Intercepting the time estimates

Erichero · Aug 19, 2003

I'm a YEC. Although I'm vary sceptical of a lot of age estimates, I acknowledge that many are reasonably valid.

However, in my opinion, God did not create a young earth, and I'm still amazed at how many people overlook this. Just because there's a claim that God created an earth 6000 years ago does not necessarily mean he created a 6000-year old earth. Do you think Adam & Eve would have had to sit around for 5 or 10 years waiting for the fruit trees to grow?

Nope, God created full-blown trees, with a number of annual rings already neatly defined, just like He in all reason created Adam & Eve as full-grown adults, not 1 day old toddlers unable to care for themselves.

Likewise, I understand that the pattern of universal body movements (planets, etc) can be traced back to a starting point. Not 100% sure if this is theory/fact, etc. Regardless, God may very well have kicked off that pattern some where in the middle of the curve - He didn't have to start at the beginning.

In this light, estimating the geological age of the earth cannot of itself prove OEC.

Your thoughts?

goat37 · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
I'm a YEC. Although I'm vary sceptical of a lot of age estimates, I acknowledge that many are reasonably valid.

However, in my opinion, God did not create a young earth, and I'm still amazed at how many people overlook this. Just because there's a claim that God created an earth 6000 years ago does not necessarily mean he created a 6000-year old earth. Do you think Adam & Eve would have had to sit around for 5 or 10 years waiting for the fruit trees to grow?

Nope, God created full-blown trees, with a number of annual rings already neatly defined, just like He in all reason created Adam & Eve as full-grown adults, not 1 day old toddlers unable to care for themselves.

Likewise, I understand that the pattern of universal body movements (planets, etc) can be traced back to a starting point. Not 100% sure if this is theory/fact, etc. Regardless, God may very well have kicked off that pattern some where in the middle of the curve - He didn't have to start at the beginning.

In this light, estimating the geological age of the earth cannot of itself prove OEC.

Your thoughts?

So basically God is a liar?

Besides... what would be the point of making rocks look billions of years old? What would be the point of creating dinosaur fossils that date from 250 million years to 65 million years?
What would be the point of creating a worldwide flood and leaving absolutely no physical record of it?

I think your statement is bogus, that's my thought.

Erichero · Aug 19, 2003

It would be the same point as making full-grown trees to provide fruit. You need a stable geological formation to allow human population to spread without stumbling around due to what would have been internal instability of the earth at an early stage.

Pete Harcoff · Aug 19, 2003

To quote something off a different forum I just read, "there's a different between appearance of maturity and appearance of history".

To make the world not only look "mature", but look like it has had this whole series of events throughout its history... well, you've entered philosophical ground that science can't touch, not to mention made God into a deceiver.

goat37 · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
It would be the same point as making full-grown trees to provide fruit. You need a stable geological formation to allow human population to spread without stumbling around due to what would have been internal instability of the earth at an early stage.

Or God could have just created the universe 13.7 billion years ago, the sun 5 billion years ago, and the earth 4.5 billion years ago and let eons of natural history work in a time frame that doesn't break the laws of physics or the universe.

If God created the universe to look 13.7 billion years old... I think he'd make it that old, not just look that old.

Plus, there is absolutely no evidence to backup your claims. Science doesn't delve into the metaphysical. If you want to take the extra steps to say that God deceived us all into thinking the earth was that old, great... but there is no evidence to support that. There is not even a logical reason to even think it unless you take the word from a bunch of scientifically inept men who wrote the bible. They didn't know, so they made it up.

We didn't all come from 1 man and 1 woman to start off humanity. There was no worldwide flood in the last 4,000 years.
You are making general leaps of faith that don't need to be made.

Vance · Aug 19, 2003

This is the "appearance of age" theory, and as a Christian I find it very disturbing. While it is true that if God were to create the world whole all at one time (or within 6 days), He might have good reason to make much in maturity. But that is as far as it goes. There is no reason to make the rest of the Earth look old, going so far as to plant very old things in the ground and carve the Earth's surface in EXACTLY the way it would if it were billions of years old.

The problem is that YEC groups can't decide which they want to argue. On the one hand they scoff at the evidence that Earth is old, stating that the dating is unreliable and that the flood created all the geological formations. They insist that their scientific theories prove that the Earth is not old at all, but well within their 6 to 12 thousand years.

