God created an aged Universe?

[kenofken]

C’mon now - everyone know that uniformtarianism is indeed the foundation of long ages. At the dawn of uniformatarianism, it was reading the geologic column and assigning a time to the layers.

We now know that catastrophism is much more prevalent than recently thought.

Bottom line - Uniformatarianism was used to discredit the flood and Scripture accounts. It no longer can be used as such.

Geologists have long accepted that periodic catastrophes are part of the formation process in the greater context of relatively constant rates of change over the long haul. Work on things such as this megaflood are showing how significant and relatively recent these can be. It makes for exciting times in the field of geology, but it comes nowhere close to undermining the evidence or conclusions for a very old Earth. Showing that large volumes of fast moving water can destroy things faster than slow steady erosion doesn’t exactly turn physics on its head. Katrina and the Tsunami of several years ago are ample evidence that water can destroy quickly. Cutting a caynon or drilling holes in the scablands can take 10,000 years or 10 hours, but that doesn’t change the age of the rock layers you cut, only the rate at which layers were exposed.

Even if it turns out that catastrophism is the predominant force responsible for Earth’s surface features, that still doesn’t get you a hundredth of one percent of the way toward proving a young Earth. You’ve still got the enormous problem of radiometric dating carried out by countless investigators and institutions over a century which points to an age of 4.5 billion years, give or take a few million. The only way the young Earth “scientists” have been able to take on this problem is to assert that radioactive decay rates in the recent past happened ONE BILLION times faster than they do today, for inconceivable reasons and by inconceivable mechanisms. There is no evidence at all to suggest that radioactive decay rates vary to any significant degree under any conditions relevant to geology.

Then there’s other mountain ranges of evidence pertaining to evolution, rates of genetic diversion etc., none of which point to even the remotest possibility of a 6,000 year old planet. If people want to believe it because they feel bound by religion to do so, so be it. But to base that belief in science requires nothing less than the total abandonment of reason and a fantasyland suspension of belief in everything our eyes and minds tell us.

 

[Ichthys4121517]

That is a very telling sentiment. You are saying that you would not worship any god whose motives and majesty cannot be shrunk down to the scale of your own existence as a creature who is deaf and blind to 99% of the universe and has the lifespan of a fruit fly in the scheme of things. It is evident in much of organized religion that God is created in man’s image and not the other way around.

I never said I was trying to make my own God. It’s just that the using of such a cruel process as evolution to create man is obviously against God’s nature. By the implicit definition of God in the Bible, a God who would do such a thing cannot exist. I am not trying to “shrink down” God and make Him conform to my standards. If anything, the theistic evolutionists are doing that. They assume that just because some fallible “scientists” preach a false gospel against God’s account of creation, then we should give those people’s opinions more respect than God’s objective truth.

Look, there are some things that God does in the Bible that atheists deem morally questionable while I disagree with them, but the prospect of theistic evolution is not one of them (if anything, atheists prefer theistic evolutionists to creationists). Before the Fall, there was no reason for animals, and humans, to die.

 

[kenofken]

Source?

My source for this is the observation that many people of faith in the Judeo-Christian spectrum refuse to believe in a god or creation which makes them uncomfortable or challenges them in any way. They can’t conceive of a universe where anything counterintuitive or complex like evolution or multi-billion year old planets exist, so therefore God cannot have conceived such a thing. On a more mundane level you have people who hate homosexuals and Democrats, are white and speak American English with a Southern accent, so that’s taken as evidence that God must be all these things too. Liberation theologists have a god that looks and thinks just as they do. For many people God is just a big version of the guy in the mirror who happens to live in the sky somewhere and who validates everything that person says, thinks or does.

 

[kenofken]

I never said I was trying to make my own God. It’s just that the using of such a cruel process as evolution to create man is obviously against God’s nature. By the implicit definition of God in the Bible, a God who would do such a thing cannot exist. I am not trying to “shrink down” God and make Him conform to my standards. If anything, the theistic evolutionists are doing that. They assume that just because some fallible “scientists” preach a false gospel against God’s account of creation, then we should give those people’s opinions more respect than God’s objective truth.

Look, there are some things that God does in the Bible that atheists deem morally questionable while I disagree with them, but the prospect of theistic evolution is not one of them (if anything, atheists prefer theistic evolutionists to creationists). Before the Fall, there was no reason for animals, and humans, to die.

