Science and Biblical Creation

Well here I go. I have about 30 min to get this thread together and I am doing it from my Black Berry so please excuse any spelling or grammer errors.
Now on with the thread.
I was just reading the "Chunk from the Original Earth Found" thread and I did not even make it past the second page because of all the argueing over the age of the earth.
First I will tell you that I am a Christian.
Second I will tell you I believe the earth is a lot older than 6500 to 12,500 years old.
Third I will try to explain why I as a Christian believe this but first I would like to say that people try too hard to seperate the bible and science.
People also try too hard to go strictly by what is said in the bible but sometimes we have to look at what is not being said as well. This is one of those cases.
Now was the world and everything in it created in 6 days?
I believe the answer is yes. But how long were those days?
Did people really live as long as the bible says?
Once again a "yes" from me.
The "why" of this is to long to get in to now but I will try to make another thread later explaining it and other biblical questions like ;
Who was Cains wife and where did she come from?
Who were the "sons of God"?
Who were the nephilem?
And questions of the limited gene pool.
All of this I came across while reading the bible. What it says and does not say.
Now the age of the earth?
We all know from the creation story that God made Adam and placed him in the garden of Eden.
Simple questions:
How long was Adam in Eden before He created Eve from Adam's rib?
How long did it take Adam to name all of the animals before the creation of Eve?
How long did they live in the garden togerther before being cast out?
You see the bible does not say so we can not be sure.
But what we can say is that in the garden they did not age.
They did not age until they were cast out of Eden. So we as Christians can not use the bible to say how old the earth is because it is not written how old the earth is.
We can only go back as far as Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden abot 10000 years ago.
We do not know for any certainty how long they where in the garden. It may have been a year or 70 million.

What is the point ? Can you at least try to explain why you believe any of these things or maybe answer one of your questions ?

6 days equals SIX days! How can you take parts of the bible literally and not take the clear statement six days. Apparently you take people living 900 years literally but six days you have a issue with..


[edit on 13-8-2010 by nophun]

With all of the knowledge science has given us about the world around us, compared to all of the heartache religion has given us... well... you make the decision for yourself.

You will never convince yourself, or anyone else, of any truth as long as you look through scientific eyes at a completely unprovable piece of evidence.

Logic and reasoning have no place in the mind of the believer, until you drop two different mass cannon balls from a tower and PROVE they hit the ground at the same time.

Science takes for granted that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but you will never hear Religion apologise for stoning someone who believed it before it was proven.

Are not science and SPIRITUALITY both the search for truth? Why then the conflict if there can be only one truth? Both MUST ultimately agree. Any dissagreement constitutes a lack of understanding on one or both sides.

It is a futile argument to prove God with science. It never was about science.

Next point: What I hear you saying is that you do not believe God could make the world in 6 days. Apparently, you don't know God's power.

If you are all-powerful, you can do anything.

He said it, I believe it. I can't prove it. That's ok.

reply to post by Quadrivium


So you disagree with fundamentalist Creationists, good

But where is the science part to your OP? I see a lot of speculation on how the days of Genesis weren't literal days and how people might have lived longer but no real substance.

I used to be an Old Earth Creationist myself and while it is an easier position to hold than a Young Earther or a Geocentrist it suffers from the same problems as other forms of Creationism and that is it is faith based and not evidence based.

Back when I was a Christian I had a lot of fun theorizing about what God might have done with the Earth before Genesis, or that maybe he had a whole other Universe or civilization running before we got here (Martians). But all it really was was speculation, fun science-fiction style blending of myth and my own imagination.

Eventually I got around to looking at the evidence for Evolution from the actual evolutionary perspective (meaning I stopped getting my info from biased Creationist sources) and after that I quickly realized that even if there is a God out there in this Universe Evolution would still be true and magical creation would still be laughably absurd and unproven.

Originally posted by nophun
What is the point ? Can you at least try to explain why you believe any of these things or maybe answer one of your questions ?

6 days equals SIX days!

How can you take parts of the bible literally and not take the clear statement six days. Apparently you take people living 900 years literally but six days you have a issue with..


