Evidence for an ancient earth

[Bob the Unbeliever]

. If you wish God to speak to you . . . ask Him to do so.

I have. Since before you were born, most likely.

The only "answer" I ever get? Is silence indistinguishable from not-existing.

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

Such massive tectonic movement in such short periods of time are impossible without boiling off the oceans and atmosphere, thereby rendering the entire earth uninhabitable. Even some YEC's admit it can't happen without multiple miracles.

well.... if you are going to invoke magic?

 

[Jose Fly]

well.... if you are going to invoke magic?

In my experiences in these debates, that's where it invariably ends up. The creationist will eventually resort to "God can do anything", which is indistinguishable from "anything's possible if you believe in magic".

Then they wait a few days and come back starting all over again by arguing that the flood is scientifically feasible, thereby further illustrating that creationism is an inherently dishonest enterprise.

 

[ChristineM]

I go by self-entitled "biblical scholars" and what they claim the dates were-- somewhere around 3000 to 4000 BCE. That puts the territories just North of the Reed (red) Sea under Egyptian control.

We know this from actual facts and archeological digs... (not the Exodus stuff-- that has nothing supporting it, but the Egyptian control of lands stuff).



Yes-- I think? Exodus has absolutely NOTHING that supports what it claims to have happened-- no documents (apart from biblical, which do not count) no archeology, no dead cities, no cemetaries, no large areas where ancient humans traveled and camps (no trash pits-- which we do have of non-biblical peoples... )


Absolutely False! That time-and-place? Pottery was the "Plastic" of the Day. And pottery breaks, and is left behind. As are bones of animals eaten, or at least, of the camels and other domestic animals that would have died. But wait! They were supposedly at this for 40 years. That is two generations-- and infant mortality was very high back then-- roughly 1 in 2 infants died before puberty.

Where are the gravesites of the dead?

They do not exist-- because Exodus never happened.

Although there are no figures before the early 1900s i believe infant mortality was much higher than 50% in the bronze age.

There are estimated figures for population growth which is a pretty good indicator, over the the last 5 millennia until the early 20c the growth rate has been very slow, considering the unreliable birth controls which meant post pubescent women were more or less perpetually pregnant.

When the population first began to explode in the late 1800 and early1900s it was because improvements in medical knowledge began reducing infant mortality from over 90%

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

Although there are no figures before the early 1900s i believe infant mortality was much higher than 50% in the bronze age.

There are estimated figures for population growth which is a pretty good indicator, over the the last 5 millennia until the early 20c the growth rate has been very slow, considering the unreliable birth controls which meant post pubescent women were more or less perpetually pregnant.

When the population first began to explode in the late 1800 and early1900s it was because improvements in medical knowledge began reducing infant mortality from over 90%

Thanks! I knew it was at or less than 1 in 2, so I was being generous with my comment, as you have to be, to "explain" the "sudden population explosion" shortly after both eden and noah.

Of course, they need a birthrate where only 1 in 10 infants die before puberty.... or some such nonsense.

 

[ChristineM]

• Thanks! I knew it was at or less than 1 in 2, so I was being generous with my comment, as you have to be, to "explain" the "sudden population explosion" shortly after both eden and noah.

Of course, they need a birthrate where only 1 in 10 infants die before puberty.... or some such nonsense.

Inverse that 1 in 10 to 9 in 10 and it's closer to the realty

There was also the lifespan problem, excluding infant morality, assuming you reached your teens then there was every chance of reaching the grand old age of late 20s early 30s before turning up your toes of natural causes.

Remembering of course that a broken bone or tooth ache meant almost certain death

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

In my experiences in these debates, that's where it invariably ends up. The creationist will eventually resort to "God can do anything", which is indistinguishable from "anything's possible if you believe in magic".

Then they wait a few days and come back starting all over again by arguing that the flood is scientifically feasible, thereby further illustrating that creationism is an inherently dishonest enterprise.

Oh, absolutely it is 100% dishonest.

The charlatan and former biologist, wos-'is-name, Behe? Yeah, that guy, he had to recant more than once, in actual court, during cross-examination. He was forced to admit that his creationist "argument" was bogus. And admitted under oath.

But fast-forward to the next event? There he was, telling the same lie he had previously admitted under oath, was false. As if the previous conversation never took place....

I am sad, however, to encounter people who, unlike Behe (who I think actually knows he is lying, but does not care) actually believe it, because they have been lied to by people they trusted...

