Continents move about 1 inch per year?

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I was reading an article about earthquakes and continental drift. Continents move at about .8 in per year. It mentioned how all the continents were joined at one time(Pangea) The continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. With that being said, If you do the math it would take about 100 years for a continent to move 8 feet.

1000 years equals 80 ft
10,000 years equals 800 ft
100,000 years equals about 1.5 miles and so on.

Asia and North America are about 5000 miles apart??

Did the continents have a thousand years of fast movement?? it certainly does not add up to the earth being 6000 years old?
 
The timelines one derives from adding up the ‘generations of Adam/Noah’ patriarchs may not be literal. And they may not be literal father-son descent in the first place: I’m pretty sure biblical genealogies often skip generations, so those might be more ‘here are a bunch of important people descended from X’, and some of the boring people got left out… so there may be waaay more generations/years involved than all that.

And if the six days aren’t literal days (and after all, the sun only shows up on day four, so something at least odd or semi-non-literal is going on there*) maybe the earth is way older than humanity.

*I prefer the idea that they’re not chronological at all, but a thematic description or poetic catalog of the Creation.

Day 1: light --------------------------------- Day 4: luminous celestial bodies (sun, moon, stars)
Day 2: sky/separation of waters ---- Day 5: birds and water creatures
Day 3: land separated from sea — Day 6: land animals and man

Augustine, IIRC, thought creation was ‘actually’ instantaneous (I think because God is outside of time… or something) - so it’s not like the idea that the 6 days are not literal was something kludged in to make things fit with modern geology; nonliteral interpretations go WAY back.

For most of Christian history, the argument was between an eternal (usually cyclical) universe and a young, created universe – Christianity supported an universe with a beginning, a moment of creation, against an eternal universe. Few, if any, even considered the possibility of an old but temporally finite, created universe … I don’t think it would have been problematic; it just never occurred to them.
 
Kevster10504 said:
I was reading an article about earthquakes and continental drift. Continents move at about .8 in per year. It mentioned how all the continents were joined at one time(Pangea) The continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. With that being said, If you do the math it would take about 100 years for a continent to move 8 feet.

1000 years equals 80 ft
10,000 years equals 800 ft
100,000 years equals about 1.5 miles and so on.

Asia and North America are about 5000 miles apart??

Did the continents have a thousand years of fast movement?? it certainly does not add up to the earth being 6000 years old?
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The earth is not 6,000 to 10,000 years old.
You are asking a question that a bible can not help you with.
Catholics are NOT required to believe in a 6,000 to 10,000 year earth.
If you want answers to this, you can not find them in the bible at all. Nor should you, as it is stated by many catholics here it is not a science book.
 
Kevster10504 said:
I was reading an article about earthquakes and continental drift. Continents move at about .8 in per year. It mentioned how all the continents were joined at one time(Pangea) The continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. With that being said, If you do the math it would take about 100 years for a continent to move 8 feet.
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The different tectonic plates move at different speeds. The 0.8 inch/year you cite is actually the slowest of the plates:
These average rates of plate separations can range widely. The Arctic Ridge has the slowest rate (less than 2.5 cm/yr), and the East Pacific Rise near Easter Island, in the South Pacific about 3,400 km west of Chile, has the fastest rate (more than 15 cm/yr).
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pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/understanding.html

And as Strawberry Jam pointed out, as a Catholic (and perhaps for most Christians) holding to a literal interpretation of the Bible to mean the earth is only 6000 years old simply isn’t necessary. Sometimes the Bible is written in figurative language, and the meaning of the passages are not literal.

Pangaea is thought to have existed 225 million years ago.
pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/historical.html
 
Dinosaurs pretty much prove the earth is older than 6,000 years!
 
buffalo said:
The soft tissue findings may change that.
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I know you think you are helping others to your Christ, but you have no idea how much harm you can be responsible for by promoting this kind of viewpoint.
You would be much better off clarifying that these are your personal viewpoints, and not those endorsed by the Catholic Church to be taken as dogma.
 
Kevster10504 said:
I was reading an article about earthquakes and continental drift. Continents move at about .8 in per year. It mentioned how all the continents were joined at one time(Pangea) The continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. With that being said, If you do the math it would take about 100 years for a continent to move 8 feet.

1000 years equals 80 ft
10,000 years equals 800 ft
100,000 years equals about 1.5 miles and so on.

Asia and North America are about 5000 miles apart??

Did the continents have a thousand years of fast movement?? it certainly does not add up to the earth being 6000 years old?
Click to expand...
Who said the earth is 6000 years old? Certainly not the Catholic Church.
I’m Catholic and believe the earth is around 4.6 billion years old.
 