[edit on 13-8-2010 by nophun]

1)The point is that the young earth therory most Christians claim as being in the bible is not in the bible.
The way they go about the math is wrong because we do not know how long Adam was in Eden.
We no that he lived after being cast out 930 years.
2)I ask questions to make people think.
3)I did not say that the earth was not created in six days. What I asked was how long those days were.
I doubt sence the beginning there have always been 23 hours 57 minutes and 4.1 seconds in each day.

reply to post by Tyler 720


Tyler I hate to be the one to tell you this but science is flawed.
Most of it is based on therory and hypothosis.
The scientific method was created by man and is flawed as well.
As Einstein said
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
You know I think I read somewhere that he also believed in a creator.

Originally posted by Jim Scott
It is a futile argument to prove God with science. It never was about science.

Next point: What I hear you saying is that you do not believe God could make the world in 6 days. Apparently, you don't know God's power.

If you are all-powerful, you can do anything.

He said it, I believe it. I can't prove it. That's ok.

Brother I apologise if I came off the wrong way. I know that you can not prove God with science. For us that believe we do not need proof.
We each have ways that God has showed Himself to us, things He has done for us.
I did not say He could not or did not create the world in six days. I just stated that I did not know how long those days were. Just as the blble does not tell us how long Adam was in Eden.
As I read my OP I see I may have botched it by being in too much of a hurry and trying to state too much.
Sorry once again if I offended anyone.

reply to post by Quadrivium


"I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist." - Albert Einstein

Science is the only method we have of obtaining information from observations AND testing for hypotheses. Also, science IS falsifiable, that's one of the things that makes science great.

reply to post by PieKeeper


He did not say he was an atheist. He said from the veiw point of a jesuit preist he was an atheist. Also for you consideration.........
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." .............
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.".................
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God." -Einstein

Originally posted by Quadrivium
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

Spinoza's God was nature itself. He was a pantheist, and actively opposed to the conecpt of a personal, miracle-working God with an interest in humanity, such Jews and Christians believe in.

The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God." -Einstein

He's talking about the laws of nature--that was Einstein's 'God'.

reply to post by Quadrivium


So you are a fundamentalist old Earth creationist.

1)The point is that the young earth therory most Christians claim as being in the bible is not in the bible. The way they go about the math is wrong because we do not know how long Adam was in Eden.

True, we do not know how long Adam was in Eden. We also know no one lives 4+ billion years. That is what it would take for your myth to be aligned with the real age of the Earth.
No! We do not know that he lived 930 years after being cast out .. because that is crazy talk. Life expectancy has grown not dropped by 900 years.

www.infoplease.com...

I am actually interest in why/how you feel people lived to be 900+ y/o ? Most times this is brought up by creationist "The Flood" is brought up ... yet no one can prove this flood ever happened. (There was no global flood, this is fact)

2)I ask questions to make people think.

I like this. No joke, But please be willing to think about the respones that you get.

3)I did not say that the earth was not created in six days. What I asked was how long those days were. I doubt sence the beginning there have always been 23 hours 57 minutes and 4.1 seconds in each day.

I think it is a safe bet a "day" equals one rotation of the Sun around the Earth.
(Yes I did that on purpose )

If you want to take the bible literally Gen 1.14-15 give hints to this.

14And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for(A) signs and for(B) seasons,[a] and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so.

I read that thing a time or two in my day.



[edit on 14-8-2010 by nophun]

reply to post by nophun

No global flood and that's a fact?
If you say so.
How long was a day in the beginning?
I suppose you know then how fast the earth's rotation was in the beginning. Care to enlighten me? I always wanted to know.
We can tell from the fossile record that animals were much larger then. Hmmm would a slower rotation have any affect on body mass?
I do not want to argue with you. What ever you choose to believe it is your life to live as you see fit.
I will how ever say a prayer for you.
Maybe oneday He will work in your life as He has in mine.
God bless you.

reply to post by Quadrivium


No there was no global flood and that is fact. It is your claim that there was this global flood, so show me the evidence of one.

Just like people are living longer now, the days are getting longer due to tidal friction from the Moon.

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...'s_rotation

Conclusion no the Earth did not rotate REALLY slow, some how pick up a ton of speed and start slowing down again.
I think this is why we have so many YEC now, there is no way around a day being a day. If your going to believe some crazy # you might as well go all out.


