I only know that the Bible is right, because I cannot imagine it being wrong about what is not observed when it is so perfectly correct regarding what is observed, such as human nature and the difference between true consistent right and wrong and humanities desire to justify self before any and all consistent truth.
While the only claimed testimony for the origins of our universe that I have ever heard of comes from the Judaeo Christian ethic and Bible account in Genesis. In all other religions they reach a point of admitting that no one knows what occurred before, but in the Bible is a clear account of the beginning that even states that God also made the stars, for those who are too dense to realize that God making the Heavens would also include the stars.
Now there is evidence for a young universe while much of this, when denied, forces atheists to look to other unproven theories, such as the Oort Cloud for the continued existence of short term comets, as explanations with which to disprove a God who has always claimed to be beyond measure, and thus beyond proof.
But when you mix science and the Bible the part that comes from science may be proven wrong.
This is why the Biblical account of the Exodus changed, we tried to tie the Bible in with archeology and when the archeological part fell through it was the Bible and not archeology that was laughed at by those who are quite frankly terrified by the very thought that God may be real.
This may not help much, but it is the best I can do.
Please note. Every one of these facts is disputed, but how many of them are disputed by hard, verifiable, testable evidence and how many are disputed by pure conjecture that lacks any real evidence?
Being able to see galaxies that are millions and billions of light years away is pretty strong evidence that the universe is pretty old. Otherwise, we wouldnât be able to see them. The constancy of the speed of light is much more than an unproven theory.
More to the point, is there any evidence that would change your mind? Can your mind be changed?
First of all, can we get one thing straight here. The age of the universe is NOT an âatheistâ thing. The basic rules and principles from which it is determined have nothing whatsoever to do with attempting to âdisprove God.â Itâs simply a matter of measuring things.
The problem with these âfactsâ is that they simply donât prove what YECs claim that they prove.
There are a few themes that come through in all of them. First, they rely on rates of change that nobody â neither YECs nor mainstream scientists â expects to have been constant in the past. This means that the extrapolations that they make are simply not valid. Second, their sample sizes are tiny and their error bars are huge. This means that they simply donât come anywhere close to establishing a case for a 6,000 year earth. Third, those that actually place an upper limit on the age of the earth frequently produce limits that are far, far greater than six thousand years anyway. And fourthly, some of them rely on invalid calculations or in some cases donât even calculate anything at all.
By contrast, old-earth data is usually based on rates of change that are rock solid. Nuclear decay rates and distant starlight, for example, are based on the fundamental constants of natureâthe speed of light, Planckâs constant, the fine structure constant, the relative strengths of the fundamental forces of nature-- and so on. YECs try to propose that these rates could have been much higher in the past, but when youâre talking about the fundamental forces of nature, that is pure science fiction. For starters, squeezing all the nuclear decay that is observed in nature in to less than six thousand years would have raised the Earthâs temperature to 22,000°C. And old-earth results are frequently accurate to within a fraction of 1%. For example, the K/T boundary, and with it the extinction of the dinosaurs, has been dated to 66,038,000 years ago with a precision of just one part in six thousand.
So what does this look like in these cases? Letâs take spiral galaxies for starters. YECs claim that spiral galaxies should be much more tightly wound than they actually are if they really were 14 billion years old. But even if this claim were correct (and it isnât â it is based on an outdated misunderstanding of how galactic spiral arms actually work) it would only reduce the ages of the galaxies concerned to a few hundred million years or so. This falls far, far, far, far short of getting them down to just six thousand.
The sun takes about 225 million years to make one orbit round the centre of the galaxy. Six thousand years ago, the difference between the galaxy as it was then and as it is today was negligible on a galactic scale. Youâre going to have to start off with some starting point for the shape of your galaxy, and regardless of what that starting point is, it would have taken hundreds of millions or even billions of years for it to get to the shape it is today. And then you have galactic collisions such as this one:
And what about galactic collisions, such as this one:
These galaxies are called âThe Miceâ. They are about 290 million light years away, about 100,000 light years from one end to the other, and colliding with each other at a rate of about 200 miles a second. It just takes a quick back of the envelope calculation to show that they must have taken at least a hundred million years to spread out to that size.
