The Dinasour Question

[JimG]

SPOKENWORD:

Same age. It was all created at the same time according to Gods Word. Read the book of Genesis,it will help. God Bless

6000 yrs ago might be a reasonable guess for Adam & Eve, since recorded history starts about that time. But the earth itself? The galaxy? The universe? I don’t think so.

 

[SPOKENWORD]

6000 yrs ago might be a reasonable guess for Adam & Eve, since recorded history starts about that time. But the earth itself? The galaxy? The universe? I don’t think so.

Okay lets see what Gods Word says. Lets start with Gen 1;1 In the beginning God created the HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. Then in verses 2-31. Six days later God created Adam.Whose report will you believe Jim ? Man or Gods? God Bless

 

[JimG]

SPOKENWORD:

Okay lets see what Gods Word says. Lets start with Gen 1;1 In the beginning God created the HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. Then in verses 2-31. Six days later God created Adam.Whose report will you believe Jim ? Man or Gods? God Bless

Well, I just think it’s kind of pointless to read the bood of Genesis as if it were a textbook of astronomy or cosmology. For example, it speaks about the “firmament” or “dome” of the heavens (Gn 1:6), which separates the waters below from the waters above.

Now that is the kind of image one would get from standing in a big Kansas field on a clear day with a blue sky. The sky looks like a big dome covering the earth from horizon to horizon; that blue could be waters being held back by the dome.

Now, I don’t think it’s really a big dome up there, but it’s a pretty good description of what the writer of Genesis saw, writing from his own experience and observation. I wouldn’t expect him to write about galaxies or the red shift. That wasn’t part of his worldview.

I take it as an absolute truth that God created the heavens and the earth. I just don’t think God ever intended to convey the mechanics or the physics of it in sacred scripture.

 

[SPOKENWORD]

JimG:

Well, I just think it’s kind of pointless to read the bood of Genesis as if it were a textbook of astronomy or cosmology. For example, it speaks about the “firmament” or “dome” of the heavens (Gn 1:6), which separates the waters below from the waters above.

Now that is the kind of image one would get from standing in a big Kansas field on a clear day with a blue sky. The sky looks like a big dome covering the earth from horizon to horizon; that blue could be waters being held back by the dome.

Now, I don’t think it’s really a big dome up there, but it’s a pretty good description of what the writer of Genesis saw, writing from his own experience and observation. I wouldn’t expect him to write about galaxies or the red shift. That wasn’t part of his worldview.

I take it as an absolute truth that God created the heavens and the earth. I just don’t think God ever intended to convey the mechanics or the physics of it in sacred scripture.

HIJim, You should do some research on the FIRMAMENT. That dome no longer exists. Why is it that people lived hundreds of years with the dome. Dinasours were pre flood.Why do you think they grew so large. It has to with the oxegen levels and the protection of that dome. That dome disappeared with the Great Flood.Thats where all the water came from that flooded the earth.Read the Bible. Its Words are true. They are God breathed. God Bless

 

[Skotnicki]

SPOKENWORD:

HIJim, You should do some research on the FIRMAMENT. That dome no longer exists. Why is it that people lived hundreds of years with the dome. Dinasours were pre flood.Why do you think they grew so large. It has to with the oxegen levels and the protection of that dome. That dome disappeared with the Great Flood.Thats where all the water came from that flooded the earth.Read the Bible. Its Words are true. They are God breathed. God Bless

This is the price of ecumenism, not liberalisation of Catholicism but the threat of the fundamentalization of Catholicism as the Cardinal in charge of culture recently said.

 

[vern_humphrey]

forthright:

I hate to post hearsay on this thread, but I thought it would be good to hear another story of scientific failure. . .

I had a friend in college that had previously attended Wesleyan University. He told me of an experiment they performed (he was involved in the experiment, so this isn’t an urban legend) by taking a piece of wood with a known age (I’m not sure how the knew the age), and sent it to 3 laboratories for carbon dating. The closest result was more than twice the real age, and one of the others came back being thousands of years old.

The first carbon dating was made using wood from tombs in Egypt whose age is known precisely. There is no case of an uncontaminated specimen of known age being submitted which produced a false date - unless through a gross laboratory error.

