Evidence for an ancient earth

[gnostic]

If it is possible that the universe is uncaused, it is possible to have an uncaused Creator (or a caused Creator).

If it is possible that the universe is uncaused than it is possible to have a caused universe. Theists consider an uncaused universe as wildly unprobable and skeptics consider an uncaused one.

Except that God or creator is not "uncaused".

The creator only because people write about the creator, such as that in the scriptures or he only exist because "create" religion.

There are not a single evidence that god created anything. The creator is the figments of man's deluded imagination.

Which make men the creators of God.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Well, I don't think either Adam and Noah to be real historical people. To me, they are merely literary characters, made up mythological figures, that religious people believe in. And I have hard time believing anyone can live to 930 and 950 years.

And I don't think either events as narrated in the Genesis, thus the creation with Eden episode and the Ark event, ever took place.

But with the translations of the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT) and the Greek Septuagint (Sept.), it is possible to work out backwards, from the time of Babylonian army sacking Jerusalem in 587 BCE (which was a real, historical event), all the way to creation of Adam.

Only the Orthodox Churches in the east, relied solely on the Septuagint, while the rest of churches (Catholic and Protestant) relied more on MT, but supplemented some passages on occasions with Septuagint.

Depending on which sources (MT and Septuagint) people use, the calculations of age to Adam's creation can be estimated approximately. There are several different manuscripts for the Septuagint, such as the Vaticanus Codex and Alexandrinus Codex, and the generations given in Genesis, differed in some areas, so they are not in agreement.

Although you can compare the Dead Sea Scrolls against the Masoretic and Septuagint, there is only fragments of Genesis 5 only 2 verses survive, and Genesis 11 is completely missing in Qumran's scrolls. Other sources include the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Vulgate Bible.

There are no other old sources but the bible and their various translations. And what we do have, we can estimate through a little research and using basic arithmetic.

Now I may not believe in everything Genesis say, including the ages of when they became fathers of their successors or when they died, we don't have any other information, other than the bible.

The Masoretic text, put it between about 2400 and 2100 for the Flood. While the Septuagint get much older dates, but they (remember there are main extant versions) put the creation of Adam around 5500 BCE, and the Flood to about 3258 BCE (5500 BCE - (Noah's birth 1642 AM - his age when the Flood occur 600)).

But dating the first Neolithic settlement of Jericho, still show it is even older than the Septuagint Adam's creation.

Whether Flood occur in 3258 BCE (according to the Septuagint) or 2340 BCE (as Masoretic say), it doesn't matter, because you are wrong that the Flood caused marine fossils being deposited at the Himalayas.

Remember this post, BB, you wrote (esp. highlighted in red):


Those fossils you are talking about are older than 30 million years old. And the whale jawbone that I keep talking about, is 53 million years old.

There are absolutely no correlations between those marine fossils and your Genesis Flood. Man weren't around when these marine life became fossilised.

That's what I am arguing you were about. The marine fossils had nothing to do with Noah's Flood, and not by tens of millions between your biblical account and palaeontology.

Are you so blind that you cannot distinguish 53 million years (whale jawbone discovered in the Himalayas) from 5258 (Septuagint) or 4340 (Masoretic) years?

That's a huge gap between the bible myth and actual scientific discoveries.

I understand.

1) Please don't tell me what I should believe since I have the Hebrew and Greek background and am in the scriptures daily and in apologetics studies as well.

2) The type and formation of fossils seems consistent with the Flood narrative. Just today I came across something in this vein from the Grand Canyon if you have an interest. My desire was not to reopen the "science proves and everyone should believe X date on fossils" argument, but to mention to you the extraordinary circumstances in which fossils form.

Your argument--and if I don't understand it accurately please let me know--seems to be "science dates trump Bible dates" when you a) have different dates than I b) are ignoring anomalies of geology that have moved scientists in recent decades from an anti-Flood bias held since the 1800's to "Wow! There were HUGE localized floods in different places!"

 

[Polymath257]

If it is possible that the universe is uncaused, it is possible to have an uncaused Creator (or a caused Creator).

If it is possible that the universe is uncaused than it is possible to have a caused universe. Theists consider an uncaused universe as wildly unprobable and skeptics consider an uncaused one.

Why is an uncaused God more likely than an uncaused universe?

 

[viole]

Spacetime doesn't expand. Space does.