For what itâs worth, galactic spiral arms are a solved problem. They are easily understood in terms of density waves â regions of greater and lesser star density. Hereâs a computer simulation of how it works:
Then thereâs Earthâs magnetic field. YECs have measured changes in the Earthâs magnetic field over the past two centuries or so and blindly extrapolated them by assuming an exponential decay curve. But the Earthâs magnetic field doesnât decay exponentially, it fluctuates randomly. We can determine its historic strength from studies of ancient pottery and deposits of magnetic rocks in the geological record. These show us that it is currently about twice as strong as it was a few thousand years ago, and that it actually reversed on numerous occasions throughout the Earthâs history. The backwards extrapolation that they appeal to simply isnât valid.
Some of these claims are not even honest. The one about ocean sediment accumulation tries to determine an upper limit for the age of the oceans by dividing the rate at which sediment gets deposited on the continental shelf (in river estuaries and the like) with the total amount of sediment on the deep ocean floor. That is like trying to determine annual amounts of snowfall in London by taking measurements in the Cairngorms of Scotland, 500 miles away. It simply doesnât work. In any case, the error bars in the results are simply too large to justify such a conclusion.
I could go through the others in detail, but suffice it to say that they all follow exactly the same theme: tiny samples, huge error bars, rates of change that nobody expects to have been constant, upper limits on the age of the earth that are still far, far, far in excess of six thousand years â the facts that they are claiming are simply too ill-defined and too broad and ambiguous to coming anywhere close to establishing a case for a young earth.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
44
Either you did not read anything I wrote or you ignored it.
You measure what occurs today and assume that nothing has ever clanged, which is an atheist thing entirely.
God created the universe in six days and then rested from his labor, meaning the process of creation is not an ongoing, currently measurable event.
While your readings on tea leaves, oops, I mean pottery and magnetic minerals are once again extrapolated into your own view of our universe and its steady state of existence.
The orbit of our Earth, the orbit of our moon, dust accumulation upon our moon that may be declining after the destruction of a possible planet that left the asteroid belt in its aftermath, the Earthâs magnetic field, the short term duration of comets and a lot of other things are all fluctuating but also steadily declining events.
As for seeing other galaxies! Why would or should God create them and not reveal them to us? The Bible says that God stretched out the universe or heavens, like a man would stretch out a canvas painting over a frame. But like in all else, as an atheist, you say, natural processes cannot account for this so we will ignore it.
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God will not argue with you because God is smarter than I am, for I am stupid enough to argue with someone who clearly has their mind closed to any possibility that goes beyond ongoing, observable natural processes.
No, Dominic, I did NOT ignore what you wrote, and I do NOT just assume that nothing has ever âclanged.â On the contrary, I specifically said that some things DO change. If you missed that point, then you are the one who is not reading things and ignoring things, not me. Scientists perform detailed studies to attempt to determine which rates could reasonably have changed and which rates could not. They measure things. They cross-check things. They ask questions about what they would expect to see if particular rates of change had happened, and then ask whether they see those things in reality. These are not assumptions, they are tests of assumptions. There is nothing âatheisticâ whatsoever about that.
The whole point is that science has rules. There are rules that have nothing whatsoever to do with âatheismâ or âliberalism.â Some of these rules come directly from the Bible itself. For starters, Deuteronomy 25:13-16 says this:
š³Do not have two differing weights in your bag â one heavy, one light. šâ´Do not have two differing measures in your house â one large, one small. šâľYou must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lá´Ęá´ your God is giving you. šâśFor the Lá´Ęá´ your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.
And just to be clear about this: this is a verse of Scripture that applies to every context. No exceptions, no excuses. There is nothing whatsoever in that passage to suggest that it applies only to some contexts but not to others. Honest and accurate weights and measures are one thing that everyone who studies creation should agree on, whether we are Christians, or atheists, or Muslims, or Jews, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or Trekkies, or hyper-intelligent shades of the colour blue.
The fact of the matter is that conventional old-earth geochronology follows those rules. Young-earth so-called âcreation scienceâ does not.
If you want, I can explain exactly what the rules are and why young-earth claims do not follow them. But if youâre just going to blindly dismiss anything and everything that you donât agree with as âatheismâ or âliberalism,â then thereâs no point in even having any further discussion.