Please give us a cite where we can check on what your friend told you.

 

[BigTurkey]

Has anyone ever read Shroeder’s (?) The Science of God? It makes some interesting points about how the biblical text and science are acutally fairly close to each other on the beginnings of the universe.

In summary (which won’t do justice to it), here is the most interesting point I found in the whole book:

According to Einstein Theory’s, time is relative to speed, aka, the nearer you are to the speed of light, the slower time is.

During the Big Bang, the universe would have been expanding so fast that time would have been slower by a 1000000000000 to 1 ratio.

So, if you have our perspective as humans on earth, then it seems like the time from when the universe came into existence to the appearance of humans would have been ~15 billion years. But if you do the calculation to see how many years 15 billion would have been from the perspective of the Big Bang (in which, as stated above, a second would have been equal to a million million seconds today), then 15 billion years becomes a mere 0.016 years - or 5.844 days, which is approximately 6 days.

Hope that isn’t too confusing, but most of all hope I didn’t mess it up and be wrong about a lot of that

Micah

 

[JimG]

The firmament disappeared??!! Where is that in the bible?

Also, if the firmament is to be taken literally, was it really a dome covering only part of the earth? Or did it extend completely around the earth, making it a concentric sphere?

I’m hoping the Vatican doesn’t take this theory too seriously; it would have all the makings of another Gallileo affair.

 

[rossum]

SPOKENWORD:

Okay lets see what Gods Word says. Lets start with Gen 1;1 In the beginning God created the HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. Then in verses 2-31. Six days later God created Adam.Whose report will you believe Jim ? Man or Gods?

You say that God made the earth. So when scientists study the earth those scientists are studying God’s work. When those scientists find a pattern in the radioactive isotopes in the earth that God made, then those scientists are justified in thinking that the message they get from the pattern of those radioactive isotopes is God saying that He made the earth about 4.5 billion years ago. For the details see Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective.

Some might say that God was deceptive in His placement of radioactive isotopes, but as Theodosius Dobzhansky said “They are blasphemies, accusing God of absurd deceitfulness. This is as revolting as it is uncalled for.”

God wrote two books. Science’s success can be attributed to its giving priority to the unwritten book of the earth rather than to the written book of the Bible. Historically where an interpretation of the written book has clashed with the scientific interpretation of the unwritten book it has been the unwritten book that has come out on top. The Catholic Church is well aware of this, which is why it is, correctly in my opinion, reluctant to make definitive statements on the interpretation of the unwritten book. That is not an area in which the Church generally has expertise. You would do well to follow the Church’s example.

You are pitting your interpretation of one of God’s books against science’s interpretation of God’s other book. Given the manifest success of science in its interpretations of the unwritten book, I am more inclined to go along with the scientific interpretation than with yours. Given that the correct interpretations of God’s two books cannot be in opposition, I have to conclude that your interpretation of the written book is incorrect.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Just to go back to the questions in the opening post on this thread.

Jay29:

If dinasours are like 59 million years old and so forth,

Dinosaurs arose about 230 million years ago and, apart from the birds, died out 65 million years ago.

Jay29:

how does that fit into creationism?

That depends on what you mean by “creationism”. It is a big problem for Young Earth Creationism which insists on a 6,000 year old earth. It is no problem at all for either Old Earth Creationism or Theistic Evolution which both accept the 4.5 billion year age of the earth. There is a discussion of the different varieties of creationism on this webpage which gives references to appropriate organisations and books.

Jay29:

How does this fit into Judaism/Christianity?

Different Jewish and Christian groups will have different positions on this. Not all will have a set position, hence allowing some freedom of belief to their followers.

rossum

 

[mcpeake]

#1–this is a stupid quote "The ultimate truth is that there is no Ultimate Truth. "

#2. The point I made way back in the beginning of this thread was that there are different scientific arguments on both sides of this issue, young earth/old earth. I believe that the Bible indicates that the earth is young, but that is my opinion. We also have Popes and many fathers of the Church arguing for a young earth at he center of the universe–here is a quote fom Bob Sungenis:
"And I’m in good company, since all the Fathers and the Medievals said the same, and St. Robert Bellarmine, in disputing with Galileo, said that interpretations of Scripture cannot contradict the consensus of the Fathers, and thereby Bellarmine, with the approval of the reigning pope, condemned Galileo and Copernicanism as “opposed to Scripture,” and which decision was confirmed by two other popes, one of which sent his decision to all the papal nuncios and universities of Europe (Urban VIII in 1633) and another of which wrote his decision in a papal bull, Speculatores Domus Israel, (Alexander VII in 1664).

