FernRL

At one time I was really serious about looking at the earth's age like that, but this time I was being a little facetious. It just goes along with something I had heard before: "You can prove anything using the Bible." Add a few modern scriptures and.... Well, I think a lot of this doesn't really matter, as long as we know that whatever is proven by science doesn't mean the Gospel isn't true, that there is no God, etc.

Ok, fine. I'll be a little more serious. I think the earth could be billions of years old, or merely thousands of years (since life was formed here [again], in a possibly recycled planet.) I don't think it really matters. I do believe that we are all totally descended from Adam, who was banished from the Garden of Eden distinctly within the last 10,000 years. Therefore, I don't believe that the dating methods are totally accurate which show ancestral modern humans dotting the earth with civilizations as much as 40,000 years ago. I believe that carbon dating becomes inaccurate when the amount of carbon-14 taken in by living plants and animals was much less than it is now. I suspect that at the time of Noah there was an increase in cosmic rays which increased the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere, increased the likelihood of rain (resulting in The Flood with its rainbow afterward,) and decreased life spans (from the 900-some odd years of the Antediluvian patriarchs.) I just searched for more information about carbon-14 dating and found this: Doesn?t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? - Answers in Genesis Which article, in some ways, supports my general idea.

I believe the earth is at least millions of years old, if not billions. I also think I could "prove" it using the scriptures. The short version goes kind of like this: 1. Someone needs to be at least 8 years old to be baptized. 2. The earth was "baptized" during the great Flood. 3. A day to the Lord is like a thousand years to man. 4. Figure out how many days are in 8 years. 5. Times that by 1,000 years. 6. Result: The earth is at least millions of years old.

I think it works both ways. In the 1800's a scientist was hiking over the countryside, and looked around and said to himself "It is rather obvious that these rocks are more than a few thousand years old, therefore, the Bible is not true, there is no God, etc." Then wherever science and religion have met there has often been either a cold-war situation or an "in-your-face" confrontation. Geologists deliberately concocted the concept of "Geologic Time" to religiously refute any type of young earth philosophy. It doesn't matter that, in actuality, an earthquake can be over and done with in less than a minute and even long ones don't take an hour. It doesn't matter that a volcano can rise in a Mexican cornfield overnight, or that in one season, a flood can lower a creek bed by about 20 feet. I'm talking about real geological changes that don't conform to the accepted "Geologic Time" concept. If scientists were really interested in accuracy and being open-minded they would drop that silly notion and emphasize "Geologic size" instead--then it would be easy to show that one little volcano in a cornfield makes no difference at all on the face of the whole earth, or even a major earthquake in Alaska, certainly not a 20 foot drop in the creek bed of Levan Canyon, a new lake being formed by a mudslide, and another canyon having it's mouth shifted a few miles one direction. That is reality.

My mom always said "give a man enough rope and he will hang himself." I think scientists who should be very open-minded and able to question all previous studies and conclusions, fail to be able to do that when pressed against the wall by well-meaning non-scientists who doubt the same studies and conclusion. When challenged by people who know less about it, even the most committed scientist can resort to merely defending what has been done without looking at it with fresh interest. We need to back off and suspend disbelief in scientific things until they evolve their own thinking to come up with different conclusions where they may be wrong now.

I can accept it if science has not yet been able to explain how different species evolve with different numbers of chromosomes. I just wish they would even consider the number of chromosomes to be important--that it should be taught in biology classes, for example.

That is interesting, but it does not answer my question. What I have read from a scientific point of view to refute ID is something along the lines of "a mouse has virtually the same DNA as a human" with no mention of the fact that a mouse has 20 Chromosomes and a Human has 46. When a horse and a donkey are mated to produce a mule the mule is usually sterile due to the different number of Chromosomes in the horse and the donkey. Obviously if the horse and donkey both evolved from some parent species the number of chromosomes they had would have had to change also. My question is: What is scientifically known about such changes?

Just a thought, or two: Evolution could be equivalent to "the law of Eternal Progression," by some definition, but an Evolutionary Scientist would probably not think so. Sometimes too much emphasis is put on The General Theory of Evolution without talking enough about some of the specifics. I would like to see more emphasis put on the number of chromosomes various species have, and possibly how that change(d)(s) over the ages. I agree with Gaspah regarding the importance of the creation story in its link to keeping the Sabbath Day holy. I also think that it is hardly important to be Pharisaical about it, but to realize that there is a value for both man and beast to rest every 7 days or so, and that it is good to meet together and worship with others on the same appointed day each week.

It sounds like it boils down to one thought: God can create man from the dust of the earth, by way of a whole chain of evolution. It is Abiogenesis to the scientists, and to the creationists, it is simply God creating man.

In my previous post I included a link to "Who's really pushing 'bad Science'?" One thing covered in the article was the question of how we define evolution, or the distinctions between evolution, biological evolution, and the General Theory of Evolution (GTE). The author made a very good case for the need to specify what we are talking about when we use any of those terms, such that I think reading at least the first part of that article is essential to any further discussion.

Because Godless mentioned NOMA I searched for it and found this article, which, though rather lengthy, and I have not read more than half of it, I found to be interesting in some major points. Who’s really pushing ‘bad science’?

Ok, that is clear. The only other thing is: that I doubt most scientists agree. I read in Discover magazine (a year or two, or maybe longer, ago) where some scientists were saying that Evolution actually proves there is no God. I have thought that was certainly going overboard, but even so, I have read many things that seem like scientists are saying that because they can show that evolution is factual, that there is no need to believe in a god, creator, or intelligent designer--that it all works, or could work, without divine intervention.

Ok, maybe I didn't make myself clear: What I was saying is: Evolution does NOT depend on God to work, which is precisely why it can appeal to science, which can neither prove or disprove the existence of God.

As far as I can tell, it is not an either/or situation between belief in God and acceptance of the Theory of Evolution. I believe God created the evolutionary process. Science cannot disprove the existence of God. Evolution, as a scientific theory, is more than one fact--it is a collection of facts with assumptions and opinions and conclusions tying all of these together. But Evolution only offers an explanation that does not depend on the existence of God to work.

Another question I have: Where dinosaurs are said to have become extinct millions of years ago, but there is the Komodo Dragon today--what is the distinction between it and dinosaurs?