Iâm not arguing against God. And my mind is not âclosed to any possibility that goes beyond ongoing, observable natural processes.â The only thing I am arguing against is misinformation and falsehood. And the only thing that my mind is closed to is sloppy or dishonest approaches to weights and measures.
Your view of the range of change is the pivot point of this entire disagreement, as you see change and agree with this, but this is not the kind of change that I am speaking of.
I mean things like God, spreading out the entire universe, Faster Than Light, yes FTL, and far beyond any observed change. Or even before this, God speaking and all of the energy and material needed for our universe emerging form God.
Evidence =s the after image that we can see of our primordial, not at all spread out, universe.
What an ironic question, since all those statements are largely âpure conjecture âŚlacking any real evidenceâ that I have seen. Jammycakes has offered examples of hard evidence, and much more can be found elsewhere on the internet with a simple google. If you wish to discuss or dispute the evidence presented, or show real evidence that those statements have validity, please do so, but please refrain from making false characterization or assumptions of motive. It may well be helpful to review the forum expectations for gracious dialogue: FAQ - The BioLogos Forum
Well yes, but those kinds of changes still wonât reduce the age of the universe to six thousand years.
Not unless you are proposing that God created extraordinarily self-consistent evidence for a detailed history of 13.8 billion years of events that never happened.
Have you personally been around for 13.8 billion years?
As I said a thousand times before, all of this is your detailed speculations upon things which were never observed nor recorded by anyone.
As for their consistency, this is just saying, your logic has proven that your logic is correct and whenever anything comes about to contradict you, you simply revamp it without ever daring to speculate upon the possibility that your logic just might be embracing stupidity through limiting what you will believe to only those things that are small enough for you to see, measure and understand.
Reality has always lain fully beyond our human ability to measure and observe it.
This is proven to every generation by the the NEW we discover.
But, every single generation seemes to take the same old view, that we somehow know it all and therefor need no God to guide us.
But necessarily as interpreted and understood by a human being, with each human being potentially mistaken. Why should Bishop Ussherâs estimates and totals count for more than the excellent peer-reviewed estimates made by scientists? The whole point of science is not to prop up any traditional system of belief but rather to explore the limits of what can be directly measured. Why do you insist that the Bible must be a more reliable account of the natural world than that which people have been building on for centuries? Was that why the Bible was written, is that what God wished to communicate?
Sigh, the old âwere you there?â fallacy rears its ugly head again.
Take a look at this picture:
This is a fossil of a fish. You donât have to have âbeen there to see it happenâ to see that it was, in fact, once a fish. Not having âbeen there to see it happenâ may mean that we donât know everything about the history of the universe, but it doesnât mean that we donât know anything about the history of the universe.
Itâs the same way with determining the ages of things. There are ways of doing so that:
do not require you to have âbeen there to see it happenâ
do not make untestable assumptions
do not involve any kind of âspeculationâ whatsoever
are not based on âatheismâ or âmaterialismâ or ânaturalismâ.
One example is using two different measurement techniques that use different physical processes, and checking to see whether they give the same results. For example, cross checking the rates of continental drift determined from radiometric dating with the same rates measured directly using GPS. They give the same result every time.
When cross-checks of this nature give the same result, that is a pretty solid indicator that the methods concerned are reliable and work as intended. There is no âspeculationâ involved. They do not assume anything. And there is nothing âatheisticâ about them whatsoever. Itâs measurement: nothing more, nothing less. And measurement is the direct diametric opposite of speculation.
Iâm sorry, but thatâs just nonsense. Consistency doesnât say âyour logic has proven that your logic is correct.â Consistency says that measurements and evidence have proven that the logic is correct. And itâs not about âbelieving to only those things that are small enough for you to see, measure and understand.â Itâs simply about believing that what we can see, measure and understand is an accurate, if partial, representation of reality, and not deceptive or misleading.
Youâre making a lot of accusations against the scientific community that are completely untrue here, Dominic. I presume that this is because you donât have any scientific training or professional experience beyond secondary school and therefore youâve misunderstood how these things work. We can explain how these things work in reality if you like and if youâre prepared to listen, but if youâre just going to respond with tirades that dismiss anything and everything that you donât like as âspeculationâ or âstupidityâ or âatheismâ or ânot believing anything that you canât understand,â then thereâs no point in carrying on this conversation.