Considering the fact that no subsequent pope has rescinded the condemnation of Copernicanism (but have only allowed it a place of “hypothesis,” which was the original allowance in the decree of 1616 given by Paul V), then I would say I’m in good company.

In fact, the 1616 declaration specified the condemnation of the diurnal motion of the Earth, that is, both the revolution of the Earth and its rotation as being “opposed to Scripture.” Ok so my point is that a old earth is not absolute scientific fact…

 

[PhilVaz]

mcpeake << The point I made way back in the beginning of this thread was that there are different scientific arguments on both sides of this issue, young earth/old earth. >>

And your point made way back at the beginning of the thread, and in fact made way back in the thousands of threads we’ve had on the subject since May 2004, has been an embarrassingly wrong point.

There is a slight difference in the approaches taken: the scientific arguments for a 4+ billion year old earth are based on the findings of geologists over the last 200 years, many of whom were creationists. The “scientific” arguments for a “young earth” are based on a pseudoscience fueled by young-earth interpretations of Genesis over the last couple of decades, starting with the writings of a Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price, followed by engineer Henry Morris and theologian John Whitcomb (The Genesis Flood).

Ergo, this so-called “debate” has nothing to do with science. The original Christian creationists figured out the earth was old 200 years ago. Don’t listen to Bob Sungenis, listen to the modern Popes.

Phil P

 

[PhilVaz]

spokenword << You should do some research on the FIRMAMENT. That dome no longer exists. >>

I beg to differ, the Bible says the “firmament” (or solid dome or “vault of heaven”) still exists. Compare Gen 1:6-20 with Psalm 19:1 with Ezekiel 1:22 with Isaiah 40:21-22; 45:12; 48:13 with Job 22:12-14, which firmament or sky is “spread out” as “hard as a mirror of cast bronze” (NIV) or " strong…as a molten looking glass" (KJV) or “strong as a molten mirror” (NASB) or “strong as a cast metal mirror” (NKJV) or “hard as a mirror of cast metal” (NEB) (Job 37:18; cf. 9:8).

The Hebrew term there is firmament (Hebrew raqia, Greek LXX stereoma, Latin firmamentum).

Now who will you believe? Science or the Bible? If I understand you correctly, they both can’t be right. We’ve crashed through the hard metal firmament many times in planes, spaceships, and satellites.

Phil P

 

[rossum]

#1–this is a stupid quote "The ultimate truth is that there is no Ultimate Truth. "

The quote is deliberately paradoxical. See this webpage for further details; the quote comes at the end of section four.

#2. The point I made way back in the beginning of this thread was that there are different scientific arguments on both sides of this issue, young earth/old earth.

There are not two different scientific arguments. The scientific arguments are all on the side of an old earth; the young earth side just has theological arguments.

If you want to provide scientific evidence for a literal interpretation of Genesis then here is a suggestion for a research program. According to Genesis there were humans [Gen 1:27] and cattle [Gen 1:24] on the earth during Creation Week; sheep [Gen 4:2] appeared soon after during Abel’s lifetime. There were also human habitations such as cities [Gen 4:17] within 130 years [Gen 5:3] of Creation Week. So in order to provide evidence for a young earth you should look for a reference to any fossil of a human, cow or sheep from, say, the Cretaceous or earlier. Alternatively evidence of human habitation, such as a city, from the Cretaceous or earlier would be acceptable. Until you can provide such sientific evidence I will continue to treat the young earth arguments as unscientific.

mcpeake:

Ok so my point is that a old earth is not absolute scientific fact…

As I said, and you have just shown, theological arguments are all that the young earth point of view has. Until you produce some scientific evidence for a young earth the science will point unambiguously to an old earth in an old universe. Show me a Devonian sheep and then you can claim a scientific case for a young earth.

rossum