Jus wondering how you guys respond to people when "New Discoveries" of fossils come out and they are said to be 100,000s of years old when Earth is only 6000 years old.
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Question about Fossils
- Thread starter missguidedsheep
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I would say it is a safe bet that either they are wrong about the age of those fossils or the person requiring the Bible to say the earth is only 6k is mistaken.
No scientist but the older earth appears to be better supported. One could imagine God capable of anything, including making our dating of fossils impossibly difficult to get right - but then we should also ask why would God do that. I like the Pope's answers on such things.
No scientist but the older earth appears to be better supported. One could imagine God capable of anything, including making our dating of fossils impossibly difficult to get right - but then we should also ask why would God do that. I like the Pope's answers on such things.
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timewerx
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Not anymore. Scientists are now finding soft tissue, in many dinosaur bones that's been lying around for a long time since they dug them up.
They simply didn't have the technology (and the open-mindedness) back then so they didn't bothered to look for soft tissue.
Also the fact that Carbon-14 is found many dinosaur bones simply means dinosaurs couldn't have been extinct more than 40,000 years ago.
Where did the millions of years come from? Simply from miscalculation. It would be impossible to find soft tissue in dinosaur bones if they died millions of years ago.
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As I said and you seem to have misunderstood, I like the Church's answers to such questions. Leave science to proving things they can observe. All of us search for truth and science is the art of it, but God is our author and so that longing for truth He wrote inside each of us.
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I believe GOD is telling us something by preserving fossils. I believe God made earth LONG ago, and that He made the present arrangement from an already-existing earth. After all, His spirit moved over the face of THE DEEP, berfore he made anything else in the present world.
Fossils were formed only when very specific conditions occurred, when creatures or their bodies were quickly buried in mud or sediment deep enough to not be disturbed by weather, etc. Same for footprints, which were made in mud & quickly filled in with softer mud or sediment which preserved them. Such preservation is the exception rather than the rule; they occur only rarely today, & there are likely many now-extinct plants & animals who left no remains for us to discover.
God, of course, coulda chosen to not preserve any fossils at all, but He DID preserve them for our instruction, not to create controversy.
Fossils were formed only when very specific conditions occurred, when creatures or their bodies were quickly buried in mud or sediment deep enough to not be disturbed by weather, etc. Same for footprints, which were made in mud & quickly filled in with softer mud or sediment which preserved them. Such preservation is the exception rather than the rule; they occur only rarely today, & there are likely many now-extinct plants & animals who left no remains for us to discover.
God, of course, coulda chosen to not preserve any fossils at all, but He DID preserve them for our instruction, not to create controversy.
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Robycop, you stated "Fossils were formed only when very specific conditions occurred, when creatures or their bodies were quickly buried in mud or sediment deep enough to not be disturbed by weather, etc." The bible speaks of a time when those conditions were met. Noahs flood. The fossils were not buried in some already-existing earth.
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how true. The still soft tissue found in some dino's is making the evos scratch their heads. How can dino tissue survive for 65+ million years?
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Ah, but Noah took at least one pair of EVERY land animal in the ark. And over 90% of all animal, bird, insect, etc. that is known to have existed is now extinct. That has NOT happened since Noah's time.
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timewerx
the village i--o--t--
I did not misunderstood but both the Church and you seem outdated and misinformed on scientific facts.
We are finally getting our facts right, we are not guessing anymore. I don't like the notion that we will remain in the dark and ignorance about certain things, never knowing - it contradicts the whole concept of the Truth. We should be seekers and bearers of truth, not resting until everything is known!
http://www.history.com/news/scientists-find-soft-tissue-in-75-million-year-old-dinosaur-bones
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Am saying it is your view of the Church which is outdated. Guess you missed the memo.
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God sent Noah 2 of each 'Kind" of animal. Your model doesn't quite fit the bible. Then again I have the suspicion that that doesn't matter to you as you will have to change the bible to meet your beliefs.
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Imagican
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It's kind of funny how that works. The 'Orthodox Christian Community' accepts the science that whisks them through the air at 500 MPH. That allows them to speak to those all over the world in REAL TIME. The medicine that keeps them from suffering. And the very vessel in which we presently communicate. Yet when it comes to dating ancient rocks or fossils, they immediately insist that it CANNOT be accurate simply over a BELIEF created and perpetuated by the "churches".
There is NOTHING in the Bible that says that the Earth is ONLY 6000 years old. And ALL evidence is that it's MILLIONS or even BILLIONS of years old.
While it has been proven that certain situations make carbon dating difficult, those conditions are NOT universal. Just studying LAYERS of sediment PROVE that men and dinosaurs NEVER lived together at the same time.
Then we have this: does ANYONE believe that men were CREATED with the ability to WRITE? In other words, it ONLY stands to reason that man didn't invent, create or discover WRITING until he NEEDED to write. And the obviousness is that it may have taken tens or hundreds of thousands of years before man NEEDED to write.
