Subduction and plate tectonics work; expanding earth does not. The pattern of earthquakes at the trenches tracks the sinking slabs. Variations in the speed of earthquake waves allows us to detect sunken plates inside the mantle. Under the ocean, it’s actually ultramafic rock at 20-50 km down, definitely not granite, and the only way to have basalt that deep is if it were subducted. But 20-50 km deep is still within the plate. It’s closer to 100 km down when you reach the asthenosphere, where a small level of melting (about 1%) plus the heat and pressure causes the rock to be plastic. I.e., it is still solid but it fails by squishing and bending, not by breaking. This allows the plates to move around on top of it (as measured by GPS, which doesn’t match the expanding earth model) and the subducting edge to move underneath.
Mark…I wish I knew what comment by Laura you refer to. But yes, she does have good comments. HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Note that light travels slower when going through a medium. If light were traveling slower than expected, the universe would be even older, not younger.
Optical space-time wave packets having arbitrary group velocities in free space | Nature Communications is the original source on “speeding up”. Your conclusion is based on a bad headline - they increased the speed of a pulse of light, not the speed of light. Increasing the speed of light in a vacuum is not possible. Young-earth models invoking a change in the speed of light produce so many problems that most young-earth advocates don’t endorse them.
Are you actually no more sensible than Dawkins? This is a particularly bad god of the gaps argument. Is God active in things that happen by natural law, as the Bible affirms he is, or not? If He is, then natural processes, chance, and the big bang are merely ordinary means used by God. Even if one were to take a deistic approach, evolution and the big bang and the like only explain physical things, not more important issues such as ethics and theology.
Information does not require an intelligent source; that is a myth invented by antievolutionists. For example, jgfdbklfgbjfbkjlfbjldf did not result from an intelligent cause. I closed my eyes and banged the keyboard. But it produced information: the information that I just typed jgfdbklfgbjfbkjlfbjldf. It’s not particularly useful information in any context that I know of, but it is information. In evolution, information is produced by mutations, recombination, and the like. Is it useful information? That is tested against the environment - if the organism survives, the information was good enough. Conversely, all the natural processes produce information - this is the temperature here, it’s wet there, etc.
Happy new year, Robin. Happy to oblige:
I think the best course is to not treat the Bible like a science book at all. Technically, believing in a heliocentric solar system is also reconciling the Bible “with something from outside it,” and I haven’t had any problems with doing that. I simply don’t think the Bible speaks to the age of the earth and universe, any more than it speaks to nuclear fusion, cell division, or Newton’s laws of motion. Nowhere does anyone, in the Old or New Testament, make reference to any kind of age for the earth or universe, and neither Jesus nor Paul or other epistle writers devote a single word to upholding a “biblical” age of the earth.
(But if you just click on the little up and right arrow beside my avatar in the upper right corner of your post, it will take you to my post. Then if you click on the same arrow beside Laura’s avatar it will tak you to Laura’s post which I’ve quoted here.)
Thanks for the explanation, Mark. And having read the quote — yes, well said. I did just go back and read her remarks…from 6 days or so ago now. I also looked at some of that “Bereshit” blurb that someone wants everyone to read. It does not relate to questions about the age of the earth but rather to someone’s figuring that the date of Jesus’ crucifixion (30 A.D., per the blog) and the date of the start of the New Millennium (2030 A.D.) are predicted in the first word of the first book of the Bible. This does account for where someone is coming from, I think.,…that is, it all must fit into a certain timeframe that must be seen as biblical.
And it is not information. It is random chicken scratch. Information must carry an idea that is recognizable between two entities. Like these posts, for the most part. Even if we disagree on specifics, we know what the words mean coming from each other. It’s the conclusions we have problems with.
How much do you know about computer architecture and programming? Our cells are like computers. There are programs, input and output. The difference is a matter of complexity. Our cells make the best supercomputer look like an abacus. You can’t change the software without changing the hardware and vice versa. They must both be upgraded at one time to add new capabilities.
Genesis 2 is not a creation account, and it is not separate from Genesis 1. The bolded part below also goes for chapters 10-11.
Blockquote
Scholars broke up the Bible text into chapters and verses so it would be easier for us to find what we’re looking for. It doesn’t mean that the seventh day belongs in the same breath as the creation of Adam and Eve. In fact, it would have been better, perhaps, to put the chapter break between [Genesis 2:3] and [Genesis 2:4].
Blockquote
That still puts the account of the creation of Adam after the seventh day — in the text. That doesn’t necessitate Adam’s creation was after the seventh day chronologically. It is common in non-fictional accounts to give a summary of a major event, then go back and give specifics as needed. That is what is happening here. Adam and Eve were clearly created on day six, as [Genesis 1:26-27] indicate. The account in [Genesis 2:4-25] is a more detailed description of what happened on day six.
