I can't remeber the exact quotes. It was something like all the planets will be aligned with one another on the 21st. But I heard they do that every year or so on the 21st EDIT: [video=youtube;QJjQMwEjC1I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJjQMwEjC1I[/video]
you believe in a young earth because you've bought into all the recent literal creationist propaganda out there that only exists to make money off ignorant christians, not because there's some objective translation of the original hebrew you've studied that unequivocably says creation occured in 6 24 hour periods. like everything else about the fundamanalist dogma you believe in that is only based in subjective interpretation. and you should study the history of YEC. their prominence is a relatively recent phenomenon with no real historical tradition.
No. I believe in a young earth because I've bought into the long-standing doctrine that the bible is the word of God transcribed by people inspired by the Holy Spirit. I believe that every word in the Bible is true, doctrinally, and creation is just a part of that. Did Jesus not actually turn water to wine or rise from the dead? Did Moses not lead the Exodus of the Hebrews through the Sea of Reeds? Did God not light Elijah's water-soaked altar while he laughed at the priests of the other gods? For me, it's an issue of this: if there are parts of the bible that aren't right, then how do I know which parts are and which aren't? If you were to tell me that the 6-day creation was actually an allegory for 1-day-is-a-thousand-years, then how do I know that the resurrection isn't an allegory for "spiritual enlightenment" or something and the doctrines of grace start to fall apart. So it's not that I believe anything Ken Ham tells me. It just so happens that what he says works with my worldview, and he's one of the few who are open to standing up and refuting "common sense" and the "fact" of the old earth. I guess it's folly for me to attempt to refute the idea that I'm an "ignorant Christian", since it seems that to many on here "non-belief in Darwin et. al = ignorance", but Old Earth people routinely just laugh and name-call rather than answer my scientific-based questions.
Bible says Red sEa, not Sea of Reeds (historians proved that, not the bible) Isn't Ken Ham a tax-fraud? Ken Ham is denying, or in a better way of putting it, is twisting the facts to his agenda/ideology. Plus the Catholic Church, arguably the largest sect of Christianity, has pretty much said they disagreed with him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucuOOipIalw And as much I see notice the Bible's fallacies, plagiarism, and hypocrisies, it does have some bad ass stuff. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2 Kings 2:23-24&version=KJ21 What caught my attention was the last sentence: "forty-two of the youths." You mean to tell me there were MORE than 42 kids who took time out of their day and kept calling the guy baldy!? All I ask is that religion stay out of governing and science class. I could care less what people think, whether it be a flat earth, a Jewish Zombie, unicorns etc ( all of which are mentioned a few times in the Bible) etc.
you missed my point. i was saying the literal 6 day creation thing is necessarily a matter of subjective interpretation of the original hebrew and is and always has been widely disputed by many christian scholars, even by some who consider themselves literalists. the fact that modern interpretations say 6 days shouldn't necessarily mean that much to you. lots of passages in the OT were clearly meant to be vague allegory or poetry and are wide open to interpreation. it's simply impossible to take every word literally, and no reason for you to feel you need to. so even if you believe the bible is the inspired word of god there's nothing in genesis 1 that should unequivocably compell you to believe what was meant was 6 24 hour periods. MANY christians (the majority now in the US based on recent polls) believe in an old earth, either because they think god's "days" mean something longer, or because they consider the first part of genesis to be allegory (which is the official position of the catholic church). after all the sun was created after day and night, so something there obviously can't be literal. literal truth to the exodus story is almost as bad as a literal global flood for you. there is not even a remote possibility that either could have happened. good point. in fact since science has disproved a literal reading of the bible quite thoroughly there's no reason to believe any of it is more than typical human mythology. most christians are hanging on to the bible and meshing it with science as they can, but they're not really fooling themselves any less than YECs are. as far as i've seen any time you've bothered to ask a science-based question on the subject it has been answered sincerely. otherwise belief the earth is 6000 years old deserves to be laughed at. there isn't really a polite way to put that.
No, but it's not your fault. I didn't bring them up here, b/c when I have in the past the thread's been derailed. I didn't see this before...I don't know that Ken Ham was a tax evader. I'll have to look that up. Regardless, (as in my post about the other pastor) if you're not going to at least think about what someone claims b/c of a sin issue they have (homosexuality, divorce, lying, tax evasion, whatever) then you're not going to be able to listen to anyone.