I'm going to go technical because I know @viole has the background knowledge to understand what I am going to say. For others, ask and I will do my best to answer.

Spacetime is a 4-manifold with a Lorentzian metric (signature (+,-,-,-) ). The first approximation assumption is that there is a fibration of spacelike submanifolds and coordinates at each point wherein the slices are homogeneous in the induced 3-coordinates of the slice. If you solve the Einstein Field equations, your find that the spacetime metric is such that there is an expansion factor that only depends on the time coordinate. I can point to specifics if you would like.

The analogy is to look at the latitude lines on the surface of a sphere with time being given by the latitude and a 1-dimensional 'space' being given by the longitude. Then, 'space', given by the latitude lines, 'expands' as we move north from the south pole until the equator is reached, then 'collapses' again. The overall manifold doesn't change, but the scaling factor on the spatial parts does.

Music for my years. I also used that analogy in the past, with mixed results, tho

Therefore, under relativity, or any other theory that treats time as a local coordinate on a patch of a manifold, it is nonsensical to say that the Universe expands, if the universe is that manifold. That it was born, will die, or whatever change we want to ascribe to it.

For all practical purposes, it is eternal. Actually, it is beyond eternal, if eternal means existsing (tensed) forever. For there is no external clock that measures the lasting forever.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Polymath257]

Music for my years. I also used that analogy in the past, with mixed results, tho

Therefore, under relativity, or any other theory that treats time as a local coordinate on a patch of a manifold, it is nonsensical to say that the Universe expands, if the universe is that manifold. That it was born, will die, or whatever change we want to ascribe to it.

/E: Yes, it is the spatial slices that have the expansion factor in their metrics.

For all practical purposes, it is eternal. Actually, it is beyond eternal, if eternal means existsing (tensed) forever. For there is no external clock that measures the lasting forever.

Ciao

- viole

For the basic theory (general relativity), this is correct. The universe, meaning all of *spacetime* simply exists as a Lorentzian 4-manifold.

Now, there are extensions of this where our universe is a submanifold of a larger manifold with an induced metric from the larger structure. In that case, the time coordinate in the larger structure may allow for the 'beginning' and 'end' of our submanifold. Often this larger manifold has a symplectic structure also and our submanifold has some special characteristics in terms of its embedding. This is where 'branes' arise.

Again, the analogy is to embed a sphere in 3-space. The z-direction in 3-space then projects down to latitude on the sphere. While there is no 'north of the north pole' on the sphere, there is 'upward' in the larger 3-space.

 

[Polymath257]

Music for my years. I also used that analogy in the past, with mixed results, tho

manifold, it is nonsensical to say that the Universe expands, if the universe is that manifold. That it was born, will die, or whatever change we want to ascribe to it.

For all practical purposes, it is eternal. Actually, it is beyond eternal, if eternal means existsing (tensed) forever. For there is no external clock that measures the lasting forever.

Ciao

- viole

More technically, the metric for a flat space version of spacetime (in the first approximation) looks like

ds^2 = dt^2 -a(t)^2 (dx^2 +dy^2 +dz^2)

where a(t) is an increasing function of the coordinate t.

 

[viole]

/E: Yes, it is the spatial slices that have the expansion factor in their metrics.



For the basic theory (general relativity), this is correct. The universe, meaning all of *spacetime* simply exists as a Lorentzian 4-manifold.

Now, there are extensions of this where our universe is a submanifold of a larger manifold with an induced metric from the larger structure. In that case, the time coordinate in the larger structure may allow for the 'beginning' and 'end' of our submanifold. Often this larger manifold has a symplectic structure also and our submanifold has some special characteristics in terms of its embedding. This is where 'branes' arise.

Again, the analogy is to embed a sphere in 3-space. The z-direction in 3-space then projects down to latitude on the sphere. While there is no 'north of the north pole' on the sphere, there is 'upward' in the larger 3-space.

Yes, but what if we extend the concept of Universe to the manifold that is not a submanifold of another manifold? Unless that does not exist and we have turtles all the way down, I do not see how that thing can begin.

Ciao

- viole

 

[viole]

More technically, the metric for a flat spacetime (in the first approximation) looks like

ds^2 = dt^2 -a(t)^2 (dx^2 +dy^2 +dz^2)

where a(t) is an increasing function of the coordinate t.