And then we get Cognitive Antiprocess, which actually prevents even thinking about contrary ideas.

 

[David M]

Quickly rising mountain ranges imply some vulcanism and meteor strikes--understand that some projections of same would be based on physics and others on the uniformitarian assumptions of modern "slow mountain" geology.

No, they just demand quickly rising mountain ranges, that is the scenario that you proposed. That massive adjustment needs to have taken place between the flood and the first documented evidence of the existence of the features.

What that does mean is that Volcanos thousands of feet high need to have built up over the course of centuries by multiple eruptions, it means the Alps need to have risen by the time of Hannibal.

It means that every surface crater on land everywhere on the planet needs to have been created by an impact after the flood (and there are a lot of craters).

It means the devestatation of the ecosphere for centuries withoy anyone mentioning it, which is what makes your proposal so ludicrous.

David, respectfully, you are making an argument from silence as well, which is all atheism is. If you wish God to speak to you . . . ask Him to do so.

No, its an argument from the consequences of your claim.

 

[Jose Fly]

Oh, absolutely it is 100% dishonest.

The charlatan and former biologist, wos-'is-name, Behe? Yeah, that guy, he had to recant more than once, in actual court, during cross-examination. He was forced to admit that his creationist "argument" was bogus. And admitted under oath.

But fast-forward to the next event? There he was, telling the same lie he had previously admitted under oath, was false. As if the previous conversation never took place....

I am sad, however, to encounter people who, unlike Behe (who I think actually knows he is lying, but does not care) actually believe it, because they have been lied to by people they trusted...

And then we get Cognitive Antiprocess, which actually prevents even thinking about contrary ideas.

Can't agree more, and it's why I often wonder if it's even possible to advocate creationism honestly. I've yet to see that it is.

 

[gnostic]

Can't agree more, and it's why I often wonder if it's even possible to advocate creationism honestly. I've yet to see that it is.

It is not possible.

Creationists will attempt to twist science to fit the bible. And then they will attempt to twist the bible to fit the science.

So with all that twisting, creationists wouldn't know what are the truth, even if their kitten scratched their bleeding noses with it.

They have caught in a lie, one too many times, that they have lost all credibilities.

Michael Behe have admitted that he has been wrong with not only Intelligent Design, but with his own papers on Irreducible Complexity (IC), but he would keep repeating and teaching the same mistakes before his admission, as if he didn't admit he has been wrong about ID and IC.

That demonstrated Behe's lack of integrity. And he isn't the only ones whose integrity and credibility are questionable.

Lots of creationists and so called ID adherents or advocates resorted to the same tactics.

 

[gnostic]

But no census. No crucifixion of a Jewish rebel. None of the events recorded elsewhere.

Oh, the Roman census did happen in Judaea, but not during the reigns of Herod the Great, or his son Herod Archelaus.

The census occurred 10 years after Herod's death (4 BCE), and after Augustus banished Archelaus from Judaea in 6 CE, when the Romans turned Judaea officially into a Roman province.

The gospel of Luke is wrong about with the dates as to when the census took place and when Quirinius became legate (governor) of Syria (6 - 12 CE).

Different governors were serving at that time before and when Herod died:

• Gaius Sentius Saturninus (9 - 7 BCE)
• Publius Quinctilius Varus (7 or 6 - 4 BCE)
• Lucius Calpurnius Piso (4 - 1 BCE)

Varus was the governor when Herod died, not Publius Sulpicius Quirinius.

Varus was the son-in-law of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who was close friend and adviser of Augustus. Varus was general killed at Teutoburg Forest, Germany, in 9 CE, where he lost all 3 legions.

Quirinius was serving in the province of Galatia as governor (12 - 1 BCE) there, and has been fighting war against a mountain tribe (5 - 3 BCE) in Galatia and Cilicia at that time Herod was still alive. Quirinius didn't serve in Syria twice and he didn't hold census twice, as some Christian apologists have claimed.

So, yes, the NT authors weren't very accurate with history.

Also inaccurate is the notion that Joseph would have to travel to Bethlehem to enroll in the census.

 

[gnostic]

Huh?

Science is inductive observation. Inductive observation and logic tells us that when we see something supernatural, it may have been caused rather by natural processes we don't understand.

No, BB. That's the way you think and believe.

And that's now inductive reasoning works exactly.

And there are two faulty assumptions you are making.

First. If I was seeing thing that I couldn't understand, it doesn't mean the phenomena I am observing to be "supernatural".

It only mean that I don't understand it or cannot explain it.