Just consider. Imagine someone you knew was brutally murdered. The murder weapon (with finger prints) was found at the scene and the killers DNA was found on the victim. But (and this is important) there were no eye witnesses. The killer is arrested and the case goes to court.
The defence calls the chief investigating officer to the stand. âDid anyone see the accused commit the crime?â She asks. âWell no.â The CIO replies, âbut the evidence placesâŚâ
âBut how can you know? No one was there. No one saw it happen. How do you know the murder weapon and DNA did not get there by some other means?" turning to the judge she says âYour honour, since no one actual saw what took place on the night in question I request all charges be dropped immediatelyâ.
To your horror the judge agrees and the case is thrown out. After all, none of the CISs were there on the night of the murder. How can the know what really happened. Sure theyâve collected the evidence but they did not directly observe the evidence coming into existence. How can they prove it really happened?
None of us would want a criminal justice system that is predicated on Humean skepticism. We recognise that even though someone wasnât there to witness a murder the evidence tells itâs own story. And yet that is what would happen if YECs âscientificâ methods became mainstream. Moreover, your quote above is appealing to Humean skepticism to defend the a literal reading of the creation accounts. Ie. âWere you there?â
Iâm sure you didnât know that was what you were doing, becuase Iâm sure you learnt to do it the same place I did YEC websites like Answers in Genesis. See here:
If you ask me, Humean skepticism is the real pagan philosophy that is endangering the church and undermining the bible - not evolution and an old earth.
For those who donât know, David Hume for which Humean Skepticism is named, was the enlightenment thinker who, among other things, is famous for trying to philosophically disprove the existence of miracles.
Just a reminder of what you are talking about here. You are talking about this:
Really? Where in the Bible does it say anything about the spiral structure of galaxies, human population growth, erosion of continents, helium diffusion, polonium halos, genetic mutation rates, Earthâs magnetic field, moon dust accumulation, comet disintegration, or ocean sediment accumulation?
I donât know about you, but I have never seen a Bible translation that even mentions any of these things, let alone describes them as clocks.
@Dominic_Roy_Accampo Will you please stop slandering your fellow Christians who know a lot more about this than you do? It does not say much about you as a Christian. This is in violation of the gracious dialogue rules around here.
It is a creationist thing, too. Every creationist I have read or talked to picked out certain natural processes and constants and projected them backwards into Earthâs history. For example, flood geologists assume the density of water was the same in the past which is why they claim sediments will form during the flood.
To use any of these as evidence you would have to use constants that were observed and measured in the modern age, and then project them backwards into history.
If this happened then light would be stretched to such a degree that we wouldnât see it. If you are going to invoke the supernatural to explain away a problem then it only reinforces the conclusion that the evidence backs an old universe. If the evidence werenât consistent with an old universe then you could simply point to it without invoking the supernatural.
Hey brother - I know how you feel, because I felt the exact same way. If we donât take Genesis 1 at face-value, if we allow the world and science to dictate how we interpret Scripture, then we are subjugating truth to modern times and not to the faithful understanding of the Bible. I was right there with you and I feel like Scriptural authority MUST be defended.
However, what changed my mind wasnât any sort of scientific data or interpretations of âyomâ, it was a simple reading of Romans 1, which says (paraphrasing) that the evidence of God and his power is clearly seen in creation by the world. Itâs seen so clearly that it condemns them.
Unfortunately, I realized that being a 6-day creationist meant that it was impossible for non-Christians to accurately observe creation. I was unwittingly saying that if a scientist hasnât been exposed to Genesis 1, then he is incapable of understanding his own data. Only with the Bible can you determine that the speed of light must have changed to make galaxies millions of light-years away, but the Apostle Paul tells us that non-Christians observe creation, not only accurately, they observe it so accurately that they are condemned for not acknowledging its Creator.
So I want to encourage you to not lose an ounce of your passion to defend the authority of Godâs Word, but like the faithful men who also called Galileo a heretic, sometimes our present understanding of the universe does, in fact, adjust our hermeneutics. Bless you bro!