THEN, the same groups will argue, when faced with incontrovertable evidence that Earth IS old, that God just created it to look old (thus admitting that the Earth DOES look old based on the physical evidence, contradicting their scientific assertions to the contrary).

lucaspa · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
I'm a YEC. Although I'm vary sceptical of a lot of age estimates, I acknowledge that many are reasonably valid.

However, in my opinion, God did not create a young earth, and I'm still amazed at how many people overlook this. Just because there's a claim that God created an earth 6000 years ago does not necessarily mean he created a 6000-year old earth. Do you think Adam & Eve would have had to sit around for 5 or 10 years waiting for the fruit trees to grow?

Nope, God created full-blown trees, with a number of annual rings already neatly defined, just like He in all reason created Adam & Eve as full-grown adults, not 1 day old toddlers unable to care for themselves. Your thoughts?

Oh Lord! The Appearance of Age argument again!!

Erichero, this argument was first tried in 1856. Christians quickly rejected it because it destroys Christianity. What you have just done is make God a deceiver!

Here's the history and the immediate rejection by a Christian minister:

In 1844 a pamphlet entitled Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, espousing an evolutionary viewpoint, was published. In response Philip Gosse, a minister in the Fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Brethren, wrote Oomphalos, published in 1857. In it Gosse made the first written argument that creation only LOOKS old. In it, Gosse even argued that Adam and Eve had navels because that is what one would expect in God-created creatures.
Gosse expected Oomphalos to be attacked by scientists. What he should have expected, but didn't, was the denunciation by the religious community. Asked to write a review of Oomphalos, his friend Charles Kinglsey, a minister and author of Westward Ho! refused and wrote the following letter to Gosse.
"You have given the 'vestiges of creation theory' [the pamphlet discussed above] the best shove forward which it has ever had. I have a special dislike for that book; but, honestly, I felt my heart melting towards it as I read Oomphalos. Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind. To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds. It will not make me throw away my Bible. I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others; but for the young I do fear. I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands."

And I would not for any amount of money repeat what you have said to any child.

Frumious Bandersnatch · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
It would be the same point as making full-grown trees to provide fruit. You need a stable geological formation to allow human population to spread without stumbling around due to what would have been internal instability of the earth at an early stage.

So how do you know your trickster God didn't create the earth last Tuesday?

The Frumious Bandersnatch

lucaspa · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
It would be the same point as making full-grown trees to provide fruit. You need a stable geological formation to allow human population to spread without stumbling around due to what would have been internal instability of the earth at an early stage.

Erichero, it would have been VERY possible to make a geologically stable earth but have very little soil and then just granite and other igneous rock underneath. There was no reason to put miles of sedimentary rock.

Also no reason to put fossils. If the earth is young, there should be no fossils.

There is no reason to put light in transit, either. We could be viewing stars only 6,000 light years away and have recorded throughout history the sudden appearance of stars as their light first reached earth.

And there is every reason to have radioactive isotopes that have short half-lives. However, of any isotope with a half life less than 50 million years that is not made by some other process, we have NONE. Zip. Zilch. All those isotopes have decayed away over the last 4.5 billion years since the earth was formed.

Erichero · Aug 19, 2003

Sure, Pete the dinosaurs would still be a major snag in my theory. It would not necessarily disprove my theory, but it would raise the question of why would God do it that way? This ignores the theory of extra pressure in flood conditions, which I'm not ruling out either.

And goat37, I don't need evidence to support a spiritual concept, because the kind of evidence you're looking for is not spiritual. If God chose to "deceive" us, that's not something that can be disproven by logic, or proven by science.

Can you give a scientific proof that my theory is false?

goat37 · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
Sure, Pete the dinosaurs would still be a major snag in my theory. It would not necessarily disprove my theory, but it would raise the question of why would God do it that way? This ignores the theory of extra pressure in flood conditions, which I'm not ruling out either.

And goat37, I don't need evidence to support a spiritual concept, because the kind of evidence you're looking for is not spiritual. If God chose to "deceive" us, that's not something that can be disproven by logic, or proven by science.

Can you give a scientific proof that my theory is false?

I fear the only evidence you would listen to is if I made God come down himself to tell you it's wrong.

There are many on this board, in particular any threads started by The Frumious Bandersnatch. Like the one called "Extensive salt deposits falsify the worldwide flood" or the one titles "Biogeography falsifys the worldwide flood" both are on page 2.