For instance, I don't understand many of the diseases that we can suffer from. I am not a medical doctor, nor am I pathology, so I wouldn't be able to tell you what cause them or how to treat people suffering. Just because I don't understand those diseases, it doesn't mean I should immediately jump to the conclusion that the diseases are "supernatural".

I don't assume that those diseases are caused by God, the Devil, demons or any other evil or malevolent spirits. Believing in such supernatural entities been the root cause of those diseases, are nothing more than superstitious belief.

Superstitions are often based on ignorance and fear.

Science, or more precisely scientists, are attempting to understand and explain any phenomena without resorting to supernatural causes, like God did it.

Are you saying that everything you cannot explain or understand to be labeled as "supernatural"?

My answer would be, I don't think so. You are clearly superstitious person.

Second, inductive reasoning is not to reach a conclusion, until you have strong evidences, that help a person to reach the decision that the premise could be "true" or it could be "false".

Using evidences instead of assumptions and preconceptions, which is apparently what you good at.

If you jump to conclusion that something to be "supernatural", simply because you don't understand what you are observing, then THAT'S NOT INDUCTIVE REASONING, because there would be no evidences to reach such conclusion.

You are forgetting that inductive reasoning required "strong evidences" before reaching the conclusion as to what is true (or false; it could go either ways).

Your example have nothing to do with inductive observation.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Writing was invented multiple times as there are thousands of years separating various inventions of writing and the form is also entirely different. This is no odd fact as most technologies and sciences are indeed seen to be invented independently multiple times through recorded history. Darwin and Wallace separately came up with evolution, Calculus was separately invented by Newton and Leibniz, telegram was invented separately by JC Bose and Marconi, bronze working was separately invented in Americas and in Asia. In fact if you look at technology and science, one is hard pressed to find even one example of unique invention. And many of these inventions cropped up nearly at the same time, as invention is driven by need, and the same economic forces contrive to drive similar inventions in close temporal proximity in disparate regions. Inventions of coins as a medium happened seven or eight times in a similar manner.
Frankly I can start an entirely new thread showing how human civilization has complete continuity over the last 20000 years thus refuting your flood narrative. I may do so in future. But here we are discussing the age of the earth and I will stick to that. I have presented evidence for age of the universe, constancy of laws, dating through multiple methods of rocks of earth as well as through analysis of the sun, all pointing to enormous and consistent evidence of a very old earth. I have also adequately refuted the older conflicting data regarding anomaly of some results showing that later experiments have shown them to be due to instrument error. Are you satisfied with the evidence and arguments? If so, I will concentrate on archeology regarding absence of flood data in a seperate thread. Each of my posts are summaries based on week-long research from multiple sources, so I like to focus my effort to improve quality. Thanks

Here is a detailed analysis of how writing evolved in three independent places Sumer (3500 BCE), China (1200 BCE) and MesoAmerica (300 BCE)

Linguistics 201: The Invention of Writing

Writing in Southwest Asia--the earliest anywhere-- seems to have developed out of economic expediency. The earliest uses of pictograms in Mesopotamia--pre-writing-- predated the Sumerians. Beginning with farming some 9000 years ago, tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce. With the rise of cities and urban centers of manufacture 6000 years ago, more complex pictographic tokens were also devised to label manufactured goods. Eventually, the tokens were replaced by impressions made on clay tablets. The simple tokens used to denote farm goods gave rise to the practice of pressing tokens into the clay tablets to produce a raised picture; the complex tokens used to denote manufactured goods were drawn on the clay tablets with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform, wedge-writing.

Where is the discontinuity?

The discontinuity is in the 195,000 years where we didn't invent writing. Occam's tells me those people got off Noah's boat and started to record history (again, perhaps) in documentary form as they multiplied.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Do you not understand the paper you quoted? It was trying to prove absolute motion through ether, which has been disproved. Yes, one can disprove absolute motion from experimental observation. Not a joke

The observations that supported Einstein were disproofs of the concept of absolute motion. See below for how that is,

The principle of relativity — Einstein Online

From our vantage point, all things are moving away from us at equal speeds. We may be in local space that is stretching or not. How would we know?

 

[BilliardsBall]

Such massive tectonic movement in such short periods of time are impossible without boiling off the oceans and atmosphere, thereby rendering the entire earth uninhabitable. Even some YEC's admit it can't happen without multiple miracles.

Respectfully, I disagree. Noah and his descendants can multiply in a local area while elsewhere, over several thousand years, things are moving, and some of the geological formations including sediment settling and solidifying.

