of years old?

[VaultZero4Me]

Darwin himself said that if we do not find fossils that prove transitional transfiguration within 100yrs then throw his theory out. It's been over 200y

The bold text indicates to me this is likely something from the AIG website ran by Ken Ham.

In fact I would put money on it that there is something a long this line on their website.

 

[lovely]

Barbarian,

I would like it if you could give some more evidence to the claims that AIG has been deceptive...is there something you can cite to prove this statement? The reason I ask, is because we have met Dr. Menton, he is from my hometown, and find him to be a very upstanding man. My sons met Mr. Buddy Davis, and he was very kind and encouraging to them after their dad died. I have heard Mr. Ham speak, and have some of his books, and while I am not sure if I agree with all of his arguments, he has presented himself to be quite upstanding. We have some friends in common with him, and they speak very highly of his character as well. I guess, I am just saying that if my brothers in Christ are misleading people, I would like to know. I would like to investigate these claims before I cast them off as deceivers. The Lord bless you.

 

[lovely]

Well, the Bible doesn't say reincarnation doesn't happen, so we might as well teach that is true also. I will probably reincarnate into a skinny tree because I have skinny limbs. :P

Lol. But the Bible does speak about the creation of life, without actually describing the mechanism for that creation. Does your understanding lead you to believe that God *poofed* life instantaneously out of nothing at all?

lordkalvan,

The Bible does say that all was created through the Word...

Acts 17:23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; 26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

Colossians 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

I think it's interesting that in Genesis 1 we have this voidless water in darkness and then God makes light. We know that light is one of the components needed for forming amino acids of life. It also reveals to us some of the main components that make up man. It's amazing how much insight Genesis 1 has in light of what we know through science now. Believing that God 'poofed' things is at least an actual beginning that we have learned about through an ancient book that has never been proven wrong...it's merely rejected. The Lord bless you.

 

[Barbarian]

Being an evolutionist and a christian
is a much bigger attempt to deceive imo.

All you need to do, to be a Christian and an evolutionist, is to accept all of Scripture as it is written. As you might know, Genesis directly rules out young Earth creationism, although some other forms of creationism are consistent with Christian belief.

I don't keep up with what they do,

It's a good idea to know. They aren't the best examples of Christian ethics you could find. They don't even treat each other very well. Recently, they had a huge legal battle within the organization, which now has split as a result of the rather nasty behavior of some leaders.

I only offered it up as their opinion for people to look at. I never said if I agree or disagree with it. I do believe what the bible says and it says nothing about evolving from apes.

Says nothing about protons, either. You don't believe protons exist?

 

[Barbarian]

Evidence? Darwin himself said that if we do not find fossils that prove transitional transfiguration within 100yrs then throw his theory out. It's been over 200yrs.

We can test that belief. Pick me a few major groups of living things said to be evolutionarily connected, and I'll see if I can find you some transitional organisms. Be sure to tell me what you think "transistional" organism" means. Hint: It's not "a cow turning into a dog" or some such.

Your evidence starts with a belief and bases its findings on those beliefs.

Well, we can test that belief, too. Find a scientist and ask him why he accepts evolution. If he says "because Darwin said so", you're right. If he starts citing evidence, you're wrong.

Let me know which ones you'd like to see, and I'll see if I can oblige.

 

[Barbarian]

Jonathan Sarfati, another frequent contributor to your creationist perspective website, is no better. In his article “Exploding Stars Point to a Young Universe: Where Are All The Supernova Remnants?†first published in Creation Ex Nihilo 19:46-48 and later online at http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... /stars.asp, Sarfati tries to claim that the absence of Type III supernovas suggests that the universe is young, perhaps a few thousand years old, not billions of years as evolutionary scientists claim. He offers the following quote from Clark and Caswell in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1976, 174:267:

"As the evolutionist astronomers Clark and Caswell say, ‘Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?’ and these authors refer to ‘The mystery of the missing remnants’."

Sarfati conveniently forgot to finish the last sentence, which actually appears on page 301. In its entirety, it reads

"…and the mystery of the missing remnants is also solved."

The dishonestly altered statement has since been removed from the AIG site, but I ran across it myself. And Clark and Caswell did find exactly the opposite of what AIG claimed they found.

Notice that even though they have read the research by Clark and Caswell, they continue to pretend that it's a problem for science:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp

And this, from a website on religious toleration:

# The references found in creation science articles on supernovae sometimes mention that Clark and Caswell were at a loss to account for the deficits of observed SNRs. As of 2002-MAY-30, they quote Clark and Caswell:

* As asking: "Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?"
* But this quote seems to be a rhetorical question that was extracted from the following sentence: "Thus two anomalies require explanation. Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected? Is it reasonable that E0/n should differ so greatly from our estimate for the Galaxy? Both anomalies are removed if we assumed that the N(D)-D relation has been incorrectly estimated owing to the small number of remnants (4) used." 2

Creation scientists have also quoted Clark and Caswell:

* As referring to "The mystery of the missing remnants." 6
* However, a more complete quotation is: "...the mystery of the missing supernova remnants is also solved." 2

Strictly speaking, the above YEC quotations are accurate. Those exact phrases do appear in Clark & Caswell's report. However, their quotations are similar to quoting Psalms 14:1 and Psalms 53:1 in the Bible as saying that "There is no God." Again, that is a precise quotation. That phrase appears twice in the Bible. However, the full quotation is "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Quoting a very much abbreviated part of a sentence can often invert its meaning, either through intention to deceive the reader, or carelessness.

