Why a young earth?

[SPLogan]

Writings and scientific evidence are two different things. Not to mention that you are still in the general area referenced to. It is quite possible that there was a flood in that particular REGION. Those there would veiw that as "the world", doesn't mean it WAS the whole world that was flooded.

Granted,the "world" could mean a particular region. However, if we are assuming that the narratives of the world's major religions fall under the "non-fiction" genera, we must note how the stories unfold. In the Bible, for example, the story does elaborate on some specifics of how the waters rose and receded. It also indicates the approximate location of the Garden of Eden (between the pre-flood Tigris and Euphrates rivers) and it indicates the location of the Arc's landing (Mt. Ararat). A dove was sent out from the Arc several times to find dry land. Obviously, no dry land could be seen from the Arc. Finally, after several attempts, the dove returned to the Arc with a small branch. Later the dove was sent out again and it never returned.

As far as the direct cause of the flood, other than just "God caused it," the Bible describes both the world's FIRST rain and it describes watter coming up out of the Earth. Perhaps a large meteor hit could have done this? (just speculation) It was obviously a HUGE cataclysmic event...

In response to "Science and writings are two different things," I'm not sure what you mean. There is a science involved in writing and communicating and the only way you can do keep up with "science" is to write it down. "Science" is a lot more than just Biology, Geology, Psychology, etc. It also inlcudes History, Philosophy, Theology, etc.

 

[BruceDLimber]

Greetings!

I have done some Bible homework to show that if you believe in the God of the Bible you must belive in a young earth.

Only if you're foolish enough to think it must be taken literally!

Which most people are not!

In part, because if you insist on taking the Bible literally, then it becomes a trivial exercise to prove that God is a chicken!

Just the facts.

Peace,

Bruce

 

[SPLogan]

Keep in mind that we are speaking of the historicity of the Bible, which besides the flood, also speaks of Jesus feeding about 5000 people with two loafs of bread and two fish. (if I recall correctly) So- if you believe that, as I do, the flood's not a stretch.

 

[Draka]

Granted,the "world" could mean a particular region. However, if we are assuming that the narratives of the world's major religions fall under the "non-fiction" genera, we must note how the stories unfold. In the Bible, for example, the story does elaborate on some specifics of how the waters rose and receded. It also indicates the approximate location of the Garden of Eden (between the pre-flood Tigris and Euphrates rivers) and it indicates the location of the Arc's landing (Mt. Ararat). A dove was sent out from the Arc several times to find dry land. Obviously, no dry land could be seen from the Arc. Finally, after several attempts, the dove returned to the Arc with a small branch. Later the dove was sent out again and it never returned.

As far as the direct cause of the flood, other than just "God caused it," the Bible describes both the world's FIRST rain and it describes watter coming up out of the Earth. Perhaps a large meteor hit could have done this? (just speculation) It was obviously a HUGE cataclysmic event...

In response to "Science and writings are two different things," I'm not sure what you mean. There is a science involved in writing and communicating and the only way you can do keep up with "science" is to write it down. "Science" is a lot more than just Biology, Geology, Psychology, etc. It also inlcudes History, Philosophy, Theology, etc.

To use a point that I made in the Da Vinci thread today...fiction is based in reality. You have to have some form of fact in order to proceed with stories that are fictional. Was there a flood IN THAT AREA? Probably. Could a story be told from that line of thought? Most definitely. Could someone use actual places as the setting for their stories? Of course...it's done all the time. Doesn't make the various stories in the bible all literal fact and never will. It is interpretation of the stories and what they mean to believer's lives that are what is important. NOT that they ACTUALLY happened. More the effect the meaning of the stories have to the particular person reading them.

This is why I say that writings and scientific fact are two different things. You are talking about a collection of stories that are uncollaborated by scientific evidence. As a matter of fact...a lot of the basis for the stories have been outright proven to be false. So, yes, while certain, validated and collaborated, writings by scholars and such can be considered as evidence...the bible cannot hold up to the scrutiny required to be considered that. It is subjective...not given fact.

 

[messianicmystic]

I have recently come across and started studying ancient Jewish interpretations of creation as recorded in the Tanakh. Several if not most of them are closer akin to evolution and an old earth than they are to young earth creationism, so someone who believes in the inspiration of the Bible can also reasonably believe that evolution, directed by the Greatly Revered One of course, is a definite possibility.

To cite some examples, a Jewish scholar and sage by the name Isaac of Acco, who lived, I believe, in the twelfth or thirteenth century, way before Darwin, proposed, based on his interpretation of the Tanakh, that the universe is about 15,360,250,000 years old. If you want an explanation of how he arrived at this figure, please let me know, since I have not yet posted enough to include URLs.