You’re purporting to know God’s nature and the only way that is remotely possible is if he is no more complex, infinite or wise than yourself. You can’t conceive of a God who would allow evolution to occur, but you’re OK with a God who, we are told in scripture, destroyed entire cities in a fit of pique, drowned almost everyone in the known world, allowed his chosen people to be brutally enslaved, demanded human sacrifice, had men impregnate their own daughters, sent an angel to kill all of Egypt’s first-born children for the sins of its leader?

 

[buffalo]

My source for this is the observation that many people of faith in the Judeo-Christian spectrum refuse to believe in a god or creation which makes them uncomfortable or challenges them in any way. They can’t conceive of a universe where anything counterintuitive or complex like evolution or multi-billion year old planets exist, so therefore God cannot have conceived such a thing. On a more mundane level you have people who hate homosexuals and Democrats, are white and speak American English with a Southern accent, so that’s taken as evidence that God must be all these things too. Liberation theologists have a god that looks and thinks just as they do. For many people God is just a big version of the guy in the mirror who happens to live in the sky somewhere and who validates everything that person says, thinks or does.

Wow. :whacky:

The entire Catholic proposition is a challenge. And yes, it is true, Catholics do hate. We hate evil and sin wherever we find it.

 

[buffalo]

You’re purporting to know God’s nature and the only way that is remotely possible is if he is no more complex, infinite or wise than yourself. You can’t conceive of a God who would allow evolution to occur, but you’re OK with a God who, we are told in scripture, destroyed entire cities in a fit of pique, drowned almost everyone in the known world, allowed his chosen people to be brutally enslaved, demanded human sacrifice, had men impregnate their own daughters, sent an angel to kill all of Egypt’s first-born children for the sins of its leader?

Revelation is how we come to know God’s attributes. God could have allowed evolution to occur. But then He should have told us that. He didn’t. He revealed something quite different and now biology is affirming it. IDvolution is the solution.

The rest of your post is garbage and is standard doubter talking points and shows a superficial knowledge of Scripture. If you want, I have some excellent sources for you to study up on.

 

[JDaniel]

Science claims the universe is far older than what the bibles leads us to believe.
Couldn’t the universe be as young as the bible explains, but only that it seems alot older because God created a Universe with age?

If you don’t know what I mean, let me explain it this way.
God created Adam and Eve, the second he created them, they were new right? But they already appeared to be mature, as if they were like adults but never actually existed before to grow and age.

Same thing as in the Chicken before the egg.
Do you guys think this could be true, making scientific theory about the earth’s age irrelevant?

Dec:

The critical issue is: geology says 4 billion years (+ or -). Red shift says: 17 billion years (+ or -). The bible says 4,500 to 10,000 years (+ or -). How do we reconcile these apparent discrepancies?

Of course, any answer is going to be conjectural, to say the least. None of us (I hope) existed back then to tell us about it.

From reason, logic and revelation we are given to understand that the universe, including the earth, was created by God. Upon the instant of creation of mobile being, time came into being. But, not necessarily at the current speed of motion and time. It is quite possible that God rolled out the earlier-to-us part of the on-going event of Creation at a greater speed and time than what we are currently familiar with. If He did, then all of our science would be, relatively speaking, on target. There is no reason to believe that what we are currently measuring is what time was earlier in Creation. (Again, this is conjecture, just like all the other posts.)

I happen to believe that Genesis is not merely metaphoric. I believe that our perception was different. I have chipped away at the earth in the varves of the Green River Formation and found fossils. I have been intimately involved with a company that received and retailed fossils from 500 million years ago. I have counted the varves. I don’t doubt the science, yet, I don’t doubt our Lord either. (Nor do I doubt His scribes.)

There is no trickery here. He was not trying to pull the wool over our eyes. He was rolling out Creation such that it would be perfectly ready for us - I mean all of life. So that the eventual roll-out would be correlative with our abilities and capabilities, as living creatures. Just as we slow down our cars as we come to a red light, He could easily have have been slowing down the roll-out until the Earth was ready to sustain living, mortal things. The Earth thus perfectly tweaked, so to speak, man was created.

In any event, that’s how I see it. (For now.)