First, what "many people, even Christians" believe doesn't matter a ton to me. Many people believe divorce is ok. Personally, I don't. Many people, even Americans, don't like that Barack Obama is president. Many people, including sports fans, root for the L*kers. Does that mean I'm supposed to change my mind? There isn't a "subjective matter of literal Hebrew". I'm hesitant to post it, since it's something that you'll only really find on websites who adhere to literal 6-day stuff, but as a pure matter of Hebrew you can't get around it. Others (even theologians!) may try to read things into it, but in terms of the Hebrew: And that's from a guy who thought it was a fairy tale. It's not a problem for me if you or anyone else does, too. What's a problem is you trying to explain it away as allegory. The author of the book intended it to say a literal six days. The author of the book intended to say that a flood covered the entire planet. As I said, you can choose to believe it's a fairy tale. What one cannot do is say that the author didn't mean what he wrote. You probably don't want to bring up the global flood. That part I do know quite a bit about, factually and scientifically. The rest of the stuff is better for discussion. I must've missed that day in public school, university, or in my daily updates on the interwebz.
unlike the merits of divorce the age of the earth is not a subjective matter. there is effectively a 100% scientific consensus that the earth is older than 6000 years. ken ham etc. who say otherwise are con men trying to sell you books, DVDs, museum admissions etc., and the only reason they continue to get away with it is because there is a large base of poorly educated christians who are ignorant about science. not that it matters, but among scholars there is nothing close to consensus on the meaning of the hebrew word that is interpreted as day, or on what the original intent of genesis 1 itself was, and historically there never has been. whatever you believe, something about it certainly has to be subjective. and even then you still have that day/night created before the sun thing among other anomalies that need to be subjectively equivocated away somehow. you have to keep in mid what was written was written by primitive humans with no knowledge of science. for example to whoever authored the flood story in genesis a localized major flood event might have been seen to cover the whole world as they knew it (irrelevant since the genesis flood story was plagiarized from the epic of gilgamesh). you've been brainwashed by creationist propaganda to believe that you know something "scientific" or factual, when in actuality 100% of scientists working in relevant fields (who don't have a preset creationist agenda) don't believe a global flood is even a remote possibility. after the creation story is the most easily disproved thing in the bible. you obviously missed a lot if you believe the earth is 6000 years old. that's not meant to be personal, but it's just so idiotic that an educated person would continue to believe that in this modern age of scientific revelation. it's literally the equivelant of still believing the earth is flat.
as far as 6000 years old, this says the egyptian culture is 7000 years old. http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/history/timeline.html ca5464 + 2000 ~7500 years
Okay, toning it down a bit...and rephrasing for Brian (for my pure edification): First, how do you explain carbon dating? Secondly, if man is imperfect then whomever wrote the bible must be imperfect as well and written imperfect or incorrect statements, correct? If God channeled the writer and made him/her write perfectly then whomever assembled the bible was imperfect and might have assembled the wrong documents, no? And if God channeled through the assembler and made the assembly perfect then my question is why are there different versions of the bible with conflicting interpretations? Since every assembler would either be perfect the bibles would be identical or the assemblers would be imperfect and we'd know that the bible wasn't perfect. Since God gave us free will and free thought wouldn't he expect that we'd be able to use it to evaluate the bible and its (im)perfections individually? Unlike others, I'm not anti-Christian, I just practice my own brand of spirituality and have some serious misgivings about the way "the" bible is used.
Why do you imagine that there's no potential way that I could've learned things before Answers in Genesis came around? I guess these con men aren't doing a good enough job, since I'm supposedly one of their cronies and yet don't give them money. One thing I learned in school was to question "proofs". My nuclear engineering background tells me that there's no possible way that you can justify a radiochemical equilibrium on earth over the past 10000 years, much less 4B+ years. And yet, every rock someone "dates"...every fossil someone finds...each of these is built on the axiom that earth has been at a radiochemical equilibrium during the entire period of that fossil living and then laying in the dirt. That's just one. Why do you believe that? Why is it that if it came from God, I'm believing the earth is flat, yet you believe in a faulty axiom, so it's right? I'll keep bringing this up---the "modern age of scientific revelation" taught people that atoms could be modeled like plum pudding. Then the fault in it was found and scientists moved on. That's awesome. That's what science is about. But so many are in a hurry to "disprove God" (as if that could ever happen) that they use poor science, uneducated masses, and put things out there as truth. Perhaps, since it fits in with one's love of self and unwillingness