Early Jewish sources also state that the first man had a tail like an animal, and before the generation of Enosh, men's faces resembled those of monkeys. It is possible that these last two statements were part of oral tradition in Yeshua's day, and yet we have no record, at least to my knowledge, of him going out of his way to refute them.

Please, let's not spend so much time telling people what they have to believe. Instead, let's show them how they ought to live, by the way we conduct ourselves. I'm reminded of a bumper sticker that I once saw and liked that said, "My Karma ran over your Dogma". I hope this is helpful, and I am not intending to offend anyone with my opinion. I'm speaking as much to myself as anyone else.

Regarding calculating the age of the earth by geneaologies, I believe this is rarely if ever a reliable method, as most if not all geneaologies contain gaps. When it says that so and so was so and so's son or that so and so begat so and so, it seems that there is occassionally more than one generation between the two. There is nothing untrue about saying that my grandfather begot me or that I am my great great grandfather's son. We see this when Ephraim and Manasseh are refered to as Jacob's sons, even though Jacob's son Joseph is what we would consider their father.

Also, there are flood accounts outside of Mesopatamia, I believe the Chinese have one, the ancient South Americans have one, and I know the Hawaiians have one. There is no logical reason that the histories recorded by ancient people should be taken any less seriously than our own, given that we still can't say definitively how the pyramids were built so precisely or if Atlantis really existed. If we are to be honest in both science and religion, we must admit that there is a great deal we just don't know. One of my favorite quotes is, "Knowledge is proud that it knows so much, while wisdom is humbled that it knows no more."

 

[bradleykavin]

but how could our earth be so old if we have bones from dinosaurs that have been proven to be 65 million years old and beyond?

 

[messianicmystic]

Do you mean "How could our earth be so young?" If not, I'm not sure I understand the question or who it is directed at.

 

[Popeyesays]

Abram says:
"But this thread wasnt to debate the Grand Canyon, I tried to explain that if you want to believe in the Bible you should believe in a young earth. But I have a feeling you don't believe in the Bible though?"

But in the Bible it also says a year is for a day. And in the Bible sometimes it says a thousand years to us is but a day to God. So why should we not take these literally, if we are counting the years of the generations. We do not know what those six days were to us - 6,000 years minimum. And how many years did Adam live peacefully in the garden? We do not know. A hundred days? A thousand days? If a thousand days to God, that would be a million years to us.

All calculated using your standard. We KNOW that rivers erode the earth from day to day because we can observe it. So we can interpolate the depth of the riv er in its bed to the age of the canyon.

The Bible is full of metaphor, of lessons contained within tales and parables. Those examples cannot be taken literally or they would have been in entirely different language.

 

[MdmSzdWhtGuy]

Keep in mind that we are speaking of the historicity of the Bible, which besides the flood, also speaks of Jesus feeding about 5000 people with two loafs of bread and two fish. (if I recall correctly) So- if you believe that, as I do, the flood's not a stretch.

So because you believe one absurd and unproveable story, that means that there is evidence for another, just as absurd story to be true? Or are you saying that the truth or untruthfullness of the Noahic Flood story, etc. . . don't matter to you?

B.

 

[may]

How do you explain the 10 Commandments when God tells us to work six days and rest on the seventh for He created the earth and heavens in six days and rested on the seventh?
There is some theories that can try to refute this. But not without going outside the Bible.

"Thy word is true from the beginning" Psalms 119:160

This is a issue that needs to be addressed by all Bible believers. Do you think that God could not make the world in 6 days? Why doubt his power? Why not take him at his word?

I feel that this is a huge issue in the Christian world. It seems that many believers are saying, "Yes I believe in the Bible, but I agree with evolution on this one." Pick your belief and believe it. Take God at his word. Where in the Bible does it even suggest that it took any longer then 6 days?

correct understanding about the bible makes things clear

religious fundamentalists today distort the Bible when they insist that the earth was created in six 24-hour days. (Genesis 1:3-31) Such a view agrees neither with science nor with the Bible. In the Bible, as in everyday speech, the word "day" is a flexible term, expressing units of time of varying lengths. At Genesis 2:4, all six creative days are referred to as one all-embracing "day." The Hebrew word translated "day" in the Bible can simply mean "a long time." So, there is no Biblical reason to insist that the days of creation were 24 hours each. By teaching otherwise, fundamentalists misrepresent the Bible.—See also 2 Peter 3:8.​

Throughout history, theologians have often distorted the Bible.