God bless,
jd

 

[kenofken]

While browsing other blogs, I came upon Gus di Zerega’s excellent piece on Beliefnet this morning. It sums up the failings of literalism perfectly:

*I have been struggling with better understanding what Karen Armstrong calls mythos in her book The Battle for God, on religious fundamentalism worldwide. I think it is essential towards developing a deeper appreciation of what Pagan spirituality brings to the spiritual table, among many other things. Pagan spirituality is filled with myths, and is I think an essential part of our spirituality, one in many ways barely rediscovered.

Armstrong contrasts mythos to logos, arguing the “fundamentalisms” are quite modern in rejecting myth in favor of literalistic understandings of scriptures, as modern as science. Because they argue on the same turf, they are incompatible, and because the fundamentalisms have chosen to argue on science’s turf, they get the worse of the encounter, and hence fall back on irrationality and, when they have the power, violence. I think she is profoundly right on this. Fundamentalism is the religious version of secular nihilism.
*
Read more: blog.beliefnet.com/apagansblog/2011/01/myth-as-a-way-of-knowing.html#ixzz1Bn5jPlRW

 

[buffalo]

While browsing other blogs, I came upon Gus di Zerega’s excellent piece on Beliefnet this morning. It sums up the failings of literalism perfectly:

*I have been struggling with better understanding what Karen Armstrong calls mythos in her book The Battle for God, on religious fundamentalism worldwide. I think it is essential towards developing a deeper appreciation of what Pagan spirituality brings to the spiritual table, among many other things. Pagan spirituality is filled with myths, and is I think an essential part of our spirituality, one in many ways barely rediscovered.

Armstrong contrasts mythos to logos, arguing the “fundamentalisms” are quite modern in rejecting myth in favor of literalistic understandings of scriptures, as modern as science. Because they argue on the same turf, they are incompatible, and because the fundamentalisms have chosen to argue on science’s turf, they get the worse of the encounter, and hence fall back on irrationality and, when they have the power, violence. I think she is profoundly right on this. Fundamentalism is the religious version of secular nihilism.
*
Read more: blog.beliefnet.com/apagansblog/2011/01/myth-as-a-way-of-knowing.html#ixzz1Bn5jPlRW

If one is committed to the search for the truth they will be open to all knowledge. The turf of science is very small in comparison and it is irrational to close one’s mind to other knowledge. In the process though science has debunked the pagan mythos long ago and points solidly to the one true God.

Revelation has no problem whatsoever being on true science’s turf since it is a subset. Faith and reason cannot be opposed for they flow from the very same God.

 

[kenofken]

If one is committed to the search for the truth they will be open to all knowledge. The turf of science is very small in comparison and it is irrational to close one’s mind to other knowledge. In the process though science has debunked the pagan mythos long ago and points solidly to the one true God.

Revelation has no problem whatsoever being on true science’s turf since it is a subset. Faith and reason cannot be opposed for they flow from the very same God.

Why is it then that nobody has been able or willing to engage the argument in terms of real science, especially after stating that an old Earth is scientifically invalid? Every time I’ve presented the evidence, all I get in the form of counterargument is suggestions that science is corrupt or that you all know the mind of God so well that you can say with certainty He wouldn’t have created a universe that contradicts your own expectations. If, as I suspect, old Earth creationists are commanded by their faith to believe it and discount any reasoned argument against it, then we really have nothing to debate.

If, however, you mean to present it as scientific truth and something a reasoning person could agree with, you need to engage it on those terms and play by the rules of science and logic. I’m not seeing that so far. I see a movement which apparently wants the credibility that scientific knowledge confers in our modern world, but which really has deep contempt for science and refuses to follow its rules of discovery and reasoning. My point in quoting Gus’ blog is not that anyone should accept pagan mythology, only that mythology as a way of understanding provides a MUCH more powerful insight into truths than a literal reading does. It also has the advantage that it does not paint one into a corner where you are confronted with the choices of atheism or utter abandonment of reason. There is simply no way a person believing in a literal chronology of the Old Testament can also be rooted in logic or scientific reasoning. When push comes to shove, most of you throw science and reason over the side. Atheists do the same with religion. I suggest that neither is necessary.