to believe they're a created pawn in God's universe, it's embraced. Just about every culture on the face of the earth (except Egyptians) in early historic times has a flood history, and (in looking up some of the ancient Egyptian stuff, I'm by no means an expert) it seems as if there aren't records from before the 1st Pharaoh in 3100BC or so. But there WAS an almost-immediate increase in "civilization" stuff (art, culture, writing, farming, military, etc) with the establishment of that dynasty. It may be that the Hebrews "stole" the flood history from Gilgamesh--though it could also be argued (and seems more likely to me) that the inspired Hebrew author(s) were told exactly what happened from God, while the Gilgamesh epic was passed and corrupted through 1000 years or more of oral history, to the point that the gods (little g) in that epic took on the form and behavior of humans (much like the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians did with their gods). This is just a personal philosophy--could be way off--but I find that this still fits with my worldview. The bible is inspired and true, and as such has difficult things (or God acting in ways we don't think is right/fair/fun) b/c it's (in the terms of one analogy I've read) like a snail trying to understand the emotion and thinking of the guy whose yard he's in--except if the owner of the house had created the world. I'm not a Hebrew scholar. I'm more of a scientist/engineer than many, though. Therefore, the doctrines that I believe in theologically are ones that I have to rely on the interpretation of others more trained in that than me, which guide my personal study. I didn't have a good reason for belief or disbelief in my place in or need for God until I read many books (on both sides), among which was Pink's Sovereignty of God. But my understanding of beliefs/faith in God is not the same as my understanding of beliefs in science. Someone's going to have to do a good job explaining to me scientifically why someone can date the missing-link lemur to 48M years ago. I'll happily read if someone comes up with more evidence or a proof for their axioms. I've been following the missing-link story because it fascinates me. But as time goes by (and it may be bias in the journalism of it) it seems as if more questions are brought up. Maybe more later.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic but if you believe the earth is 6,000 years old you are a typical loony Christian fundamentalist. So, going by that theory, 'god' put dinosaur bones here to test the faith of 'his children'?
There are mentions, of dinasour-esqu creaters in the Bible, so what makes you think that dinasours didnt inhabit the earth as recently as 6000 years ago, actually more like 10,000 cause i dont think Brian got his math right
No worries. I don't know what you mean by "explain", but here goes the quick version (hit me up again if I'm going off on a tangent): Carbon 14 dating is based on a number of measurements based upon radioactive decay in things that were previously living. Technically, there are some problems. The first is that even the inventors of the method say that it's only good for about 50k years or so, b/c at that point the measurements (half-life based) are too small to measure accurately. Makes sense--that's why things like argon dating, thorium dating, etc. are used for rocks and "really old things". The second is So, to use the axioms (unproven) that I base my faith off of; God is perfect and God is sovereign. He channeled the writers/assemblers/etc. and inspired them to write it. That's why you may see grammatical differences in how John writes (like a 3rd grader) vs. how Paul writes (like the highly-educated rabbi that he was), or how a man educated in the Egyptian court may write versus how a farmer/prophet would. My guess (and as I said, I don't have all the answers) is that the Scripture as authored was inerrant. Maybe there were translation errors, but God has seen fit to show us some of those. I don't know that doctrinally there are issues in the bible that are due to transcription/translation error. As for "conflicting interpretations", you're correct (or, I'd agree with you) in that man might mess it up. Some might see "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength" and interpret it to mean "I need to re-take Jerusalem". I'm not saying that's right, b/c men are errant. Many people do. But there are reasons (imho) that the "church" (people, not building) are to meet together. So that if someone gets a crazy thought ("I need to just pray instead of taking my kid to the hospital") then other can say "actually, you're misinterpreting that. It's almost like scientific peer review. If someone reads into an experiment to say that they disproved gravity, then it's up to the colleagues/etc. to say "actually, you failed to see this, and this over here shows you're wrong". I welcome talking to people about this. There are definitely things I'm fuzzy on (for instance, if you showed me proof --like the Egyptian thing--that the Earth's 7500 years instead of 6000, because we're not reading certain things in the Hebrew chronologies correctly, I'm open to that) If you said to me that lemur-esque fossils show that there was a being that was half-amphibian, half-mammal, I'm interested. If you're telling me that the Bible is false, that's earth-shattering enough that I have to be able to defend it. So that's why (with respect to everyone who's been kind enough to participate in this) I think I've had to study a lot more about my defense of my faith than many who say "science has disproven the bible and it's not even an issue anymore" because they heard it anecdotally or read a website.