 

[Tiberius]

For those who say that the earth appears older than the Bible tells us because of Noah's Flood, I would like to ask how deep they think the Flood actually was.

I ask because the rocks we've gotten from the moon also indicate they are billions of years old, and if the Creationist claim that the age discrepancies between scientific investigation and the Bible are due to the actions of Noah's Flood, then the Flood must have reached the moon.

 

[Jerrell]

The Age of the Earth is not the Question, We are not all knowing Therefore we can't know. God created the earth in his Time. Seeing that Our days were not formed until the fourth day, these cannot be 1000 years long nor 24 hours.

God created the earth in his time, how long that was we dont know. What Peter meant was something diffrent....To spend a Day with God is so wondering, Joyous and great, that it'll be as a Thousand years on Earth.


We can gain so much from God in one day, that it'll take so much longer on earth to gain the same thing.

 

[Tiberius]

So your answer is to assume that God exists, and then assume that we can never know, so just say, "Let's just say the Bible got it right, and leave it at that."

Seems to be avoiding the question if you ask me...

 

[Super Universe]

A night and a morning was the first day? There was no sun or moon created until the fourth day so a day of how many hours?

The water did not rise to cover the land in the flood, although it appeared that way. The land mass sunk. This has happened more than once in the earth's history.

 

[Draka]

A night and a morning was the first day? There was no sun or moon created until the fourth day so a day of how many hours?

The water did not rise to cover the land in the flood, although it appeared that way. The land mass sunk. This has happened more than once in the earth's history.

Say what? So you find it easier to believe that all the land mass of the world suddenly fell below the water at once? Like the legend of Atlantis? Just exactly where did it fall to? Since the levels of the earth are fixed and plates are atop the levels...how in the world did the continents just fall? Looking at it that way one would have to assume planet implosion. I don't think so :tsk: .

There was no great flood that covered all the land. There is no proof of that at all. There are straws one can grasp at and say "look...this bit here proves it"...all the while there is a perfectly scientific, geologically proven reason for these things that the person doesn't want to see because then they lose their precious "proof".

 

[Super Universe]

Exactly how are these land levels fixed? Their movement causes earthquakes. If it was all 'fixed' some time ago then why do we have mountains? Why is a large section of Yellowstone national park rising?

The continents didn't just fall instantly, it was a gradual process that took many years. And the great floods did not cover all the land, just the low areas of certain continents.

 

[Tiberius]

if the land masses sank, then the volume of the Earth would have decreased. That means that some of the magma inside the Earth must have been released (an earth with a smaller volume contains less magma than an earth with a larger volume). Where did this magma go? Space, perhaps?

There is absolutely no evidence for a world wide flood, and any quasi-science that is used to support the idea of a flood is easily shown to be either false of mis-interpreted.

And the great floods did not cover all the land, just the low areas of certain continents.

This wouldn't be the oft-used "Well, give the non-believers something that sounds a bit more plausible in an attempt to make the Bible fit with science so they'll be more willing to accept it", would it?

They did the same thing with evolution.

The problem is that there will always be people - and I mean believers - who will say, "You can't just go and change God's word like that!"

 

[Super Universe]

No evidence for a world wide flood? Uh, there are books that tell the story of it.

What proof do you have that it did not occur?

I don't think any geologist would agree that an earth with a smaller volume contains less magma then an earth with a large volume. There are other things that can affect it: atmosphere, perhaps the earth's solid core increases in size at times, then layers melt off at other times.

I'm not sure how much the land sunk but if you couple that with a natural warming and melting of the ice pack then together they could cover much of the American central region.

 

[Ody]

alot of writings write of this flood, particularly babylonian ones

All of them being folktales and myths however...

 

[Draka]

Exactly how are these land levels fixed? Their movement causes earthquakes. If it was all 'fixed' some time ago then why do we have mountains? Why is a large section of Yellowstone national park rising?

The continents didn't just fall instantly, it was a gradual process that took many years. And the great floods did not cover all the land, just the low areas of certain continents.

LE-VELS...not plates...LEVELS...as in layers...as in inner core, outer core, mesosphere, athenosphere, lithosphere. The layers are fixed...not the plates. Plates are constanly moving and being very slowly renewed due to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The tectonic plates that you speak of slide...not rise and fall. The rise and fall of flat land has to do with water levels and magma outbursts in the crust. The plates slide and collide and mesh with each other causing changing shorelines and mountains. An ocean plate can collide and push against a continental plate and cause an uprising which has ocean fossils on it. Leading some to believe that is evidence of flood waters...Sorry, doesn't work that way buddy. I repeat...there is no evidence of a world wide flood.