We have about three dozen different way of dating the earth and they all conclude it is billions of years old. Are you saying that ALL of these ways are unreliable? Are you serious?????
Hi OC,
Yes, I am completely serious. When God does a miracle there is no way for man to explain it, but that doesn't stop us from trying. Perhaps it would be good to read Paul's admonition to us about this.
All methods of dating are based on the first and foremost assumption that everything has always worked as it works today.
Let me offer an example: The Scriptures tell us that when the Israelites moved through the sea bed on dry ground, there was a wall of water on both their right hand and left. That is an impossibility! We cannot make water stand one foot high, let alone the several dozen feet that would have been the depth of this sea. If the sea were only one foot deep, then the Israelites would have just marched right through it. They wouldn't have stood and cried out to Moses that they were now caught between the sea and the Egyptian army and would surely die in the desert. They would have just walked right on through. So, let's say for arguments sake that the sea had to be at least 6 feet deep. When you can make water stand unaided six feet high let me know.
I lived through one of the worst hurricanes that the US has experienced. When the waters flooded the low lying homes of south miami-dade county, they didn't come as a wall of water. As the hurricane neared landfall the force of winds pushed the water in front of it and it rose to its higher level, but not as a wall. It just rose up rather gradually and as it rose above the land in front of it, it flooded the land. I have similarly witnessed tornadoes, both on land and sea. There is no wall of water created when a tornado passes over water. The spout itself will take up some water but the sea surrounding it remains pretty much the same as it was.
When we date things upon the earth we generally find some atomic formation and by knowing how long it takes for the atomic formation to break down, we then measure what is in the sample and extrapolate that back to a date. We look at diamonds and oil and opals and understand that they are formed by great pressures and long ages. However, in reasonably natural mimicking experiments, we can make all those things in a much, much shorter period of time. Now the detractors will agree that yes we can, but then say that that doesn't, in itself, mean that these things were created in a short amount of time. While I wholeheartedly agree that it doesn't give any proof that such things were created in a reasonably short period of time, it also doesn't rule out the possibility that they were.
When the world was subjected to the world wide flood of Noah's day I imagine that there were a lot of things that happened upon the earth that we will never have any way of being able to replicate to find out what they were. However, the flood, as described in the Scriptures, brought billions of tons of weight and sediment upon things that were on the earth's surface. If such a flood did occur, then the formation of oil, opals and diamonds could well have been very, very rapid. However, there is no way to either prove or disprove what happened in the flood beyond what the Scriptures tell us.
For me, I believe God. When God tells me something and man tells me something that contradicts with that, I'm standing with God.
God bless you.
In Christ, Ted