Old Earth vs. Young Earth

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Daniel_Lysinger said:
Jamie - if you know Latin perfectly, how come you don’t have good English grammar?

Anyway, I was always taught that the earth was roughly 6,000 years old - but I would like to know some reasons why the earth would be older.
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Two different ways to disprove the 6000 year old Earth:
  1. 6000 years is the number quoted by Bible literalists. Thing is, there’s also a verse in Psalms that says 1 day to God is like 1000 years to us. So if anything, Creation took 6000 years; add the 6000 they claim have passed since, and you have a 12000 year old Earth… at least
  2. The Bible is not a science book, nor is it a history book. First and foremost, it’s a book of moral Truth. Furthermore, each book is in a different genre independent of other books of the Bible. Some are books of advice like Wisdom, some are books of songs like Psalms, some actually are historical like the Gospels, Kings and Maccabees. Point is, the Church is willing to defer to science on scientific fact. Put simply, science and religion can and should be complimentary, not opposed.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the scientific reasoning that well, so I’ll have to defer to other posters on the exact reasons. But at least with the Earth, scientists use radiometric dating, but that’s as much as I know. The key thing, though, for me is that science says the Earth is that old.

Finally, and as a side note, the scientific account of creation actually follows the Biblical account decently well. Also to that point, the Big Bang actually supports a creator god. If time, space and matter were created at the Big Bang, it must necessarily have an atemporal, nonspatial, immaterial cause. Such as God.
 
Monkey1976 said:
EvolutionISM is indeed a philosophy, and a generally repugnant one in that its adherents tend to reject God. Evolution in and of itself is a model which describes how species change over time in response to environmental pressures. You asked an extremely complex question, one that experts in the field could spend their entire careers investigating without being able to come to a definitive general conclusion. Even if they did, who other than God would remember them in the vast span of years that it would take for us to evolve into an entirely new species? In small terms, though, we do have some predictions that are pretty universally accepted:
  1. Our appendix will probably disappear
  2. Our little toe will possibly disappear
  3. Our cranial capacity will probably increase
Even changes like this will likely take hundreds of thousands of years. Heck, we still grow extra teeth for processing tough, poor-quality plant matter even when they no longer fit in our jaw, but there are some populations among whom wisdom teeth are almost unknown.

As an example of a prediction that actually testable, imagine a forest whose trees are light-colored. Moths with lighter coloring will be more prevalent, because they have an advantage - camouflage. Now, imagine that the coloring of the forest trees becomes darker - say, from pollution due to burning coal. Suddenly, the light-colored moths are at a distinct disadvantage. Natural selection tells us that moths with darker colors should become more prevalent. In fact, they did - The Peppered Moth. In fact, when pollution control laws resulted in the trees once again being lightly colored, the moth populations saw a resurgence of light-colored individuals.
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The Peppered Moth debunked.

evolutionnews.org/2012/08/journal_of_evol062781.html

Ed
 
Gricken said:
Misinformation is the issue. He has no reason for mistrust other than belief in god. He treats the two as mutually exclusive by setting them in opposing camps. He demonstrates a lack of knowledge on something he’s claiming to understand.

I can easily ask the same of you. If you hear someone say they believe the earth is billions of years old and is clearly religious, why is this a problem?
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Misinformed people? I know quite a few, but it’s never about what is discussed here. Of the people I know, you know what happens? I offer them some information on other subjects that I find compelling and true. Average people listen and tell me, “No. I don’t buy it.” And we’re done. We’re not aggravated at each other. We just move on. Like average people. But here, it’s the complete opposite. It appears there’s a list of topics that people believe others should be brow-beaten about. You see what I’m saying?

And misinformation? Compare a credible Catholic news source with what the Pope just said with a mainstream media source. Wow.

You know what I’d sincerely like to see? A group of highly credentialed scientists discussing religious-scientific friction in book form. When a scientist writes a book called the God Delusion, no one is affected? How about Sam Harris?

secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=harris_27_2&section=library

Of course, nobody pays any attention to him 😉

Yeah, if anyone at your University catches a whif that you’re a scientist who uttered the words ‘intelligent design,’ oh man. You’re disowned, you’re moved to another department. The institution declares you persona non grata. Now if you wore an armband with the Soviet hammer and sickle, no one would bother you.

But scientists are carefully watched by the science KGB to make certain comrade scientist does not say aloud what he may be thinking. Even one is too much. Because if it is not squashed immediately, it might spread to two, then four, then eight… And soon an entire science department must be cleansed.

Science is run by money. I’m not blaming scientists. I’m blaming some institutions and financial backers. It’s not as pure as the driven snow.

hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047143

Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Misinformed people? I know quite a few, but it’s never about what is discussed here. Of the people I know, you know what happens? I offer them some information on other subjects that I find compelling and true. Average people listen and tell me, “No. I don’t buy it.” And we’re done. We’re not aggravated at each other. We just move on. Like average people. But here, it’s the complete opposite. It appears there’s a list of topics that people believe others should be brow-beaten about. You see what I’m saying?

And misinformation? Compare a credible Catholic news source with what the Pope just said with a mainstream media source. Wow.