Although I have no problem with multiple miracles. Macro evolution would be such a marvelous miracle, against the odds.

 

[BilliardsBall]

So, Jesus might have been resurrected by modern medicine, or by some some other natural event?

Ciao

- viole

My point is that as we learn more about naturalistic phenomena through science, things once considered impossible are now considered possible. For example, the Bible speaks of atoms being split apart creating great noise and heat. This was mocked until the nuclear age.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Isometric? I guess you mean "isotropic".

Are you maybe talking of the pictures of the Universe when it was only some 300,000 years old and became transparent to light (and there were neither stars nor planets)?

Ciao

- viole

Pardon me, isotropic.

My point being that you and other skeptics on this forum keep speaking of certain scientific concepts as if they are proven.

 

[BilliardsBall]

I trim to eliminate extraneous material that does not contribute to the point-- the original is easily there for you to refer to, if you cannot remember.

Re: Ark--- I was being generous, and rounding up to 2 years. Only one year?

Absolutely destroys any possibility of the earth going from smooth to current rough mountainous shape.

The energy release to go from smooth to the present day mountains in only a year?

Would melt the earth and boil the oceans.....!

Did I say the Earth went from billiards ball smooth to the present in a year or so?

I did not.

I'm conversant with YEC theories regarding over 1,000 years of ice ages, sediment shifting, etc. and that the Earth wasn't a billiards ball prior to the Flood.

I ask you to be reasonable, and to understand that many of your from-the-hip theories have been thought through by creationists, with care.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Let's be serious, here: You actually believe that the earth was populated by incest-- twice.

That's a darn sight worse than which incestuous persons were involved in the immorality!

I have considered incest and the scriptures:

1. Adam and Eve, etc. bore children over hundreds of years. People could have slept with siblings many years and many miles apart over time.

2. The biblical principal that the law accentuates sinfulness is in play. People think incest is dirty because of the biblical prohibitions, which would rank among man's earliest prohibitions on incest given conservative writing dates.

3. For another example, you may think using God's name as a curse is okay. I grew up as a Jew honoring the name of God, so to me, blasphemy is a dirty habit.

 

[BilliardsBall]

No-- I require proof that your bible is accurate-- which you have yet to show.

In fact, there is zero supporting, historical evidence that shows your bible's stories are anything BUT simple myths and legends.

Not a single fossil, document nor dug-up village supports any of the OT stories, for example: no exodus, no noah flood, no smashing of Sodum, no falling of Jerico, no slaves suddenly let go in Egypt-- NONE OF THAT HAPPENED.

But that goes hand-in-glove with the NT, too-- not one corroborating document supports the Jesus legend either-- no historians wrote about him while he supposedly lived.

We have Roman records from that time, and place-- olive oil sales records and other trivial events.

But no census. No crucifixion of a Jewish rebel. None of the events recorded elsewhere.

So-- all you have is your bible itself. Which makes it your claim.


You cannot use your claim as proof.

On the contrary as mentioned, several thousands people, places, edicts, even architectural styles, from both testaments, have been verified. You can visit Israel and see David's tomb, Hezekiah's tunnel, etc.

Your comment regarding no historians recording about Jesus is curious, given that not less than 12 people wrote NT accounts. You are simply discounting them as historians for mentioning supernatural events, which not all of them do (like James). And scholars accept all kinds of panegyrics as historical documents, and no that accounts of the Caesars are to be taken with a grain of salt, and etc. Be consistent. We can also discuss early Roman historians who recorded that Christians were a Jewish sect claiming the resurrection of Christ and etc.

Also, the Bible is a collection of 66 documents. I can use Matthew to verify some details of Acts, and so on. Be consistent.

Pilate alone executed thousands of Jews on crosses, including zealots. "No crucifixion of a Jewish rebel" as you wrote is not in play here, and as mentioned, historians all consider that Jesus was crucified, regardless if they personally believe in the resurrection.

Other comments are also off the truth - scholars believe they found Jericho, and the wall remains uniquely fell down outward, from the inside-out (God?), rather than being stove in (by an army). The area where Sodom and Gomorrah were supposed to have been is many square miles of salt and sulphur deposits today!

As important, since you want to digress from commonly accepted archaeology, I've told you that you can look up fulfilled Bible prophecy in modern Israel, using newspaper and other accounts published since 1948 CE!

I have more than the Bible itself. And I have the Bible, too. You should, I wish you would!