Then there is FARMING.
We KNOW that men were nomadic gatherers in the beginning. So long as populations were low and food was abundant NATURALLY, there was NO need to understand or even contemplate agriculture. Men and women simply went out and gathered what was ripe at the time.
So how many thousands of years passed before men began to multiply before they found it necessary to LEARN agriculture? When they began to develop PERMANENT settlements. And this may have taken TENS of THOUSANDS of years of development.
And we have a fossil record that has been mapped and goes through MANY different eras. The dinosaurs were one of the MOST RECENT eras. The fossil record can be traced back many, many TIMES the distance in the past FROM the dinosaurs. At one time, the ONLY life upon this planet was in the OCEANS. And that was LONG before the dinosaurs existed.
So, to believe that ALL that took place in six thousand years is a pretty LONG stretch NOW DAYS. At the time of Moses? Six thousand years probably seemed like an eternity. And the concept of BILLIONS probably didn't even exist at the time of Moses. Unlikely that the concept of MILLIONS existed at that time. Until a man has a NEED to count to a certain LIMIT, that limit isn't even a consideration. They simply use a term indicating UNCOUNTABLE.
Anyone that has EVER been to the Grand Canyon recognizes that this wonder certain didn't happen OVER NIGHT. It's vastness is indicative of something that took hundreds of thousands of years if not MILLIONS.
And we KNOW that elements like Gold and Oil and diamonds and rubies take a VAST amount of time to form. Caverns and their structures can be measured so far as how long it takes DROPS of water to form the MASSIVE structures within them.
But here's the CATCH. If the world is only TEN thousand years old instead of six, the obviousness is that the orthodox INSISTENCE is INCORRECT.
There is evidence that there were MEN on this continent: North America, between twelve and sixteen thousand years ago. If it was TEN thousand years ago, then the orthodox insistence is WRONG. And if it is a hundred years MORE than six thousand, it may as well be five BILLION years old.
But once again, it's kind of funny how 'orthodox Christians' don't question ANY OTHER aspect of science that they have come to depend on in their day to day LIFE, yet adamantly DENY any possibility of science to have the ability to measure the age of ANYTHING over six thousand years.
The NT tells us that the use of the term DAY does not necessarily mean a 24 hour period of time.
When I say, back in the day, it does NOT mean a DAY ago nor does it mean that the time period ONLY lasted A day. It is a figure of speech that is merely indicative of a TIME PERIOD so far as BEGINNING and ENDING.
And that is what we are told when it is given that a DAY to God can be as a thousand years or a thousand years a DAY. And if this is TRUE, then we could impose ANY massive number to replace thousands such as MILLIONS or BILLIONS. For God is NOT confined by TIME. He is OUTSIDE of Time. Time has NO effect upon the CREATOR of this universe. He exists by EVENTS and those events may well be beyond our ability to comprehend. In other words, how old is ETERNAL?
Blessings,
MEC
There is NOTHING in the Bible that says that the Earth is ONLY 6000 years old. And ALL evidence is that it's MILLIONS or even BILLIONS of years old.
While it has been proven that certain situations make carbon dating difficult, those conditions are NOT universal. Just studying LAYERS of sediment PROVE that men and dinosaurs NEVER lived together at the same time.
Then we have this: does ANYONE believe that men were CREATED with the ability to WRITE? In other words, it ONLY stands to reason that man didn't invent, create or discover WRITING until he NEEDED to write. And the obviousness is that it may have taken tens or hundreds of thousands of years before man NEEDED to write.
Then there is FARMING.
We KNOW that men were nomadic gatherers in the beginning. So long as populations were low and food was abundant NATURALLY, there was NO need to understand or even contemplate agriculture. Men and women simply went out and gathered what was ripe at the time.
So how many thousands of years passed before men began to multiply before they found it necessary to LEARN agriculture? When they began to develop PERMANENT settlements. And this may have taken TENS of THOUSANDS of years of development.
And we have a fossil record that has been mapped and goes through MANY different eras. The dinosaurs were one of the MOST RECENT eras. The fossil record can be traced back many, many TIMES the distance in the past FROM the dinosaurs. At one time, the ONLY life upon this planet was in the OCEANS. And that was LONG before the dinosaurs existed.
So, to believe that ALL that took place in six thousand years is a pretty LONG stretch NOW DAYS. At the time of Moses? Six thousand years probably seemed like an eternity. And the concept of BILLIONS probably didn't even exist at the time of Moses. Unlikely that the concept of MILLIONS existed at that time. Until a man has a NEED to count to a certain LIMIT, that limit isn't even a consideration. They simply use a term indicating UNCOUNTABLE.
Anyone that has EVER been to the Grand Canyon recognizes that this wonder certain didn't happen OVER NIGHT. It's vastness is indicative of something that took hundreds of thousands of years if not MILLIONS.