You know what I’d sincerely like to see? A group of highly credentialed scientists discussing religious-scientific friction in book form. When a scientist writes a book called the God Delusion, no one is affected? How about Sam Harris?

secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=harris_27_2&section=library

Of course, nobody pays any attention to him 😉

Yeah, if anyone at your University catches a whif that you’re a scientist who uttered the words ‘intelligent design,’ oh man. You’re disowned, you’re moved to another department. The institution declares you persona non grata. Now if you wore an armband with the Soviet hammer and sickle, no one would bother you.

But scientists are carefully watched by the science KGB to make certain comrade scientist does not say aloud what he may be thinking. Even one is too much. Because if it is not squashed immediately, it might spread to two, then four, then eight… And soon an entire science department must be cleansed.

Science is run by money. I’m not blaming scientists. I’m blaming some institutions and financial backers. It’s not as pure as the driven snow.

hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047143

Ed
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Yes, Science is run by money. And (as previously stated) if a scientist were to prove that our current model for the earth’s age was false. the grant money would write itself.

Again, I did not say that there are not militant atheist scientist. But I do take offense to the idea that all scientist must be militant atheist or they get in trouble. I know plenty of christian scientist who don’t understand why so many Christians get so offended by the idea of an old earth like you are

Also “science KGB”? that’s barely even worth dismissing.

You seem to be the only one doing any brow-beating. I’ve yet to see any one else here doing that like you say. So yes, I do see what you’re talking about when you say there are a certain list of topics that people believe others should be brow-beaten about. Because from my experience on this thread, one of those is the idea of an old earth
 
On my way home today I heard a discussion on how human cloning is being snuck in without the American people even having an ethical discussion on it. The scientists are not being honest about somatic cell nuclear transfer is. Big money is at work.

Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer IS Human Cloning

LifeNews Note: The following is a collection of brief write-ups from Wesley J. Smith on how media and scientists are obfuscating the cloning issue by claiming somatic cell nuclear transfer is not human cloning.
Now that human cloning is upon us, look for many scientists and their camp followers (or ignorant reporters) to mislead about what the technology entails. Human SCNT creates human embryos through asexual means. It does not create stem cells. To obtain cloned stem cells, the embryos have to be nurtured and maintained in a dish for about 10 days, destroyed, and the stem cell lines derived.
But don’t look for the embryo part to make many stories. Early case in point, a story by Loren Grush on FNC:In a major medical breakthrough, researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) have for the first time ever successfully converted human skin cells into embryonic stem cells–via a technique called nuclear transfer. The research has major implications for the future of medical treatments, as many believe embryonic stem cells are the key to treating damaged cells lost through injury or illness. According to various medical researchers, stem cell therapy has the potential to treat anything from heart disease and spinal cord injuries to major neurological diseases, like Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis.
Through a common laboratory method known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), ONPRC scientists, along with researchers at Oregon Health & Science University, essentially swapped the genetic codes of an unfertilized egg and a human skin cell to create their new embryonic stem cells…The combination of the egg’s cytoplasm and the skin cell’s nucleus eventually grows and develops into the embryonic stem cell.
False! Repeat after me: The unfertilized egg is not turned into stem cells. Rather, in the same cloning process as resulted in Dolly the sheep, it becomes an embryo, which is destroyed to obtain the cells. Moreover, the process is hardly common. In fact, this is the first time SCNT has worked in humans. That’s why it’ a big story!

more…

Having such intense faith that science is totally honest is a big mistake.
 
and here is more on the warped view unquestioned total faith in science brings:

On academic freedom to discuss infanticide

…Academics adopting the secular materialist worldview will always find themselves demolishing traditional values. They have failed to develop any ethical principles based on secular materialist foundations and they end up as pragmatists, postmodernists or social constructivists. Their conclusions about infanticide are entirely predictable. What is controversial is not that they say such things, but that they are so hostile to philosophical theism appearing in the pages of their academic journals. This is the crunch issue for academic freedom that has yet to be recognised.
 
Razanir said:
Two different ways to disprove the 6000 year old Earth:
  1. 6000 years is the number quoted by Bible literalists. Thing is, there’s also a verse in Psalms that says 1 day to God is like 1000 years to us. So if anything, Creation took 6000 years; add the 6000 they claim have passed since, and you have a 12000 year old Earth… at least
  2. The Bible is not a science book, nor is it a history book. First and foremost, it’s a book of moral Truth. Furthermore, each book is in a different genre independent of other books of the Bible. Some are books of advice like Wisdom, some are books of songs like Psalms, some actually are historical like the Gospels, Kings and Maccabees. Point is, the Church is willing to defer to science on scientific fact. Put simply, science and religion can and should be complimentary, not opposed.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the scientific reasoning that well, so I’ll have to defer to other posters on the exact reasons. But at least with the Earth, scientists use radiometric dating, but that’s as much as I know. The key thing, though, for me is that science says the Earth is that old.

Finally, and as a side note, the scientific account of creation actually follows the Biblical account decently well. Also to that point, the Big Bang actually supports a creator god. If time, space and matter were created at the Big Bang, it must necessarily have an atemporal, nonspatial, immaterial cause. Such as God.
Click to expand...
No it doesn’t.

science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/big-bang-theory7.htm

Scientists don’t know how “it” turned into an expanding universe.

Peace,
Ed
 
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