 

[buffalo]

Why is it then that nobody has been able or willing to engage the argument in terms of real science, especially after stating that an old Earth is scientifically invalid? Every time I’ve presented the evidence, all I get in the form of counterargument is suggestions that science is corrupt or that you all know the mind of God so well that you can say with certainty He wouldn’t have created a universe that contradicts your own expectations. If, as I suspect, old Earth creationists are commanded by their faith to believe it and discount any reasoned argument against it, then we really have nothing to debate.

If, however, you mean to present it as scientific truth and something a reasoning person could agree with, you need to engage it on those terms and play by the rules of science and logic. I’m not seeing that so far. I see a movement which apparently wants the credibility that scientific knowledge confers in our modern world, but which really has deep contempt for science and refuses to follow its rules of discovery and reasoning. My point in quoting Gus’ blog is not that anyone should accept pagan mythology, only that mythology as a way of understanding provides a MUCH more powerful insight into truths than a literal reading does. It also has the advantage that it does not paint one into a corner where you are confronted with the choices of atheism or utter abandonment of reason. There is simply no way a person believing in a literal chronology of the Old Testament can also be rooted in logic or scientific reasoning. When push comes to shove, most of you throw science and reason over the side. Atheists do the same with religion. I suggest that neither is necessary.

This is what I have been proposing for some time now:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=639&pictureid=7720

Now it is this intersection that we really need to look closely at. Any truths trying to be resolved in this intersection need to consider the information flow. What is most important is that the information is correct. It is reasonable to test both of them.

Research requires funding. Guess who is getting the funding right now? And since the money does flow the process becomes self perpetuating. That is what is being challenged.

Something to ponder:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=639&pictureid=4483

 

[edwest2]

Why is it then that nobody has been able or willing to engage the argument in terms of real science, especially after stating that an old Earth is scientifically invalid? Every time I’ve presented the evidence, all I get in the form of counterargument is suggestions that science is corrupt or that you all know the mind of God so well that you can say with certainty He wouldn’t have created a universe that contradicts your own expectations. If, as I suspect, old Earth creationists are commanded by their faith to believe it and discount any reasoned argument against it, then we really have nothing to debate.

If, however, you mean to present it as scientific truth and something a reasoning person could agree with, you need to engage it on those terms and play by the rules of science and logic. I’m not seeing that so far. I see a movement which apparently wants the credibility that scientific knowledge confers in our modern world, but which really has deep contempt for science and refuses to follow its rules of discovery and reasoning. My point in quoting Gus’ blog is not that anyone should accept pagan mythology, only that mythology as a way of understanding provides a MUCH more powerful insight into truths than a literal reading does. It also has the advantage that it does not paint one into a corner where you are confronted with the choices of atheism or utter abandonment of reason. There is simply no way a person believing in a literal chronology of the Old Testament can also be rooted in logic or scientific reasoning. When push comes to shove, most of you throw science and reason over the side. Atheists do the same with religion. I suggest that neither is necessary.

I have gone to atheist forums. I have seen the phrase “utter abandonment of reason” elsewhere. The core thinking behind this has nothing to do with science, but social manipulation. The enemy is fundamentalism. The goal: to convince people that the Bible only contains truths of a moral/faith nature but nothing that can be proved scientifically. In that case, God actually does nothing, is a bystander or an initiator, but He certainly has not done the things recorded in the Bible, except maybe, one. After all, there is no evidence that would satisfy science. The same could be said of other holy books.

Once that is accomplished, the new priests take over: scientists. After all, they should be in charge. They’ll get those fundamentalists into line. But, there’s a problem I’ve been seeing for years - one group of experts reigns for a short time only to have their conclusions overthrown by another group of experts.

If the Technocracy should appear, it will break down into camps. There will be followers of the Perkins Group, the Miller Group and the Smith Group (these are fictional examples). Each will vy for public attention and funding. Each will sit down with the President: “We think society should go this way.” “No, no. We think society should go that way.”

Peace,
ED

 

[kenofken]

This is what I have been proposing for some time now:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=639&pictureid=7720

Now it is this intersection that we really need to look closely at. Any truths trying to be resolved in this intersection need to consider the information flow. What is most important is that the information is correct. It is reasonable to test both of them.

Research requires funding. Guess who is getting the funding right now? And since the money does flow the process becomes self perpetuating. That is what is being challenged.

