6,000 year old Earth theory...?

The actual truth of the situation is that human beings wrote words onto pieces of paper that later became collected into what is now known as "The Bible". My words that I am typing now are no less "inspired by God" than the words of those that wrote the biblical texts. I can claim that my words are or are "the word of God" and you would either believe me or not. This is the main fallacy of such writings in the Christian religion, that you are just supposed to "believe" and "have faith" that the words you read from those ancient writings are absolute truths dictated to those humans by "God"...without any burden of proof whatsoever!

Too many people in the world today have ignored their basic instincts of common sense when it comes to reading what ancient man wrote down. In my opinion, my words are no less important than the words of Moses. He was a man, I am a man, he breathed air, I breathe air, he had thoughts and ideas, I have thoughts and ideas...get the point?

Science seeks to explain the natural world and its explanations are tested using evidence from the natural world. I would trust the evidence that scientists have discovered throughout the years, over what the "Bible" has to say any day of the week. To just blindly believe in the literal interpretations of that book is completely ignorant and very, very, very destructive to any human being who wishes to gain knowledge of actual truths about the nature of the world and history.

6000 years old? Where's the proof? Other than some philosophical musings from a superstitious religious cult....show me the undisputed evidence other than a translated book of ancient writings from humans who most likely still believed that the world was flat....and that humans could walk on water...

Even when I was a heavy Christian I never bought into the young earth line of thinking. I remember a scripture, not sure the number, in Revalations saying something along the lines of "In Heaven, each day was a thousand years and a thousand years was a day." To me, that always meant that time was irrelevant to God, that he is "outside of time". Therefore, the earth could be much, much older than the young earth crowd believes, and that the findings of the Scientific Community in regards to the age of Earth doesn't disprove the Bible or anything. In the end though, I think you're rather naive if you believe the earth is only 6,000 years old.

reply to post by WarriorOfLight96


Free will: the last refuge of the non-argument. There is literally dozens of examples in scripture that refute the notion that man possesses any agency whatsoever.

Free will -- as a concept -- is easily refuted by logical deduction. Further -- the concept was destroyed utterly by Augustine, and irredeemably shattered by Luther.

Spurgeon mocked it openly, and James White said

James White: "Then why do you embrace Christ, and your moral Buddhist neighbour across the street does not? Are you smarter than he is? More spiritually sensitive? Better, in any way? What makes you to differ? Is the Holy Spirit working just as hard on him as He did on you? If so, why do you believe, and he does not? No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid coming to the conclusion that, in a 'free will' system of salvation, those who believe do so because there is something different about them. If the Spirit is bringing equal conviction to bear upon each individual, the only deciding factor, given equality in everything else, is something in the person himself. I believe the only possible difference between the redeemed in heaven and the guilty, condemned, punished sinner in hell is a five-letter word ... It’s called 'grace.'"

John 3:27 specifically labels the notion of "free-will" as false.

John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.

Ergo: G_d creates both good and evil, just and unjust, and saves some, while damning others through grace.

Originally posted by 0zzymand0s
reply to post by WarriorOfLight96

 

Free will: the last refuge of the non-argument. There is literally dozens of examples in scripture that refute the notion that man possesses any agency whatsoever.

Free will -- as a concept -- is easily refuted by logical deduction. Further -- the concept was destroyed utterly by Augustine, and irredeemably shattered by Luther.

Spurgeon mocked it openly, and James White said

James White: "Then why do you embrace Christ, and your moral Buddhist neighbour across the street does not? Are you smarter than he is? More spiritually sensitive? Better, in any way? What makes you to differ? Is the Holy Spirit working just as hard on him as He did on you? If so, why do you believe, and he does not? No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid coming to the conclusion that, in a 'free will' system of salvation, those who believe do so because there is something different about them. If the Spirit is bringing equal conviction to bear upon each individual, the only deciding factor, given equality in everything else, is something in the person himself. I believe the only possible difference between the redeemed in heaven and the guilty, condemned, punished sinner in hell is a five-letter word ... It’s called 'grace.'"

John 3:27 specifically labels the notion of "free-will" as false.

John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.

Ergo: G_d creates both good and evil, just and unjust, and saves some, while damning others through grace.

Ah taking a mans word is free will and you could choose to listen to me or you won't and is this not free will and where does knowledge come from. it comes from God, Angels have been in heaven before the fall and all that knowledge fell with them and so is this not from heaven.

reply to post by WarriorOfLight96


You are "free" to believe what you "will," but -- were I to self-identify as a Christian -- I would never answer the problem of "evil" with "free will." There is far too much scripture against it.

The problem of evil has already been solved, but we're a little late on the uptake is all..

Originally posted by Rulkiewicz
Let me start off by saying that I am a Christian. When I first began to study more about religion and Christianity, all if not most of the literature I read suggested that the earth was created roughly 6,000 years ago. My main source of this was from my Scofield Study Bible, which conveniently marks the dates of the events in the bible on the top pages. It's not in front of me, so don't quote me, but I believe it starts Genesis 1:1 around ~4300BC. I believe Scofield got his dates based on various events within the bible and started working his way backwards based on biblical and historical events and the ages of various biblical people. (Kind of makes sense, right?)

