"What is the age of the earth?"

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Nice diagram, but I will take the word of my Professors. The first chapter of Genesis is an account to show the orientation of creation towards Liturgy, and is not meant to reveal the “how” of creation.
I agree, it is a nice diagram. 🙂

Faith and reason cannot be opposed. Things that appear in the intersection have to be true.
 
“The first chapter of Genesis is an account to show the orientation of creation towards Liturgy, and is not meant to reveal the “how” of creation.”

The God of your understanding isn’t capable of performing both at the same time?
 
Young Earth supporters (10,000 year old Earth) would have to believe that within a span of 4,000 years - the formed Earth established its proper position in the Universe on a life sustaining planetary axis, it cooled to agreeable life temperatures, with exact amounts of oxygen, proper amounts of water, atmospheric pressure, atmospheric layers and gravity, ozone, internal magnetic field, solar shields, established seasons, ocean currents, ocean salinity, food for all its plants and animals, an orbiting Moon and Sun with protective outer planets to shield asteroids, etc.
You are assuming that the earth needed to cool. What if God simply created the universe exactly as we now see it?. A galaxy is 14 billion light years away because God put it 14 billion light years away when He created the universe out of nothing.

What is more likely. God created trillions of stars and the earth out of nothing and placed them where they are OR trillions of stars and the earth were formed out of concentrated explosion of matter and energy no bigger than an electron?

I go with God over the big bang.
 
I go with God too.

Advances in cosmology and astrophysics are enabling scientists to view back into time to understand that the universe had a beginning.

The science behind the “Big Bang” was first calculated out by a Catholic priest.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

"Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître - July 17, 1894 – June 20, 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, honorary prelate, professor of physics and astronomer at the Catholic University of Louvain. He sometimes used the title Abbé or Monseigneur.

Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his ‘hypothesis of the primeval atom’."
 
I go with God too.

Advances in cosmology and astrophysics are enabling scientists to view back into time to understand that the universe had a beginning.

The science behind the “Big Bang” was first calculated out by a Catholic priest.
."

But they assume from their observations that the universe is billions of years old becasue they see stars billions of light years away. That doesn’t prove the age of the universe. God could have placed the stars billions of light years away.
 
Nice diagram, but I will take the word of my Professors. The first chapter of Genesis is an account to show the orientation of creation towards Liturgy, and is not meant to reveal the “how” of creation.
Hello! (I can’t bring myself to call another poster StAnything, lol.)

Now that’s a new one on me. I can almost see how that might make sense, but I’m stymied by a poor understanding of what’s meant by liturgy. It’s well known that the ANE temples were designed in imitation of their cosmology. I’m also fairly well persuaded that the Genesis creation accounts were designed to show the orientation of their god, first toward creation, and then toward humankind itself. (I’m also somewhat familiar with at least the rough outlines of the documentary hypothesis.) Please do elaborate.

Ross, just by the way, is a highly untypical fundamentalist. He brings his understanding of astrophysics to his sacred texts, making a bold attempt to preserve them as literal descriptions while still maintaining the standard chronology of his field. He slaps in billions of years wherever it seems appropriate to him. For him, that first primordial command, “Let there be light,” was answered by the first scattering from the original opaque plasma of the initial expansion, what we still recognize today in its remnant form, the cosmic microwave background radiation we measure at 13.72 bybp.

He also respects the standard findings and chronologies of geologists and palaeontologists. For this reason, he insists on a local flood in order to remain true to what we know of our geological history. He makes no real attempt to locate it either geographically or temporally, however. For a full scale attempt to do so by another highly untypical literalist, there’s a semi-retired geophysicist I know, Glenn Morton, who spent nearly two decades writing for YEC publications before running into one too many buried river channels layered on top of each other. He became persona non grata with them after insisting on bringing up geological issues with them that he felt they needed to address. Glenn’s flood is located about 5.3 mya in the Mediterranean basin at the end of the Messinian salinity crisis. Glenn is — get this — a biblically literalist theistic evolutionist. He’s also highly irascible and a bit of a nut, as thoroughly unpleasant to those who disagree with him as any of his former friends among the young earthers.

Ross recognizes the succession of life forms visible in the geological record, but for some reason can’t bring himself to accept modern biology, at least not by name. Into the gap, he proposes a “progressive creationism” in which his god bypasses evolutionary processes in order to mimic their effect, creating dinosaurs and then killing them off before replacing them with mammals that eventually included our closest primate cousins and ourselves. I think he’s flirting with paganism here, at risk of identifying his god with the forces of nature.

As ever, Jesse
 
The God of your understanding isn’t capable of performing both at the same time?
Hello Barbkw,

The point is, I believe, that independent of your god’s capability, such an attempt runs counter to his intention, forcing any interpretation in that direction to mislead. Keep in mind that the tools for such a god were limited by the abilities of the human authors and the comprehension of their human audience. As surely as Genesis was written in the language of the time, it was also written within the cosmology of the time. That cosmology was grossly inaccurate.

These people looked down to see the blue of the “waters below” and up to see the blue of the “waters above” complete with a physical barrier to hold them back, storehouses for hail and lightning, and gates in the firmament itself to release these heavenly depositories upon the earth. Visibly, their stars strode the heavens inside those waters. Their world was populated by creatures from the outer void capable of migrating up into our world through the “fountains of the deep.” They “knew” this, and any attempt to communicate with them must necessarily have spoken to them in the language of that understanding, as surely it must necessarily have spoken to them in the language of ancient Hebrew itself.