A cloud’s shadow on the ground carries information about the cloud.
Do you have independent support for any of this? I can’t imagine what that would even look like. Not only cells but brains are nothing like a computer. All allusions of life being machine like are gross simplifications. You can’t argue from the gross simplification to what must be true about the organism itself.
The second creation story begins in Genesis 2.4b.
It is clearly a second creation account, and it says man was formed before any plants had sprung up. And it says man was alone so God formed the animals in search of a companion for him.
Instead of reading attempts to force fit the texts together, simply read what is written in the Bible.
The notes of the Oxford Edition NRSV describe it this way: “This tradition, often identified as J, is different from 1.1-2.3, as evidenced by a different style and order of events…Animals are created after the first human rather than before…”
Patrick, answer a simple question: Was man created after plants were growing or was man formed before any plants had sprung up?
The first creation story says man was created on Day 6 and the earth had brought forth vegetation on Day 3.
The second creation story says man was formed before any plants had sprung up.
The two chronologies cannot be reconciled as literal history.
DNA and rNA are codes. Quatrinary, rather than binary, but codes, nonetheless. They must be read in a particular order at a particular time to work. DNA can read forward, backward, it can skip areas and read from multiple areas. There are stops and starts. It isn’t some fuzzy logic that can be changed on a whim. The only reason that evolution became popular was the belief that cells were simple blobs of low complexity. Now we know there is a virtual micro-city in every cell.
Does it say that? I don’t think it does.
Genesis 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
Plants of the field and herbs of the field are cultivated crops and thorn bushes, both of which came about as a result of Adam’s sin in Genesis 3:17-18. He had never had to work the land or grow crops until then.
No. They are complex molecules which replicate. Thinking of it as a ‘code’ is a metaphor to aid human understanding.
A sort of sub-cellular free enterprise zone? Are we to imagine the chemicals whose properties unzip and recombine the component molecules which make-up DNA and RNA are involved in a decision process of some kind? Do they actually ‘read’ each strand and act accordingly? The answer is no. The zipper chemicals have no little eyeballs or little brains and hands. They’re not workers who go home every night to a family. They are chemicals undergoing reactions. Rather than getting carried away by the metaphor, consider its strengths and weaknesses. The metaphor isn’t literally what is going on. They’re just convenient ways for humans to make sense of it.
The second creation story does say that man was formed before any plants had sprung up.
The NET Bible notes are helpful. I will post them.
And just so there is no uncertainty:
So, in the second creation story, man was formed “back before anything was growing,” and in the first creation story the earth had brought forth every kind of vegetation.
Bur look back at Genesis 1, the first creation story. Doesn’t it say that the earth brought forth every kind of plant? Your post disagrees with that.
11 Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
I want to jump in here to express my rather strong feelings that the Gospel of John, chapter 1 is obviously a restating of Genesis 1:1. And in that case, Jesus is the Light of the Creation, as well as of the “world” in the spiritual sense.
Then in Jon3:1-21 which is the context for John 3:16 the purpose of the creation is fairly laid out.
So…
I find trying to make Genesis 1 and 2 literal is nonsense. And I was raised in the YEC camp!
As Yeshua Jesus says
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
The stuff of General Revelation is ours to discover and interpret, which means if Science and evolution explain the mechanisms, then great!
Where the Bible explains speaks to Special Revelation (which is its purpose) then science needs to take a back seat.
I guess we are quibbling over the details of how this works out.
yes…quibbling it is …but I am enjoy reading the quibbles. Thanks for the thoughts YOU bring to this!!
You just posted the same thing I did, nearly identically.
This is far from all plants. Trees, flowers, ferns, grasses, pretty much everything but agricultural crops and uncultivated growth (weeds and thorns and unwanted plants) was grown and the world was a practical garden. Everything there was good to taste and eat.
Yes, and it is why I like the KJV and a few other versions and why I don’t like some of them. When the people translating the Bible think it isn’t actual history, then they can play loose with the words. After all, what’s the difference if it’s just a fable?
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Notice the difference between this and the version you posted?
It’s not quite a retelling of Genesis 1, but it is an introduction to the creator of Genesis, and gives the bona fides of Jesus as God. The problem now is that if Genesis 1 is a myth, then John 1 must also be a myth.
If you have time, I found an article to read:
http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/apologetics/genesis111.html
Part of his conclusion:
[quote] I need to pay as much attention to Genesis 1-11, if it is myth, as I do to the story of Pandora’s box, or to the myth of Marduk slaying and cutting up the monster Tiamat, or to the fairy tale of “Little Red Riding Hood.” When the preacher who takes Genesis 3 as myth tells me that I need a redeemer in view of man’s fallenness, I have but one response: " Did man really fall just as recorded in Genesis 3?" If not, I need no redeemer; rather, I need to evolve higher.
[/quote]