I had a thought a few years ago, and I wonder if there is any validity to it...We Christians believe (for the most part) that when Adam and Eve were created, they we never meant to die, and that they started to "die" once they disobeyed God:

Gen 3:1-3; "Now the snake was more able to fool others than any animal of the field which the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say that you should not eat from any tree in the garden?” 2 Then the woman said to the snake, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden. 3 But from the tree which is in the center of the garden, God has said, ‘Do not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”

Clearly, they did not "die" instantly, I believe at that point they began to "die". You may or may not agree with me on this, but please sit tight.

Let's back track to the end of Genesis chapter 2:

22 The Lord God made woman from the bone which He had taken from the man. And He brought her to the man. 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother, and will be joined to his wife. And they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both without clothes and were not ashamed.

The beginning of chapter 3 beings with "Now the snake was more able to fool others than any animal of the field which the Lord God had made."... my question is; why do we assume there is no time gap between Genesis chapter 2 and chapter 3? For all we know, Adam and Eve could have lived millions of years from the point where Eve was created(end of chapter 2), to where she was deceived by the snake (beginning of chapter 3.)

What are your thoughts?

(btw, verses quoted are from the New Living Version)

edit on 6-6-2013 by Rulkiewicz because: (no reason given)

Well, I am not no expert in this category but, reasonably the earth being roughly 6,000 years old is quite possible. One defense in this theory is, carbon dating has been shown to be inaccurate many of times. Not to mention, they have found different items that have been fossilized over a period of 50 years. If this doesn't make you think, think about this.. the world population is around 7.09 billion. Now, knowing this it would make sense for the earth to be around 6,000 years old if you put into perspective population rates. Please, only try to interpret what I am saying if you KNOW MATH. So, if you cuberoot 7.09 billion you get 1921.0945. Now, if humans reproduce like how limbs branch off a tree, isn't it more reasonable for the earth to be only 6,000 years old, rather then the earth being 65 million years old and humans 200,000 years old (homosapiens)? Think about it, if we have multiplied at a rate of 1921.0945 cubed in 6000 years it would make sense with all the wars that have happened in the past. Not to mention, the notorious "Noah's great flood." On the other hand if we started 200,000 years ago then the earth's population would be much greater even with all the natural catastrophes and man made wars. This is only my opinion.

reply to post by mindlessbrainpower89


What about the dinosaurs?

reply to post by mindlessbrainpower89


Do you write articles for Answers In Genesis?

Originally posted by DystopianOrigami
reply to post by mindlessbrainpower89

 

Do you write articles for Answers In Genesis?

I could if you wanted me to. Do you?

I could if you wanted me to. Do you?

Nah, I tried to get on over there, but I they said I was overqualified due to receiving a 'B' in freshman biology. Ruined my month, man.

Originally posted by DystopianOrigami

I could if you wanted me to. Do you?

Nah, I tried to get on over there, but I they said I was overqualified due to receiving a 'B' in freshman biology. Ruined my month, man.

I love this, classic example of no one having the right to be wrong. Everyone has to conform to the rest of society, right?

reply to post by Rulkiewicz

What are your thoughts?

Trying to make the creation stories in Genesis match up with the facts of geology, astronomy, biology, etc., is a mug's game. If we take the Bible literally, we'll fail at once. If we allow for a bit of metaphor on the part of the writers of the Bible ('A thousand ages in Thy sight are like an ev'ning gone', as an eighteenth-century hymnalist put it), we might find some superficial agreement, but as soon as we start looking at the parallels in any detail, they fall apart.

As that hymn suggests, people have been trying to reconcile the Bible with the physical evidence of Earth's advanced age for a very long time – more than three hundred years at least. They haven't succeeded yet. That should tell us something.

*

reply to post by Rulkiewicz

Why the fuss over thousands of years verse millions/billions of years? I think it boils down to agenda. The majority of evolutionists believe that the earth is mil/billions of years old, whereas the majority of Christians/Creationist believe the world is ~6,000 years old. People love to prove other people wrong.

The truth is a little more subtle than that.

The age of the earth is never mentioned in the Bible. Scholars derived an age for the Earth by, as you say, adding up the ages of the various Hebrew patriarchs and forebears of Jesus whose lineages are given in it. The Jews were the first to do this. Christians followed with their own calculations. Most of these came up with a creation date around 4000BC, give or take a few hundred years.

In Europe, the assumption that the Earth is only a few thousand years old went almost unquestioned for centuries. Arab thinkers like Avicenna had long suggested it was much older than that, but in Christendom nobody paid them much attention. It wasn't until the science of geology emerged in the seventeenth century that anyone thought to dispute the Bible scholars' calculations.

For all that, it wasn't until much later – 1830, to be exact – that it became impossible for educated people to believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old. What changed? A man named Charles Lyell published a book called Principles of Geology. His evidence and arguments were convincing to any open mind.