As ever, Jesse
 
The point is, I believe, that independent of your god’s capability, such an attempt runs counter to his intention, forcing any interpretation in that direction to mislead. Keep in mind that the tools for such a god were limited by the abilities of the human authors and the comprehension of their human audience. As surely as Genesis was written in the language of the time, it was also written within the cosmology of the time. That cosmology was grossly inaccurate.
How so, if I may ask?
 
Hello Barbkw,

. As surely as Genesis was written in the language of the time, it was also written within the cosmology of the time. That cosmology was grossly inaccurate.
Then it cannot be, by definition, inspired truth.
 
“The first chapter of Genesis is an account to show the orientation of creation towards Liturgy, and is not meant to reveal the “how” of creation.”

The God of your understanding isn’t capable of performing both at the same time?
Of course His is capable, but I don’t see any evidence that He actually DID.
 
I agree, it is a nice diagram. 🙂

Faith and reason cannot be opposed. Things that appear in the intersection have to be true.
Yes faith and reason cannot be opposed, which is why I feel that a literal interpretation of 6 24 hour days is untenable.
 
Yes faith and reason cannot be opposed, which is why I feel that a literal interpretation of 6 24 hour days is untenable.
The question at hand is, are your feelings true?

Here are a couple of things to consider:
  1. Genesis 1 seems to be written from God’s perspective. Imagine a rolled up tape measure. God sees it all at once and perhaps 7 layers. We live on the tape so we have to look back through the graduations.
  2. The Fibonacci spiral
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_1711.gif

Perhaps time is laid out in this way? (time compression)

Where else do we see the Fibonacci Spiral? All around us. In galaxies, in sea shells, plants and human ears. Why not time?
 
The question at hand is, are your feelings true?

Here are a couple of things to consider:
  1. Genesis 1 seems to be written from God’s perspective. Imagine a rolled up tape measure. God sees it all at once and perhaps 7 layers. We live on the tape so we have to look back through the graduations.
  2. The Fibonacci spiral
Perhaps time is laid out in this way? (time compression)

Where else do we see the Fibonacci Spiral? All around us. In galaxies, in sea shells, plants and human ears. Why not time?
What makes you think I know nothing about the Fibonacci sequence? Furthermore this has nothing to do with proper exegesis. You are ignoring the first rule of exegesis: Recognize the genre of the writing. Approaching a piece of writing as history when it is not historical will inevitably lead to misinterpretation.
 
What makes you think I know nothing about the Fibonacci sequence? Furthermore this has nothing to do with proper exegesis. You are ignoring the first rule of exegesis: Recognize the genre of the writing. Approaching a piece of writing as history when it is not historical will inevitably lead to misinterpretation.
Genesis 1 is an account of what happened.
 
I do not go to a theologian for information about the physical universe, neither should one go to an astrophysicist for exegesis. Lets have the astronomers stick with astronomy and theologians stick with theology.
Well, we have Vatican astronomers, so we can’t ignore the fact that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences exists.

God bless,
Ed
 
Genesis 1 is an account of what happened.
But not in a chronological framework. It is indeed “what” happened, but not “how”! Furthermore, the point of Genesis 1 is the establishment of the Adamic Covenant. It is liturgical, oriented towards worship on the sabbath. Chronologically it makes no sense. Birds before reptiles? Light before the sun?
 
Well, we have Vatican astronomers, so we can’t ignore the fact that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences exists.

God bless,
Ed
I am not denying the validity of science. I am denying the validity of a scientist doing the work of an exegete.
 
“But they assume from their observations that the universe is billions of years old becasue they see stars billions of light years away. That doesn’t prove the age of the universe. God could have placed the stars billions of light years away.”

From what I’ve read and seen, cosmology is now able to measure the residual microwaves from the “Big Bang”.

irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0706/1224274101630.html

Scientists were able for years to hear the static of the universe, but weren’t able to map it.

Today, they have.

From that article:

“The satellite can pick up this faint heat signal even though it registers at less than 270 degrees below zero. Achieving this is akin to trying to feel the heat from a candle placed a mile away. Even so, being able to see that signal is very important because it tells scientists about a time just 379,000 years after the Big Bang, Prof Mandolesi said.”
 
I was listening the other day to the debate that Hugh Ross (old Earth) had with Kent Hovid (young Earth).

youtube.com/watch?v=WNuHuG517lI&feature=related

Hovid said that he couldn’t believe in a God that didn’t create Earth in six days.

That Ross’ God was a bumbler who took 14 billion years to create Earth and the Universe.

Surprising admission.
 
I am not denying the validity of science. I am denying the validity of a scientist doing the work of an exegete.
Do you know that the Church has infallibly ruled that the universe is of a finite age?

Perhaps you can explain why this question is asked over and over again? It’s pretty clear it’s important to somebody. And, for some, it’s pretty clear it’s not about science at all but about getting “the” explanation out. I object to any use of science to “disprove” anything in the Bible. This question is another attempt to force scientific explanations on Biblical events.

God does not tell us how He did it? Then how did He raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, or give sight to the blind? What technology or science was used? See, here is where the attempt to say the “how” is missing shows that God is God and that God has abilities that are far beyond our current capability to understand. I caution Catholics about accepting the scientific explanation since we know that God can do things quickly and without obvious use of any science we know about.

The current method of determining distance and the age of the universe is in doubt.

God bless,
Ed
 
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