A quick answer to your body mass comment.
I will assume you are talking about species from the prehistoric age. This is very simple to understand. Those animals (dinosaurs in particular) had time to evolve that big. When a mass extinction happens the largest species often have the hardest time surviving.

There has not been enough time for a ton of new species to grow as big since the last mass extinction.

en.wikipedia.org...

I will how ever say a prayer for you.

I would rather you do something productive with your time, rather then praying for me. Like Read a book, Chase some women, or woteva.

Originally posted by Quadrivium
No global flood and that's a fact?
If you say so.

It stands to reason. Where did all the water come from? And where did it all go?

How long was a day in the beginning?
I suppose you know then how fast the earth's rotation was in the beginning. Care to enlighten me? I always wanted to know.

Faster than it is now. Rotating bodies in space can lose angular momentum for various reasons. They rarely gain it: the main they can do so is for something big to knock into them really hard and increase their spin, the way a billiard-ball sometimes does when you hit it with the cue ball. Any such collision would, of course, be catastrophic. One is thought to have created the Moon.

And there's another problem, I'm afraid. There is an lower limit to the process that causes the length of a day to increase as a planet's rotation slows. That limit is reached when speed of the planet's rotation on its axis equals the speed of its revolution round its sun. At that point, the length of the day equals the length of the year, and the planet always keeps the same face pointed at the sun. Days and nights become infinite in length; the sun, seen from the planet, is always in the same place in the sky, and slightly less than half the planet's surface never sees the sun at all--it's in perpetual night.

If the planet rotates any slower than that, the its days begin to shorten again.

We can tell from the fossile record that animals were much larger then. Hmmm would a slower rotation have any affect on body mass?

There have always been little animals as well as big ones. The thicker atmosphere of Earth's past may have helped buoy up large animals like dinosaurs, but the effect wouldn't have been so pronounced; and the higher oxygen content of that denser atmosphere made it possible for animals without lungs (e.g. insects) to be much larger than they are now. But the biggest animal that ever lived on Earth (so far as we know) is alive today: the blue whale.

The speed of a planet's rotation has nothing to do with its gravity.

There's a thing I would like to add. What I have written above has any amount of scientific evidence for it, but in fact, it's just common sense. If we look at the world without preconception, take it for what it is and study that, the whole picture fits together easily and makes perfect sense. This is true even though, at extreme scales, our theories about reality (relativity and quantum mechanics) start to contradict each other. Despite this, we know both theories are correct on the scales at which they are applied; and if and when we ever come up with a grand unifying theory, it won't disprove relativity and quantum mechanics but create a larger framework in which both are seen as special cases, just as Newtonian mechanics is now seen as a special case of relativistic mechanics.

What I am saying here is that the scientific worldview hangs together, more or less. You don't have to believe implausible things in order to accept it. But as soon as you bring religion into the picture, belief in implausible, even incredible things becomes compulsory. You have to believe in things that do not fit your observed knowledge of the world. So you start to play with that knowledge, trying to twist what you know to make it fit with what you want to believe.

That is what forces people into the mental contortions we see in your post--theorizing that Earth's day was hundreds of thousands of modern years long in the past, that the speed of a body's rotation affects gravity, and all the rest of it. It's a losing game, because the evidence of our senses and our instruments will always triumph over such postulations. If you want to believe, you must abandon reason and disbelieve the evidence of your own eyes. Once upon a time it was different, but for to-day's believer, living in a world ruled by science, there is no other option left. You can't believe in the God of the Bible and remain a rational human being.

Originally posted by Quadrivium
Tyler I hate to be the one to tell you this but science is flawed.
Most of it is based on therory and hypothosis.
The scientific method was created by man and is flawed as well.
As Einstein said
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
You know I think I read somewhere that he also believed in a creator.

Science itself isn't flawed. Our interpretations of an observation can be flawed and what's great about science is that it's self correcting - if I assert A, and B logically (to my mind) follows from A, I can perform an experiment to verify B. And if I don't get B, I have to go back and rethink A or at least some part of A. If I do get B, I can let A stand.

Your use of "therory" and "hypothosis" in the context of being the foundations of science show that you may not have a good grasp of what constitutes the scientific method.

