Old Earth vs. Young Earth

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bsroufek said:
What evidence is there of transubstantiation in the Eucharist? Only Christ’s word, which also said that, if we didn’t believe Moses and the Prophets, we wouldn’t believe even if someone should rise from the dead. We should believe Moses, because Jesus said we should, not because there is evidence to believe it.

“Blessed are they who believe and have not seen,” said Jesus.
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Does the Church dogmatically teach Young Earth the way it dogmatically teaches the Real Presence?

Your argument actually argues against your position, not for it.
 
CompSciGuy said:
The thing is… you say that we should just accept it literally, just like that. Ignore all the evidence out there. This is called blind faith. What it comes down to is this: all we have is our reason, and we have to have a reason to believe what we believe, otherwise it is not worthy of belief. This is not unreasonable. Think objectively about the way you just blindly accept the literal creation story, defending it only with “Moses said so.” Imagine if you met a Muslim who said “You should believe the Quran because it is the book of the prophet. The prophet Muhammad said this so believe it.” Would you? If we are to accept truth at face value then the truth is ultimately a question of what culture we were born into. Those who happened to be born into the wrong culture and religion are screwed because they have a different “truth” that they are expected to accept at face value. If the Bible is true, then we should be able to defend it using evidence, and if the literal creation account is contrary to scientific evidence, then we should not treat it as literal. Furthermore, if you look at the creation account as literal, it is ridiculous. But if you look at it as a allegorical, even poetic, then it is profoundly deep.
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The Eucharistic contains the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, right?

Jesus raised the dead, removed leprosy, gave sight to the blind and rose bodily from the dead. All without science. Right?

Deep? No, God can do things only God can do. The Church has not decided how old the earth is.

"The Time Question

Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago."

Source: Catholic Answers

Peace,
Ed
 
snarflemike said:
Well, if the choices are

a) a theory that explains 1000 pieces of data, but cannot explain 1 piece of data
OR
b) a theory that explains 1 piece of data but cannot explain 1000 pieces of data

Which theory is it more reasonable to side with?
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Who needs to side with either one? And if one person doesn’t like it, so what?

Peace,
Ed
 
JimG said:
If the space in which the galaxies are embedded is expanding, any observer in any galaxy would perceive every other galaxy to be moving away from him. (In the balloon analogy, the two dimensional surface of the balloon represents the three-dimensional space of the universe.)

It may sound far fetched from a human viewpoint, but no more far-fetched than an infinite flat universe, and no more far fetched than a spherical earth might have sounded to our ancestors. If you set out in a straight line on a sphere from any point on it, you will eventually circumnavigate the sphere and return to your starting point. That applies to the earth. It would also, in a spherical universe, apply to the universe. But the circumference of the universe is a lot larger than earth.

George Gamow once wrote a book called 1, 2, 3… Infinity, which covered a varity of such things, including the expanding universe. It’s outdated now, but still pertinent enough to cover some of the basic concepts.

The universe, from a spatial standpoint, must be either infinite or finite. I believe that current data would show it to be finite, and if it’s finite, it has a geometry, probably spherical. If it turns out to be some other geometry, there’s nothing particular upsetting about that either, from a theological standpoint or a physical standpoint.
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Our ancestors figured out the earth was a sphere long before telescopes and were able to figure out how large it was.

Peace,
Ed
 
JimG said:
If the space in which the galaxies are embedded is expanding, any observer in any galaxy would perceive every other galaxy to be moving away from him. (In the balloon analogy, the two dimensional surface of the balloon represents the three-dimensional space of the universe.)

It may sound far fetched from a human viewpoint, but no more far-fetched than an infinite flat universe, and no more far fetched than a spherical earth might have sounded to our ancestors. If you set out in a straight line on a sphere from any point on it, you will eventually circumnavigate the sphere and return to your starting point. That applies to the earth. It would also, in a spherical universe, apply to the universe. But the circumference of the universe is a lot larger than earth.

George Gamow once wrote a book called 1, 2, 3… Infinity, which covered a varity of such things, including the expanding universe. It’s outdated now, but still pertinent enough to cover some of the basic concepts.

The universe, from a spatial standpoint, must be either infinite or finite. I believe that current data would show it to be finite, and if it’s finite, it has a geometry, probably spherical. If it turns out to be some other geometry, there’s nothing particular upsetting about that either, from a theological standpoint or a physical standpoint.
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Except galaxies are in concentric bands around the earth.
 
man is very good at making observations but weak in making sense of them.
 
pocohombre said:
man is very good at making observations but weak in making sense of them.
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If evo is true then how can we trust our own mind or reason? We must abandon all reasoning. So then it is irrational. (ouch)

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? (Letter to William Graham, 3 July 1881, posted at the [Darwin Correspondence Project](http://www.darw(name removed by moderator)roject.ac.uk/letter/entry-13230).)
 
buffalo said:
If evo is true then how can we trust our own mind or reason? We must abandon all reasoning. So then it is irrational. (ouch)

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? (Letter to William Graham, 3 July 1881, posted at the [Darwin Correspondence Project](http://www.darw(name removed by moderator)roject.ac.uk/letter/entry-13230).)
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And how can we trust our fingers to be able to write correctly if all that causes them to move is physics and biology??? There must be invisible pixies pushing and pulling my fingers around in order for anything I write to be meaningful!

