God Bless all Of You!
Just a note to explain my presence here.
I was researching something on the net, I cannot recall right now. I saw the question, The Age of the World according to Protestants.” I came and looked and thought I could help answer the question.
Actually it is not a “protestant” issue. There are many in all denominations who believe the earth is young, and that the evidence can be viewed by both sides young earth/old earth and come to opposite opinions. There are equally qualified “experts” on both sides, and there are published articles explaining the how and why of both views.
Much of the problem however arises from the refusal to allow any differing of opinion to that of the evolutionist-old earth school “status quo.” While it truly takes much more faith to believe in evolution than creationism and hence in a young earth, the intelligent design, creationist or whatever you want to call it view is the only one that is militantly fought against to try keep from the public education system and public discussion. Real science would not be so fearful of a competing view. In one of my replies I talked about
assumptions. Everyone has them. The old earthers and evolutionists start with the *assumption *that the earth is old and that speciation equals evolution. The young earth creationists start with the *assumption *that the bible says what it means and means what it says. Then both groups look at the exact same evidence. Rocks and fossils do not come with tags saying how old they are. The only thing we know about rocks and fossils is that they are here in the present. Any explanation of how they got to be here in the condition they are is speculation, no matter how much “thou doth protest.”
Marshall McLuhan once said: *“I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” * In both cases the *assumptions *drive the search for an explanation.
For a Christian the whole thing really comes down to a question of authority. Who do you trust? How many of you quit drinking coffee because it was “bad” for you? How did you feel when recently you were told it actually can be good for you? Remember Galileo? The church forced him to recant the heretical teaching that the earth revolved around the sun! The teachings of Copernicus who developed the planetary theory were banned by the church until the middle of the 19th century.
A French scientist, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini in 1858 wrote a book and showed his theory on what was to become known as plate tectonics. He was a creationist! His reading of the flood account in Genesis led him to develop his theory. His work was followed up by Frank Taylor in 1908 who fought *against *the prevailing science of his day. A few years later Alfred Wegener published “the Origin of Continents and Oceans” giving the first “hard” evidence for the theory. What was the reaction?
Quote from UC Berkeley web site:
Reaction to Wegener’s theory was almost uniformly hostile, and often exceptionally harsh and scathing; Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago said, “Wegener’s hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe, and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories.”
Apparently Dr. Chamberlain was the “Orogeny” of his day. The fact remains that science, and especially historical science is only as good as the last edition of the book.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snider-Pellegrini
ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html
For the Christian however, his book is unchanging!
1 Peter 1:23-25
23 for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.
24 For, “ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS, AND ALL ITS GLORY LIKE THE FLOWER OF GRASS. THE GRASS WITHERS, AND THE FLOWER FALLS OFF,
25 BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER.” And this is the word which was preached to you.
Rick <><