Something to ponder:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=639&pictureid=4483

It’s an interesting schematic, but I don’t, as yet, see how IDevolution even brushes up against reason let alone intersects with it. It’s quite reasonable to test any theory and to confront the accepted theories about everything. That said, nobody has stepped up to the plate to do so in the right way for IDevolution/young Earth theory, and the problem is much more fundamental than funding. Funding is political, yes, but at the end of the day the main factor is less subjective. You get funding based on whether you have a plausible hypothesis which can and will be properly tested by experimentation and which are likely to add something worthwhile to the base of knowledge. That means you have to employ accepted or at least logically defensible methodologies and you can’t resort to fantastic explanations about random fluctuations in atomic decay etc. unless you have a DAMN good theoretical basis for doing so and a way to test that as well.

So far, nobody on your side of the debate is bringing any of these things to the table. You’re asserting that everything we thought we know about fundamental physics and chemistry is completely wrong. There is, however, no theoretical basis or mathematical model which shows how that might be so, no findings or gaps in the current knowledge which are sufficient to overturn it, and no work by IDevolotunists so far which does not rely on convoluted logic and magical explanations for things. You’ve got a lot of work to do to get any non-evangelicals on board.

Look, if I thought I had a truly plausible and testable theory that would set the scientific world on it’s ear the way a 6,000-year old universe would, I’d be all over it like stink on a monkey. Proving it would make me a bigger name than Einstein and Hawking combined. If I, or you, had any sound theoretical basis to do this, believe you me, we’d FIND funding and be able to get the world done. There’s enough money floating around the conservative Christian circles in this country and enough contrarian billionaires that you’d have a research institute that would make NASA look like a mosquito abatement lab in backwater Mississippi. The fact that you don’t have any of this tells me that you’re either sitting on a great theory and suck at marketing, OR (much more likely), that you’re all lab coat and no science.

 

[buffalo]

It’s an interesting schematic, but I don’t, as yet, see how IDevolution even brushes up against reason let alone intersects with it. It’s quite reasonable to test any theory and to confront the accepted theories about everything. That said, nobody has stepped up to the plate to do so in the right way for IDevolution/young Earth theory, and the problem is much more fundamental than funding. Funding is political, yes, but at the end of the day the main factor is less subjective. You get funding based on whether you have a plausible hypothesis which can and will be properly tested by experimentation and which are likely to add something worthwhile to the base of knowledge. That means you have to employ accepted or at least logically defensible methodologies and you can’t resort to fantastic explanations about random fluctuations in atomic decay etc. unless you have a DAMN good theoretical basis for doing so and a way to test that as well.

So far, nobody on your side of the debate is bringing any of these things to the table. You’re asserting that everything we thought we know about fundamental physics and chemistry is completely wrong. There is, however, no theoretical basis or mathematical model which shows how that might be so, no findings or gaps in the current knowledge which are sufficient to overturn it, and no work by IDevolotunists so far which does not rely on convoluted logic and magical explanations for things. You’ve got a lot of work to do to get any non-evangelicals on board.

Look, if I thought I had a truly plausible and testable theory that would set the scientific world on it’s ear the way a 6,000-year old universe would, I’d be all over it like stink on a monkey. Proving it would make me a bigger name than Einstein and Hawking combined. If I, or you, had any sound theoretical basis to do this, believe you me, we’d FIND funding and be able to get the world done. There’s enough money floating around the conservative Christian circles in this country and enough contrarian billionaires that you’d have a research institute that would make NASA look like a mosquito abatement lab in backwater Mississippi. The fact that you don’t have any of this tells me that you’re either sitting on a great theory and suck at marketing, OR (much more likely), that you’re all lab coat and no science.