And those are just about the flood... I mean, you already admitted that the earth looks old, and it tests old... so that is proof enough for me. You just throw that 800lbs gorilla in there that says that God made the earth 6000 years ago, and only made it look that old. How do I disprove something that can't be disproven? Only through the physical evidence can I show that the events that you hold as pillars to your belief, didn't in fact happen. It is up to you to throw away the rest.

Frumious Bandersnatch · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
Sure, Pete the dinosaurs would still be a major snag in my theory. It would not necessarily disprove my theory, but it would raise the question of why would God do it that way? This ignores the theory of extra pressure in flood conditions, which I'm not ruling out either.

And goat37, I don't need evidence to support a spiritual concept, because the kind of evidence you're looking for is not spiritual. If God chose to "deceive" us, that's not something that can be disproven by logic, or proven by science.

Can you give a scientific proof that my theory is false?

Erichero · Aug 19, 2003

Got to admit I'm quite chuffed at coming up with the theory myself - still a relative newbie in the Creationist field, but by no means a dimwit and already seeing past the face value of your answers (no disrespect, just question what you see, which is what many of you wish YEC's would do).

I'm not convinced about this talk about "deception" and the fact that this would count against God as deception against his people. I'll give it some thought and get back to you if I have any insights - way, way past my bedtime, just when I was having fun.

Arikay · Aug 19, 2003

As others have said (in detail

) God didnt just make the earth appear old, he made it appear 750,000 Times older than it really is, and included all sorts of things that didnt need to be there. Another example would be all of those asteroid impacts.

So the only conclusion I can see is that god created the earth to decieve us, nice that god is lying to us.

Its not science either. Its philosophy. So you can believe that god lies or not, however it is pretty much impossible to falsify your claim, thus its not science.
Just like its impossible to falsify the claim that the earth was created last thursday.

revolutio · Aug 19, 2003

And speaking of maturity, he put a great deal of effort into adding age to may stars that will never have any effect on the Earth. When humans get to the stars, if we don't destroy ourselves before that, many of the stars we see now will be dead and gone. So what was the point of putting them there in the first place already in a 'mature' state?

JohnR7 · Aug 19, 2003

goat37 said:
Besides... what would be the point of making rocks look billions of years old?

Do you think they look billions of years old? They actually do not look that old to me. If they are exposed to the elements they start to wear away to nothing in even hundreds of years. If they are not exposed, then they do not seem to show any age at all. They could have been made yesterday.

Arikay · Aug 19, 2003

Another example (if no one has used it yet

) Are the Hawaiian Islands.

Appearance of Age says that they were all created at once.

Yet when we come up with a date for them, we find that they go in a line, of oldest to newest. The newest has an active volcano and Lava flow. And when we check each islands age with the continental drift, it comes up to match pretty well.
Suggesting that the continent drifted over a hot spot, and it made the islands one at a time.

Yet, if god created them all at once, he needed to go through quite a bit of extra work to fool us into thinking they were created one at a time. Definate deception.

Edit:

Another example is C-14 dating. C-14 dating has dated beyond 10,000 years, and so for it to be able too, god must have made dead animals and purposly put a certain amount of decayed c-14 in the animal, based on when he wanted to pretend it died.
Now of course, this is normally where creationists enact their super duper magical flood, and say "the flood distorted radiometric readings." The flood is basically enacted whenever they cant explain something, they say "the flood did it"

JohnR7 · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
I'm not convinced about this talk about "deception"

They seem to think that if the earth is not as old as they think it is, then God must be trying to deceive them. It could be they are deceived, but it is not God doing the deceiving.

JohnR7 · Aug 19, 2003

Arikay said:
Another example (if no one has used it yet ) Are the Hawaiian Islands.

Where did the animals come from on the Hawaiian islands?

Frumious Bandersnatch · Aug 19, 2003

Erichero said:
Got to admit I'm quite chuffed at coming up with the theory myself - still a relative newbie in the Creationist field, but by no means a dimwit and already seeing past the face value of your answers (no disrespect, just question what you see, which is what many of you wish YEC's would do).

I'm not convinced about this talk about "deception" and the fact that this would count against God as deception against his people. I'll give it some thought and get back to you if I have any insights - way, way past my bedtime, just when I was having fun.

You may have come up with it on your own but you are not the first to come up with it. It is called the Omphalos

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_theory

Perhaps God actually created the world just before I made this post.

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