Oh, I see you also like to use an adimensional 1 for the speed of light.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Polymath257]

Yes, but what if we extend the concept of Universe to the manifold that is not a submanifold of another manifold? Unless that does not exist and we have turtles all the way down, I do not see how that thing can begin.

Ciao

- viole

This is, in essence a multiverse theory. And yes, in such a theory, the multiverse is 'eternal' in the sense you described.

 

[Polymath257]

Oh, I see you also like to use an adimensional 1 for the speed of light.

Ciao

- viole

Yes, that is fairly standard in the subject.

\E: it is also fairly standard to use units where G=1 and hbar=1.

 

[viole]

Yes, that is fairly standard in the subject.

\E: it is also fairly standard to use units where G=1 and hbar=1.

Yeah, when I went through that (gravitational field influencing) treatise about Gravitation written by Wheeler and co, i noticed they like to do that a lot. I mean, to set the speed of light to 1 is quite natural. Who would measure north-south distances in kilometers and east-west distances in miles?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Polymath257]

Yeah, when I went through that (gravitational field influencing) treatise about Gravitation written by Wheeler and co, i noticed they like to do that a lot. I mean, to set the speed of light to 1 is quite natural. Who would measure north-south distances in kilometers and east-west distances in miles?

Ciao

- viole

Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler isn't a very well-regarded book in the area, truthfully.

I might suggest Wald's book 'General Relativity' as a better reference, especially for a mathematician. Both are a bit out of date because they don't use a cosmological constant (dark energy).

For more on cosmology, per se, Weinberg's book on Cosmology is excellent.

 

[gnostic]

I understand.

1) Please don't tell me what I should believe since I have the Hebrew and Greek background and am in the scriptures daily and in apologetics studies as well.

Ah. Now I see where my problem lies with you: "apologetic studies".

Whether the themes of apologetic writinsg be political, philosophical or religious in nature, they (apologists) all have one thing in common, they were written as excuses for readers to accept their very biased belief.

I have not known a single apologetic literature written by people that weren't very biased.

Well, it is very obvious to me, that your agenda is about convincing people that creationism is scientifically and historically true, when clearly it is not.

Second, apologists have another thing in common. Not only will they present one-sided arguments so that the readers will follow his agenda (whether it be political, philosophical or religious), they will also resort to manipulating data, misrepresented any contrasting views, or even deliberate deceptions.

I don't trust any view from apologists, because they are not reliable.

As to your "Hebrew and Greek background", I can say that I don't have experiences in these languages, as I rely solely on English translations on these texts of those languages.

I do have a number of translations of the bible, almost half dozen on my bookshelf, but more in kindle and PDF formats.

The reasons why I have so many translations, is because I cannot read Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic, and because I like to be thorough, when comparing against each other.

In the last 7 years, I have been favouring the NJPS Tanakh for the Old Testament, and NRSV for both OT and NT.

But I have translations including JPT (Judaica Press Tanach), KJV, Dead Sea Scrolls, NETS (translation of the Septuagint), and translations of Samaritan Torah, Targum Onkelos, Pe****ta and Vulgate on the Net.

I also have various texts, such as the Rabbinical Midrash and Aggadah, the non-canonical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (in particular the Book of Jubilees and all 3 books of Enoch), the Gnostic Nag Hammadi codices, and even one translation of the Qur'an. A number of these are sources to my website Dark Mirrors of Heaven.

I have been interested in myths and history for a long time, and the Genesis, from Exodus to Judges, are clearly myths, not history.

The Abrahamic religions are not my only interest, because I love reading myths in my free time, and these include Greek & Roman, Norse & Germanic, Celtic, Hittite & Hurrian, Ugaritic & Canaanite, Egyptian, Sumerian/Akkadian/Babylonian. And I even have a book on Japanese book, that contained some Shinto myths, but I haven't got far, because the Kojiki is a very recent purchase.

Like with other things I read, I preferred to read translations of ancient and medieval texts for myself, instead of relying on people's thoughts on myths.

2) The type and formation of fossils seems consistent with the Flood narrative. Just today I came across something in this vein from the Grand Canyon if you have an interest. My desire was not to reopen the "science proves and everyone should believe X date on fossils" argument, but to mention to you the extraordinary circumstances in which fossils form.