We know a lot more about geology today than we did in Lyell's time. For instance, we know that continents drift about the Earth on a sea of molten lava. Lyell didn't know that. We know that the surface of the planet has been shaped and scarred by huge catastrophes. Lyell pooh-poohed that idea, which was popular with Creationists because it helped explain how much the Earth had obviously changed since it was first formed. But we also know that he was right; catastrophes do mark the Earth from time to time, but most of the processes that shape it take aeons to work.

We now have mountains – no, make that entire mountain ranges, literally – of evidence to show that Earth is, indeed, billions of years old. And we have a sky full of evidence to show that the universe is even older. It isn't a matter of opinion any more. It's belief in the Bible against a mass of facts that only desperate creationists with their 'carbon-dating-is-inaccurate' palaver even bother to contest.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by Rulkiewicz

 

What are your thoughts?

Trying to make the creation stories in Genesis match up with the facts of geology, astronomy, biology, etc., is a mug's game. If we take the Bible literally, we'll fail at once. If we allow for a bit of metaphor on the part of the writers of the Bible ('A thousand ages in Thy sight are like an ev'ning gone', as an eighteenth-century hymnalist put it), we might find some superficial agreement, but as soon as we start looking at the parallels in any detail, they fall apart.

As that hymn suggests, people have been trying to reconcile the Bible with the physical evidence of Earth's advanced age for a very long time – more than three hundred years at least.

They haven't succeeded yet. That should tell us something.

You are completely wrong there my friend. You must not have read anything I said.

Originally posted by mindlessbrainpower89 ~ I love this, classic example of no one having the right to be wrong. Everyone has to conform to the rest of society, right?

What?

It has nothing to do with "the right to be wrong" or conforming to preset societal standards; it's just that Young Earth Creationists haven't anything legitimate to put up against a truly monumental and overwhelming block of evidence that evil, secular science has come up. Guys like Hovind and Ham can talk about God making starlight, hammers in coal, centurions' accounts of battling extant dinosaurs, and any other blatantly moronic "chink in science's armor" until they're blue in the face (black and blue, if you're Hovind), and you're welcome to completely dispense with all logic and ignore the sum total of mankind's amassed knowledge and agree with them.

Just count me out.

reply to post by mindlessbrainpower89

You are completely wrong there my friend. You must not have read anything I said.

You're right. I didn't bother. I stopped at 'carbon dating has been shown to be inaccurate'.

I first read that lie in a copy of The Watchtower when I was about eleven years old. That was back in the late 1960s. It hasn't got any truer since then, but I have better things to do with my time than refute this nonsense.

It's not only Religious people that have questions about the accuracy of Carbon Dating, it's a pretty mainstream concern.

www.allaboutarchaeology.org...

The result is that carbon dating is accurate for only a few thousand years. Anything beyond that is questionable. This fact is born out in how carbon dating results are used by scientists in the scientific literature. Many scientists will use carbon dating test results to back up their position if the results agree with their preconceived theories. But if the carbon dating results actually conflict with their ideas, they aren't too concerned

This argument is redundant.

Considering that in the future, people will be arguing that The internet wasn't real, or some even more absurd issue.

We have Volcanoes older than 6,000 years here, hell there are even living organisms like the Redwoods ( 2,000 years old ) and petrified forrests ( not living ) but still great indicators of time span earth is apart of.

Jesus himselves spoke of days before the bibles conception.

The world is not up for debate, it's exactly the way it is, to argue it is to prove your mindset.

Still undecided here take a nice long read!

List_of_long-living_organisms

en.wikipedia.org...

Some species of sponges in the ocean near Antarctica are thought to be 10,000 years old

Eucalyptus recurva: clones in Australia are claimed to be 13,000 years old.[19]

The Jurupa Oak colony is estimated to be at least 13,000 years of age, with other estimates ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 years.

Various claims have been made about reviving bacterial spores to active metabolism after millions of years. There are claims of spores from amber being revived after 40 million years[5], and spores from salt deposits in New Mexico being revived after 240 million years. These claims have been made by credible researchers, but are not universally accepted.[6][7] In a related find, a scientist was able to coax 34,000 year old salt-captured bacteria to reproduce and his results were duplicated at a separate independent laboratory facility.[8]

For arguments sake, just look at a couple of things:

God made Adam and Eve. Did God make them as embryos? Did God make them as babies? Did got make them as adults? Do you think if a scientist performed an examination on Adam a year after God made him would he conclude Adam is a one year old?

God made the Earth. Did God make the Earth as a "baby"? Were there little baby rocks everywhere? If a scientist performed a test on a rock one year after God made the Earth would he conclude the rock was one year old? Or ten thousand years old? Or a million years old?

reply to post by WilsonWilson

It's not only Religious people that have questions about the accuracy of Carbon Dating, it's a pretty mainstream concern.

As the article you posted correctly states, radiocarbon dating is only accurate for objects of relatively recent origin – a few thousand years or less. That is why we use other forms of radiometric dating on older and non-organic objects.