Kevster10504 said:
Did the continents have a thousand years of fast movement??
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Maybe. There is no intrinsic reason to believe that continents move today at the same rate that they moved many years ago. Core samples from different regions which include iron deposits do not agree on the orientation of magnetic north from the same time period - which means the region was not in the same relative position (and was often quite removed, in a way that current continental drift theory cannot explain). This is a brand-new area of scientific inquiry, and there are MANY questions yet to be answered.
Kevster10504 said:
it certainly does not add up to the earth being 6000 years old?
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Agreed - that’s absurd. I add my voice to others who have asked - where do you get that figure? Surely not from the Catholic Church. Maybe continents once drifted more swiftly than they do today, but I know of NO respected Catholic theologian who places the age of the earth at 6000 years (or any figure remotely close).
 
Kevster10504 said:
I was reading an article about earthquakes and continental drift. Continents move at about .8 in per year. It mentioned how all the continents were joined at one time(Pangea) The continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. With that being said, If you do the math it would take about 100 years for a continent to move 8 feet.

1000 years equals 80 ft
10,000 years equals 800 ft
100,000 years equals about 1.5 miles and so on.

Asia and North America are about 5000 miles apart??

Did the continents have a thousand years of fast movement?? it certainly does not add up to the earth being 6000 years old?
Click to expand...
Lol…uh…you’ve just became aware of some scientific facts. Good for you. Unfortunately, though, one cannot be a literal bible reader and agree with many findings of the scientific consesnsus. Continental drift and Pangaea are two of them. I personally hope you abandon your literal reading and embrace solid evidence, facts, and proofs. But of course you need to decide that for yourself.
 
StrawberryJam said:
I know you think you are helping others to your Christ, but you have no idea how much harm you can be responsible for by promoting this kind of viewpoint.
You would be much better off clarifying that these are your personal viewpoints, and not those endorsed by the Catholic Church to be taken as dogma.
Click to expand...
The finding of soft tissue dino is not my personal viewpoint.

Show me a post where I have advanced a personal dogma.
 
buffalo said:
The finding of soft tissue dino is not my personal viewpoint.

Show me a post where I have advanced a personal dogma.
Click to expand...
I’m asking you to clarify that these are viewpoints that are yours, and not dogma.
I won’t address your soft tissue topic. Start a new thread on it. It is off topic.
 
alongexpected said:
Lol…uh…you’ve just became aware of some scientific facts. Good for you. Unfortunately, though, one cannot be a literal bible reader and agree with many findings of the scientific consesnsus. Continental drift and Pangaea are two of them. I personally hope you abandon your literal reading and embrace solid evidence, facts, and proofs. But of course you need to decide that for yourself.
Click to expand...
An allegorical reading of many passages is best, but just because a literal reading is false or dysfunctional is no reason to be an atheist, which it seems you are implying.
 
StrawberryJam said:
I’m asking you to clarify that these are viewpoints that are yours, and not dogma.
I won’t address your soft tissue topic. Start a new thread on it. It is off topic.
Click to expand...
IDvolution, the philosophy, is not dogma. It is doing what the search for knowledge does, finding a gap and filling it.

It is a position advanced by connecting the dots of Revelation and the continuous teaching and understanding of the Church and modern scientific peer reviewed papers.

If IDvolution is true it will stand the challenges and the test of time.

Whack away at it.👍 That is what it needs to survive, intellectual challenges. As far as opinion goes, most of science is just that, opinion, because it cannot be completely certain. Evolution is an opinion held by many. Revelation however is not opinion, scientific reasoning is.
 
buffalo said:
IDvolution, the philosophy, is not dogma. It is doing what the search for knowledge does, finding a gap and filling it.

It is a position advanced by connecting the dots of Revelation and the continuous teaching and understanding of the Church and modern scientific peer reviewed papers.

If IDvolution is true it will stand the challenges and the test of time.

Whack away at it.👍 That is what it needs to survive, intellectual challenges. As far as opinion goes, most of science is just that, opinion, because it cannot be completely certain. Evolution is an opinion held by many. Revelation however is not opinion, scientific reasoning is.
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You want me to whack away at it?

Opinion? Science is not based on Opinion.

Theory is not opinion. Not in Science. In Theology it may be.
 
buffalo said:
Scientific reasoning is chock full of opinion.
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The movement of the continents is measured and is real; it is not opinion. The opinion comes in when discussing the reasons for the movement; there is no room for opinion about the fact of the movement.

rossum
 
rossum said:
The movement of the continents is measured and is real; it is not opinion. The opinion comes in when discussing the reasons for the movement; there is no room for opinion about the fact of the movement.

rossum
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No argument that they are moving.
 
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