Your argument--and if I don't understand it accurately please let me know--seems to be "science dates trump Bible dates" when you a) have different dates than I b) are ignoring anomalies of geology that have moved scientists in recent decades from an anti-Flood bias held since the 1800's to "Wow! There were HUGE localized floods in different places!"

Highlighted in red: I think that a load of BS.

You are attempting to move the goalpost, BB.

You were the one who brought up marine fossils were discovered in the Himalayas as if it happened due to Genesis Flood, without even finding out how old any of those fossils are.

You cannot make claims about the fossils, without knowing how old, geologists can date these.

But now that I have refuted your claims by actually putting date one of the fossil evidences, the whale jawbone being 53 million years old, you want to change subject so that we don't talk about any of the fossil age.

This misdirection and redirection, are completely in line with dishonest tactics used by any other apologist and creationist.

 

[gnostic]

Your argument--and if I don't understand it accurately please let me know--seems to be "science dates trump Bible dates" when you a) have different dates than I b) are ignoring anomalies of geology that have moved scientists in recent decades from an anti-Flood bias held since the 1800's to "Wow! There were HUGE localized floods in different places!"

There many localised and regional flooding, but none that covered the entire Earth, including mountains in the Himalayas and Andes.

Everest is still moving upwards at a rate of 4 mm per year, because the Indian plate is still pushing into Eurasian plate, northeast.

If was that rate was constant, then 4500 years ago, the height of Everest would have only 18 metres shorter (at 8830 metres) than this year's height of 8848 metres.

There is not enough water to cover the Himalayas, let alone Everest back in 2500 BCE.

Why do you think is so often have quakes and tremors in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau?

 

[BilliardsBall]

There many localised and regional flooding, but none that covered the entire Earth, including mountains in the Himalayas and Andes.

Everest is still moving upwards at a rate of 4 mm per year, because the Indian plate is still pushing into Eurasian plate, northeast.

If was that rate was constant, then 4500 years ago, the height of Everest would have only 18 metres shorter (at 8830 metres) than this year's height of 8848 metres.

There is not enough water to cover the Himalayas, let alone Everest back in 2500 BCE.

Why do you think is so often have quakes and tremors in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau?

Are you familiar with the uniformitarian assumptions paradox? You are assuming the rate is constant when the rate could be leftover aftershocks from catastrophe.

If there was a large meteor strike millions of years ago, did the plates uniformly push at the same rates that year as they did last year?

Even plate theory requires some assumptions and has some problems inherent within.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Except that God or creator is not "uncaused".

The creator only because people write about the creator, such as that in the scriptures or he only exist because "create" religion.

There are not a single evidence that god created anything. The creator is the figments of man's deluded imagination.

Which make men the creators of God.

You would be correct unless the biblical God indeed reveals evidence to those open to the evidence.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Why is an uncaused God more likely than an uncaused universe?

Great question.

You are aware that most people say the above is self-evident and that design implies a designer. Most people say this despite a lifetime of secular education regarding cosmology, evolution and other "natural" designing. Why is that, do you think?

 

[Polymath257]

Great question.

You are aware that most people say the above is self-evident and that design implies a designer. Most people say this despite a lifetime of secular education regarding cosmology, evolution and other "natural" designing. Why is that, do you think?

because most people are trained in this society to default to a God concept rather than use reason. There is nothing in the universe that implies a designer. There is no evidence of anything outside of the physical. But, yet, most people like the stories that come from belief in a supernatural (even if the concept is ultimately contradictory).

 

[BilliardsBall]

because most people are trained in this society to default to a God concept rather than use reason. There is nothing in the universe that implies a designer. There is no evidence of anything outside of the physical. But, yet, most people like the stories that come from belief in a supernatural (even if the concept is ultimately contradictory).

There is nothing in the universe that implies a designer?!

Let's start with:

*Natural law
*Gravity at levels that doesn't cause all to implode or explode
*Math
*Logic

 

[Polymath257]

There is nothing in the universe that implies a designer?!

Let's start with:

*Natural law
*Gravity at levels that doesn't cause all to implode or explode
*Math
*Logic

How do any of these imply a designer?

Math and logic are *languages* we have created to help us understand things.

Natural laws, by their very nature, cannot be caused (causality is a product of natural laws). Gravity is one natural law.

Nothing in this suggests anything outside of the physical universe.