And Einstein was wholly correct - one feature of a good hypothesis or scientific theory is that it's testable and falsifiable. But keep in mind that a scientist's belief regarding something outside the realm of science (such as the existence of a creator) is just that - a belief. Not science.

[edit on 15/8/2010 by iterationzero]

[edit on 15/8/2010 by iterationzero]

reply to post by iterationzero

Unless science has become your god.

reply to post by Astyanax


A very bad thing to do on this site but I wish to retract my comment from the OP about " we do not know how long a day was in the beginning". People have run wild with it and adding to it. They are getting stuck on the simple fact that we truly do not know how long a day was. I was not there but I am sure (longer or shorter) it was not 23 hours 57 min and 4.1 seconds. But like I said I was not there so I, like every one else, do not know.
Now on to your post.
I think you may be missing the forest for the trees.
I am glad that you are well educated or seem to be.
I see science all around but I see God in everything.
Scientific facts do not interfere with my faith.
Why should God interfere with your science?
Science has not disproved God though many biased people have tried to make science do so.
Like evolution.
Most people mistake adaptation for evolution. We all have the capacity to adapt to our environment.
What really gets me is the belief in micro evolution.
If this were true we would see examples of it walking, running and swimming all over the place.
We would see it in the fosil records. Most of what I see in that field are people trying to force the science to their beliefs.
The true fact of the matter is that we have many distinct animals and species here on earth.
How can you have a scientific mind and refuse to see the design?
Have you ever studied something for just the wonder of studying it?
Can you look around and see how everything fits and works without reliesing the beauty of it all?
I posted this earlier but it sits well with what I am trying to say so I will do so again.
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God." -Einstein
All of the scientific breakthroughs over the last 400 years truly don't amount to a drop in the ocean with what we have yet to learn.
With all we do not know how can anyone deny the existence of a Creator?
Look at a single stand of DNA. Look at all of the information contained in that one strand. How can any one think that something so complex came from pond scum is beyond me. Their egos must be huge indeed.
I think it would be best if you read the last section of your post again and applied in to your own views of science.
Science can not kill God for God created science.

The origional word used in the bible that was interpreted as "days" actually can mean a "period of time" so it actually says the world was made in 6 periods of time. It was interpreted as days because it was most often used to describe that period of time. The origional word was "yaster" I believe

reply to post by Quadrivium

I see science all around but I see God in everything. Scientific facts do not interfere with my faith.

Perhaps that is because you're not too familiar with those 'scientific facts'.

Like evolution... What really gets me is the belief in micro evolution... The true fact of the matter is that we have many distinct animals and species here on earth. How can you have a scientific mind and refuse to see the design?

See what I mean? Your understanding of evolution seems to be both rudimentary and confused. Perhaps if you understood it better, you wouldn't find it so hard to swallow.

But can you learn? Is your god-infected brain still up to the job?

Evolution isn't easy to understand, but any moderately intelligent person should be able to do so with a little effort. Sadly, many people are unable to manage it because their religious beliefs have warped their ability to think--they can't understand what the book of nature tells them because their brains have been hijacked by the god meme. That was, of course, the point of my last post.

Evolution by natural selection makes perfect sense, is supported by a quite unnecessarily vast and detailed body of evidence, and perfectly explains the way the living world looks. Anyone who can't see that just isn't thinking straight.

And evolution doesn't disprove God anyway (it just makes Him a bit unnecessary).

Can you look around and see how everything fits and works without reliesing the beauty of it all?

Surely the beauty is enhanced, not reduced, by understanding how it 'fits and works'? It certainly is for me. Attributing the wonder of these natural processes to some god seems a cheap cop-out to me. It reduces that beauty and wonder to a cheap fairy-tale.

Look at a single stand of DNA. Look at all of the information contained in that one strand. How can any one think that something so complex came from pond scum is beyond me. Their egos must be huge indeed.

Is it egotistical to believe that pond scum was my ancestor?

I think it is far more egotistical to believe that I am the special, favoured creature of the Maker of All Things, an all-powerful being that made me 'in his image' and who, in some mysterious sense, actually lives inside me.

But then again, whatever floats your Ark.

[edit on 16/8/10 by Astyanax]