What do you think are the best proofs for an old earth? (those with the least amount of assumptions)

 

[kenofken]

What do you think are the best proofs for an old earth? (those with the least amount of assumptions)

To me the best proof is the agreement of thousands of pieces of data from numerous disparate disciplines gathered and re-tested by generations of scientists all looking to prove each other wrong. It’s what lawyers might call the “preponderance of evidence.” I also find many of the key proofs very persuasive in their own right. Radiometric dating is a key one. If you have rock formed with a particular amount of uranium or other radioactive isotope, and you know how long it’s half-life is and you can measure a known amount in it today, it’s a very accurate gauge of how old it is. Radioactive decay has been shown to be an extremely constant and predictable process and one essentially unaffected by any known physical or chemical conditions. We know from observation and the laws of thermodynamics and physics how long it takes for stars to ignite, die, go supernova and thereby to produce all of the elements we need for life. We have a sense for how long planets take to form and to cool sufficiently to allow life to evolve. The properties of light such as speed have been well proven and measured, and we know that based on distance, the light from most stars has taken a hell of lot longer than 6,000 years to reach us. Basically, in any direction you care to look in chemistry and physics, there’s no plausible way at all our world could have been formed only 6,000 or even 6 million years ago.

 

[buffalo]

To me the best proof is the agreement of thousands of pieces of data from numerous disparate disciplines gathered and re-tested by generations of scientists all looking to prove each other wrong. It’s what lawyers might call the “preponderance of evidence.” I also find many of the key proofs very persuasive in their own right. Radiometric dating is a key one. If you have rock formed with a particular amount of uranium or other radioactive isotope, and you know how long it’s half-life is and you can measure a known amount in it today, it’s a very accurate gauge of how old it is. Radioactive decay has been shown to be an extremely constant and predictable process and one essentially unaffected by any known physical or chemical conditions. We know from observation and the laws of thermodynamics and physics how long it takes for stars to ignite, die, go supernova and thereby to produce all of the elements we need for life. We have a sense for how long planets take to form and to cool sufficiently to allow life to evolve. The properties of light such as speed have been well proven and measured, and we know that based on distance, the light from most stars has taken a hell of lot longer than 6,000 years to reach us. Basically, in any direction you care to look in chemistry and physics, there’s no plausible way at all our world could have been formed only 6,000 or even 6 million years ago.

It boils down to all of these being based on assumptions.

 

[kenofken]

It boils down to all of these being based on assumptions.

Of course they’re based on assumptions, as is any form of learning and knowledge humans have access to. The first assumption is that our ability to perceive things and reason, as limited as they are, are good enough to allow us to amass at least tentative knowledge of things. Another assumption key to science, and the one that seems to bedevil the ID crowd the most, is uniformatarianism. Not in the sense of macro-scale phenomena of geology as we discussed earlier, but in the fundamental laws of nature. We assume that half-lives in radioactive decay, the mass of a hydrogen atom, the force and direction of gravity relative to mass etc., are the same today as they were in 1852 or 100 million years ago. It’s quite a reasonable assumption based on centuries of observation and the theoretical underpinnings which give us logical reasons for believing it has and will hold up over time.

Could we be dead wrong about that? Sure, but we have no reason to even suspect that so far. Neither the ID folks nor anyone else has proposed any plausible or testable theory about random fluctuations in physical laws that are needed to explain a 6,000 year old Earth. Absent that, your only tactic has been to demand absurd and arbitrary standards of evidence from mainstream science. Since science can’t prove that uranium has never decayed unpredictably in any scenario in the history of the universe, then we can’t assume that we know anything about how uranium decays. That ain’t logic or science, or even particularly clever. It’s a call to epistemological nihilism, an assertion that since we can’t know everything with the certainty of an omniscient being, that therefore nothing is knowable at all and everything is meaningless (except, presumably your read of the scriptures).

Science can offer no absolute proof of anything. What it can do is propose theories that are working models to explain things we observe around us. Good theories explain the observed phenomena very thoroughly and hold up to testing over long periods of time. None can ever be bulletproofed against the possibility that they might somehow be wrong or incomplete, because it’s simply not possible.

Gravity is just a theory, and one with no more (or less) proof than old Earth. You’ll agree that the theory of gravity explains things in our world very well. But I can’t “prove” to you that nobody ever fell out of bed toward their ceiling instead of their floor or that gravity on earth never had an acceleration different than 9.8 meters per second squared. I can say we have no theoretical or observational basis for believing these things, and until we can, we have no business saying Newton and Einstein were wrong because they had to rely on “assumptions.”

 

[edwest2]

Pope Benedict:

“… science has unnecessarily narrowed humanity’s view of creation, Pope Benedict has said in his first reflections on the origins of life.”

Science is not the whole answer.

electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm

Peace,
ED