And we KNOW that elements like Gold and Oil and diamonds and rubies take a VAST amount of time to form. Caverns and their structures can be measured so far as how long it takes DROPS of water to form the MASSIVE structures within them.
But here's the CATCH. If the world is only TEN thousand years old instead of six, the obviousness is that the orthodox INSISTENCE is INCORRECT.
There is evidence that there were MEN on this continent: North America, between twelve and sixteen thousand years ago. If it was TEN thousand years ago, then the orthodox insistence is WRONG. And if it is a hundred years MORE than six thousand, it may as well be five BILLION years old.
But once again, it's kind of funny how 'orthodox Christians' don't question ANY OTHER aspect of science that they have come to depend on in their day to day LIFE, yet adamantly DENY any possibility of science to have the ability to measure the age of ANYTHING over six thousand years.
The NT tells us that the use of the term DAY does not necessarily mean a 24 hour period of time.
When I say, back in the day, it does NOT mean a DAY ago nor does it mean that the time period ONLY lasted A day. It is a figure of speech that is merely indicative of a TIME PERIOD so far as BEGINNING and ENDING.
And that is what we are told when it is given that a DAY to God can be as a thousand years or a thousand years a DAY. And if this is TRUE, then we could impose ANY massive number to replace thousands such as MILLIONS or BILLIONS. For God is NOT confined by TIME. He is OUTSIDE of Time. Time has NO effect upon the CREATOR of this universe. He exists by EVENTS and those events may well be beyond our ability to comprehend. In other words, how old is ETERNAL?
Blessings,
MEC
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Actually, it DOES fit, as he took male & female of every species. Scripture does NOT mention any species being left out. And it's a FACT that over 90% of ALL known animal species were extinct before being discovered, with no man having known of any living specimens of most of them. So, YOU might hafta change YOUR beliefs to match Scripture and reality.
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Imagician posted "Anyone that has EVER been to the Grand Canyon recognizes that this wonder certain didn't happen OVER NIGHT. It's vastness is indicative of something that took hundreds of thousands of years if not MILLIONS."
...currently I have time for one issue.
The Grand canyon was formed in a short period of time. The still "soft" layers deposited by Noahs flood would have no problem eroding.
Any can easily look at the Colorado River and see that it is underfit..to small....and could not have carved out the Grand Canyon
...currently I have time for one issue.
The Grand canyon was formed in a short period of time. The still "soft" layers deposited by Noahs flood would have no problem eroding.
Any can easily look at the Colorado River and see that it is underfit..to small....and could not have carved out the Grand Canyon
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The Church's proper position is not that science and religion MUST agree, but that any truth either claims cannot be in disagreement with a truth maintained by the other. Whatever is true is true regardless if the Church is claiming a truth or science is. The Church did not actually take a stand against the world being round or the earth not being the center of the universe (adding - in order to proclaim a position of science). The Church was defending the idea that because some smart folks began publicly opposing prior generally accepted principles that the God's Word was then somehow seen in error.
So the proper Christian/Church response to any scientific theories should never have be that the Bible refutes it, but that IF a theory is PROVEN true then whatever concept one maintains the Bible has "revealed" to us that is in conflict to that proven theory - that Biblical concept must NOT have been what God wanted "revealed". IOW we did not understand His message to mankind. This is why we had a Pope say once something like - even if science could prove we got the bodies we now have via evolution, science will NEVER be able to explain how we got human souls by that process.
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Actually, the same layers are on either side of the canyon itself. A flow of water large enough to have created the GC in a short time woulda washed away everything, not simply created a channel.
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At first I was going to "jump to Imagican's defense" then considered I can't seem to make myself put those words to writing.
But I can see both points. In order to come up with some estimate, a flow of water has to estimated as well as the relative softness of some of the materials in order to take a stab - and make best guess. To your point a global cataclysmic event like a global flood could produce conditions - including uplifting land masses and subsiding land masses, rapid changes in plate movement...etc that are not possible to fully or at least accurately predict what levels of erosion might result from it - including the idea of some high rate for some extended period after such an event followed by slower more predictable rates.
My point would be to someone who wants to take a literal stand of Bible says seven days and from that literal week or whatever one sees it as meaning, we then attempt to compute xK years for "earth age" based on some approximation of history as reflected by the OT - then if science could ever prove that xK has to be wrong the Bible still does not have to be seen as in error. What would then (once science has "proved that"} be clear as a error is that 1) the Bible was never written or intended to provide us with some approximation of "earth age" 2) the information recorded there was never meant to be understood as the earth is xK years old. And to say otherwise is to risk having some lose faith when any scientific "proof" (or strong theory support can shake that faith as well ) is made.
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timewerx
the village i--o--t--
Wow, so the Church will simply "update" its beliefs if proven by science beyond reasonable doubt!
Doesn't that make the Church seem like a cloud without rain blown along by the wind? Like wild waves of the sea foaming up in shame (when disproven by science)??
Jude 1:12-13
.....They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. 13 They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
It already did, just not yet published
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