Yes, the human brain is fallible. But it is also useful, or else it would not have survived natural selection. If evolution is true, we should expect human reasoning to be ultimately useful, but frequently flawed and fraught with biological hangups.
 
ngill09 said:
And how can we trust our fingers to be able to write correctly if all that causes them to move is physics and biology??? There must be invisible pixies pushing and pulling my fingers around in order for anything I write to be meaningful!

Yes, the human brain is fallible. But it is also useful, or else it would not have survived natural selection. If evolution is true, we should expect human reasoning to be ultimately useful, but frequently flawed and fraught with biological hangups.
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Can the god of BUC (blind unguided chance) show us truth, morality and integrity?
 
buffalo said:
Can the god of BUC (blind unguided chance) show us truth, morality and integrity?
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  1. I wouldn’t call what happens naturally “chance”. Is it simply by chance that rivers flow downhill, or is it because there are intelligent river nymphs that tell the water to go downhill?
  2. Truth, morality, and integrity can arguably be derived from our nature, whatever the cause of our nature may be.
  3. It’s strange that you insist on calling non-god things “gods”. Do you have so little respect for your own God?
 
ngill09 said:
  1. I wouldn’t call what happens naturally “chance”. Is it simply by chance that rivers flow downhill, or is it because there are intelligent river nymphs that tell the water to go downhill?
  2. Truth, morality, and integrity can arguably be derived from our nature, whatever the cause of our nature may be.
  3. It’s strange that you insist on calling non-god things “gods”. Do you have so little respect for your own God?
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1: I agree

2: Disagree, but not part of this thread.

3: Not sure what this has to do with this thread.
 
ngill09 said:
  1. I wouldn’t call what happens naturally “chance”. Is it simply by chance that rivers flow downhill, or is it because there are intelligent river nymphs that tell the water to go downhill?
  2. Truth, morality, and integrity can arguably be derived from our nature, whatever the cause of our nature may be.
  3. It’s strange that you insist on calling non-god things “gods”. Do you have so little respect for your own God?
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Truth can be derived from our nature? If we cannot trust our own minds, because they have pragmatically developed how can we know truth? How can you be sure of anything you write?

Notice I didn’t capitalize it. You too have faith, faith in the god of BUC. That is your religion.
 
ngill09 said:
  1. I wouldn’t call what happens naturally “chance”. Is it simply by chance that rivers flow downhill, or is it because there are intelligent river nymphs that tell the water to go downhill?
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Obviously, it is because of the law of gravity that rivers flow downhill. The question is whether the laws of nature are such as they are by chance or by design. The only alternative is necessity; a hypothesis for which I have yet to hear a persuasive argument. 😃
 
prodigalson2011 said:
Obviously, it is because of the law of gravity that rivers flow downhill. The question is whether the laws of nature are such as they are by chance or by design. The only alternative is necessity; a hypothesis for which I have yet to hear a persuasive argument. 😃
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Actually, “design” is not a true option here, since it just pushes the question back a step. And then we have to decide whether God’s nature and characteristics, which drive His designing fo the laws of nature, are what they are by chance or by necessity.

So it all ultimately boils down to chance or necessity. The ‘basic nature of the universe’ is either a God, whose nature exists by chance or necessity (the latter for Catholics), or something else, which has a nature that exists by chance or necessity.
 
snarflemike said:
Your analogy doesn’t work. A better analogy would be that God created Adam and Eve to be 30 years old, and then planted baby pictures, childhood videos, birth certificates, birthday cards and mementos, bronzed baby shoes, etc, etc.
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Very good. Still, your evidences for old earth have not escaped young earth advocates ,just don’t remeber all the details of their theory.Is the flood, or tower of Babel an allegory, poetic also ? Where do we stop? The only verse i have trouble with is where Adam is told to "replenish the Earth(KJV) .Repelenish is replenish,as if something was there before
 
bsroufek said:
Jesus says, in the story of Lazarus, the Rich Man and Abraham, that if we don’t believe
Moses and the Prophets, we won’t believe even if someone were to rise from the dead.
Jesus also says, “…and the Scripture can not be set aside,…”

Genesis clearly states that the Earth and the Heavens were created in Six Days. After that,
the ages of the first fathers were stated very specifically. At some point, God specifically limits our age to 120, with a few stated exceptions. I believe the Jews have calculated this age to somewhere around 6000 years or so. Their calendar, from Genesis, is around 5K-6K years.

Now, some might accuse me of being fundamentalist, but Moses must have learned these specific geneologies and ages from God while on the mountain. He didn’t just make them up, for that would be a very detailed lie.
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Think of it this way. God wrote 2 Bibles. One He dictated to humans, who wrote it down. They lacked proper scientific understanding way back in ancient days, so they wrote it down in a way that made sense to them (which may be wrong, according to moder science), but the real fundamentals are not in question. That we are fallen people, very much prone sin, and in need of the savior Jesus Christ as our ONLY way out of this to keep getting back on the road to salvation and heaven.

The other “book” was directly “written” by God. It is His creation. And science is a very noble profession of studying that “book.” They can only discover evidence that leads them to propose evolution, climate change, and anthropogenic climate change in our day. They never could have thought up these things from their wildest imaginations; they could only discover the evidence laid out by God for them.

To diss scientists who develop knowledge about God’s creation from the “book” He directly wrote and to dismiss their science out-of-hand (even tho we do recognize it is provisional and changeable, based on ever newer evidence, theories, and computer power, etc) is to diss God Himself.
 
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