You know there's a thing about being open-minded. It's fine and dandy unless you become so open minded that you let your brain ooze out. And as much I love to answer questions about sciences, I don't have the patience to teach someone basic biology and astrophysics. Why are there a lot of flood stories? This may be because floods are a common experience to the human race. Storms, tsunamis, and other natural occurrences flood and destroy human habitats. Scholars note that flood myths in the Middle East started with the Sumerians story of Gilgamesh but soon was followed by cultures that came after including the Babylonians and Hebrews. As each culture became bigger such tales spread and took on the moral undertones of the societies adopting them. The flood story in the Bible is about the Dead Sea's formation. At that time, the ones who passed such stories had a limited view on how big the world is. Stop trying to fit things within your worldview and look at them objectively if you want the best path to finding truth about something. Coming into it with a bias does not help at all. Two types of radioactive dating come to mind - one which can be used for things like fossils and objects a thousand years old, and another which can be used for things millions of years old. This is supposed to work because it was determined that living things have a natural level of a radioactive type of carbon (carbon 14) in their bodies when they are alive. The carbon 14 is continuously replaced in their bodies by eating/or photosynthesis. Once the organism dies, it stops taking in Carbon 14, so the level of carbon 14 in its body slowly decreases due to the natural radioactive decay. If you determine the amount of carbon 14 left, to the amount of carbon 14 in living organisms, you can mathematically calculate how long it took to decay, and thus how long ago the organism was alive. Also, scientists often test materials in the ground that were buried with the fossil sample - with the expectation that they were buried at the same time - so if you find human bones buried together with a woolen clothes, hair, fur, etc, you can "indirectly" date the fossil. You can also get an upper limit on the age of a fossil by dating objects buried below it. It can be used to date the strata in which fossils occur, or sometimes the strata above and below. This can be done when suitable material happens to be available, with volcanic ash being a common example. In more recent remains, going back to at most 50,000 years, carbon dating can sometimes be applied directly to the remains. The other radioactive dating method that comes to mind is Potassium Argon dating. This is my understanding how the dating methods work. This is just a small part of the amount of evidence that debunks a 6,000 year old earth. Science's purpose isnt to destroy belief but investigate things objectively and with standards of evidence that doesn't just accept "godidit" as a true answer. And you say you arent a scholar of theology and thus rely more on the word of the scholars, most scholars have come to a consensus different from your own. Fact of the matter is there is a huge disconnect between the creation story and the mountains of evidence it faces. And even some scholars acknowledge that it is more of an allegory than actually trying to be literal. Though of course this begs the question why Jesus came in the first place to forgive a sin that took place in an allegory. Sorry, as sincere as you are trying to be, you are not approaching the bible, religion, knowledge from reason or rationality. You are letting your biases cloud objectivity. I read that book long enough to see that it isnt reliable for moral codes nor truth. Plus, a complex place like the universe, I doubt has a simple explanations. So it's no surprise that most people can wrap their heads around explanations. And if you learned to question proofs, then apply that same reasoning to the bible and religion. It works both ways. And as insightful philosophy is, it doesn't really attempt to prove itself. As for other science questions, go to library or look for unbiased sources on google. Don't go to theologians for science questions. That isn't their specialty and people like Ken Ham have agendas, so they are prone to fallacies and quote mines. For example, if you wanna know what a liberal is, would you ask SHOOTER!? Or would you explore unbiased references? There's a massive difference between the two.
irrelevant. they are still influencing the level of your and many other christians convictions with their lies. creationist propaganda could potentially be a dangerous thing if it wasn't already becoming marginalized. not sure what you mean exactly by radiochemical equalibrium? dating is based on isotopic decay rates which are caused by quantum tunneling, which has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to remain constant over time. also different specific methods corroborate each other, which would not be the case if decay rates were in flux. anyway it doesn't take dating rocks to see the earth is more than thousands of years old. all that requires is taking off your blinders. by simply observing current geologic processes it can be inferred from the geologic record that the earth has to be older than that. for example there is a sea cliff near where i live in lincoln city with at least 11 horizontal layers of pillow basalt lava flows alternating with thick sandstone deposits. no 40 day flood theory is going to explain how 5 sandstone deposits got in between 6 different hardened lava flows. for i think the fifth time the plum pudding model was just someone's theory and was never accepted as a scientific consensus of any kind, and was quickly disproved and discarded as soon as it was tested. it's NOT an example of science being wrong about something based on evidence. you're implying all of modern science is one giant anti-christian conspiracy. i would hope i shouldn't have to point out how insane that is. in truth science could care less about the question of "god". accruately determining the geologic history of the earth has more practical uses. the fact that it conflicts with your dogmatic religious views of geology is just a side effect. not surprising considering major localized floods have been constantly happening throughout history. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html my point was you don't have to be. since there is no scholarly consensus, some aspect of the meaning of genesis 1 can't possibly be as clear as you think it is.
read on a website lol? there is virtually universal world-wide scientific consensus about the age of the earth. you're not grasping the significance of that for some reason.