 

[lovely]

Barbarian, thanks for looking this back up for me. I appreciate it, because we want our brothers to have integrity that exceeds others. I am going to read up on it some more. I am not familiar with Jonathan Sarfati on any type of personal level, but I have heard of him...I am going to look into him more. Thanks again, and the Lord bless you.

 

[Barbarian]

Pleased to be of help. Remember, even if the people running AIG are not honest, that does not mean that all of their employees are dishonest.

 

[lovely]

Okay, I did a little research. I found the 'Answers in Genesis BUSTED!' blog site, and I didn't think the source was trustworthy so I kept hunting. I looked for the actual Journal. I found it, but couldn't view it. It's here
Then, I decided to look for Jonathan's article. I found it here.

The quotes are not wrong, or incomplete, and he was merely pointing out that there was an initial mystery in the minds of these men on some level, but that with the Scripture there is never a mystery. He's right. Sorry, but I don't see any cherry-picking here at all. What I really found with the AIG Busted site, and others that I looked through, is that there are people who make it their business to try to destroy others with pettiness and slander, and this is not in the interest of science. While I believe we should be trying to check up on our facts, quotes, and statistics, I don't think that we need to resort to slander to make others appear deceptive just because we disagree.

Frankly, I just don't see these quotes as deceptive at all for the purpose for which they were being used in Mr. Sarfati's article. Btw, Answers still has the article in their archives, probably because they didn't believe anything was deceptive about it either.

I looked into another one about Dr. Menton from talk orgins, and it was along the same lines. It was because he (Dr. Menton) paraphrased Mr. Leaky and left out the word 'probably' in his paraphrase. You can view it here. I found this to be far from deceptive, and typical of Dr. Menton's writing/speaking style. The article is pretty good too. It makes me sick that people would try to make him appear deceptive.

No offense, but these sources were pretty hostile toward believers. Sorry Barbarian, I appreciate your position on this as an evolutionist, but I can not agree with you concerning the deception. I find no fault with my brothers in this instance. While I may not agree with AIG on every little thing, I don't see them as trying to mislead people. I hope others will look into these links and make their own decision.

 

[GojuBrian]

Thankyou lovely!!

 

[Barbarian]

The quotes are not wrong, or incomplete, and he was merely pointing out that there was an initial mystery in the minds of these men on some level, but that with the Scripture there is never a mystery.

He altered the words of these two scientists to make it appear that they thought it was a mystery, when in fact they wrote that the mystery was solved. If you don't think that's dishonest, then I see the problem. If he disagreed with their conclusion and said so, that would be honest. But changing what they said to make it appear that they thought something entirely different, that is as blatant a dishonesty as it is possible to commit.

How would you feel if an atheist site wrote that the Bible itself admits that there is no God, citing "There is no God" from the Bible?

Psalm 14:1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.â€Â


You'd take it as a blatant dishonesty, wouldn't you? That's precisely what Sarfati did.

 

[Crying Rock]

...I will probably reincarnate into a skinny tree because I have skinny limbs... :P

That's just funny right there.

 

[lovely]

The quotes are not wrong, or incomplete, and he was merely pointing out that there was an initial mystery in the minds of these men on some level, but that with the Scripture there is never a mystery.

He altered the words of these two scientists to make it appear that they thought it was a mystery, when in fact they wrote that the mystery was solved. If you don't think that's dishonest, then I see the problem. If he disagreed with their conclusion and said so, that would be honest. But changing what they said to make it appear that they thought something entirely different, that is as blatant a dishonesty as it is possible to commit.

How would you feel if an atheist site wrote that the Bible itself admits that there is no God, citing "There is no God" from the Bible?

Psalm 14:1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.â€Â


You'd take it as a blatant dishonesty, wouldn't you? That's precisely what Sarfati did.

Barbarian, He didn't use what they said to support his conclusion, but to show there was an initial mystery that needed explaining. I didn't read that these guys supported him, because he contrasts their quotes with a verse in Scripture that he feels does explain...Sarfati's point in that section is that Scripture explains that initial mystery. The Bible quote example is not comparable. I know we won't agree here. The Lord bless you.

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian, He didn't use what they said to support his conclusion, but to show there was an initial mystery that needed explaining.

Clearly, he misrepresented what they said. And any person reading it would have gotten an entirely different idea of what these two scientists found. That is fundamentally dishonest. If AIG disagreed with them and said so, that would have been honest. To represent that they thought there was a mystery about supernova remnants an attempt to deceive.

To them, the ends justify the means. And it's embarrassing to have people representing themselves as Christians doing it.

 

[lovely]

Barbarian,

Clearly we aren't going to agree, and I am sure that we have already hijacked this thread and still have no common ground. It seems to me that they themselves offered up an initial mystery, of which they went on to explain/solve. Mr Sarfati seems to be simply beginning with that same initial mystery they offered, and then working from there toward his own explanation. I still fail to see the deception of our brothers. I leave you with this, and offer you the final word if you care to have one. The Lord bless you.

 

[lordkalvan]

I have to agree with Barbarian that Safarti to all intents and purposes quote-mines Clark and Caswell when he (correctly) quoted them in this paragraph -

As the evolutionist astronomers Clark and Caswell say, ‘Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?’ and these authors refer to ‘The mystery of the missing remnants’.

Source: http://creation.com/exploding-stars-point-to-a-young-universe

- but then failed to indicate even in passing that they resolved this apparent 'mystery' within parameters fully compatible with the model of an 'old' Universe. The implication of the reference as used is that the 'mystery' cannot be resolved and thus appears to be intended to be deceptive. It is also significant that Safarti refers to them as 'evolutionist astronomers'. What is an 'evolutionist astronomer'? Is this a new field of biocosmology, or what?