How old is the earth

[Paul of Eugene]

It is logically perfectly defensible to argue that God created all the earth 6000 or so years ago but did so in the exact manner as if it were the billions year old universe we observe, with light rays in transit of the death of stars that never will really exist, dinosaur bones buried of beasts that never lived, and so forth.

In order to do that, God would have formed in His mind an image of what the universe would have been like if it had been there, complete in every detail.

This is, for the scientist, exactly equivalent to saying the universe is really billions of years old. Because the scientist can only evaluate the evidence and all the evidence would be perfectly consistent in pointing to an old universe.

The philosopher in me rebels at this because the philosopher in me believes that all the universe is merely a thought in the mind of God ANYWAY. The thought of the earlier universe complete with evolutionary history is therefore no less real than the thought of the current universe, because it is equally in the mind of God.

That's just my own thinking on this "solution" of the difference between the universe we observe and the literal words of Genesis.

 

[D28guy]

Paul,

"It is logically perfectly defensible to argue that God created all the earth 6000 or so years ago..."

I agree completly.

"dinosaur bones buried of beasts that never lived"

I believe the dinosaurs did in fact live. It was during the past 6000 years of history, prior to the flood, which was world wide, of course. They are mentioned in the book of Job.

God bless,

Mike

 

[A_Christian]

We as Christians are faced with complex issues. I believe that GOD uses these issues to test and hone our faith. Satan wants us to believe lies and spread lies and promote lies, and I believe he assists in providing half-truths disguised as scientific "theory" to help accomplish his goal.
Satan works to pull men away from GOD's Word and rest on the resolve of man's "wisdom".

 

[UTEOTW]

D28guy

Yours is easy to prove. Show that human and dinosaur fossils are found togther. Or found in layers dated to the same age. Or found in layers with the same index fossils.

Created kinds predicts that nearly all types of fossil should be found in all layers. We should find a mix of everything that ever lived scattered randomly throught the geologic layers. That fossils can be divided such that only certain fossils are found in certain layers is strong evidence against created kinds and for evolution.

A_Christian

I personally believe that Satan delights in Christians who focus on the tree on the literal reading of Genesis and miss the forest of what God was really trying to tell us.

You have not, and cannot, show that science is "lies" and "half-truths." Though you continually claim so. Of course, it has been fairly easy to do the same for "proofs" of a young earth.

 

[BobRyan]

Leaky finds human foot prints that are over a million years old (using the myths of evolutionism) and chooses to "ignore the evidence" and claim that in some magical way australiopithecines made them.

So "evidence" is not what is lacking. In the darkened minds of our atheist evolutionist friends (like Mary Leaky)- no evidence is sufficient to disuade them from their gospel-negating myths.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Dinosauer bones - with hemoglobin still present are found in non-fossilized form on the North American contintent at cold regions near the arctic... and -- yes -- human foot prints at the same level since they are basically lying on the ground like old cow bones.

In fact for 40 years they were assumed to be "Cow Bones" - because the evolutionists "just could not accept the data".

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Check your source, BobRyan, I bet those were mammoth bones.

 

[UTEOTW]

Yes, Bob, I think I need some references as I asked you to provide earlier. Please document your claims. They are less believeable otherwise.

 

[A_Christian]

So UTEOTW, just what has GOD taught you concerning Genesis that a literal interpretation misses?

You may wish to see the following:

http://www.enter.net/~momose/evolution.htm

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c026.html

http://www.megspace.com/religion/museltof/dinobo.html

http://www.godsaidmansaid.com/topic3.asp?Cat2=262&ItemID=668

http://evo.bio.psu.edu/hedgeslab/NEWS/NewsQuotes1997-SouthCoast.htm

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by A_Christian:
So UTEOTW, just what has GOD taught you concerning Genesis that a literal interpretation misses?

You may wish to see the following:

. . (see above post for actual links) . .

The claims made in the sites you provided would appear to be somewhat exagerated.

http://www.televar.com/~jnj/item6.htm

http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2001Aug/msg00337.html

 

[UTEOTW]

A_Christian

Genesis teaches me about the nature of God and the nature of man. It teaches me about the one true God, the Creator of all. About man's sinful nature and the need for grace. And so on.

You stick to your literal reading without a shred of evidence other than your own interpretation when the other stuff is what God was trying to tell us. You pay attention to the wrong parts.

Now, about the rest of your post. If you wish me to go after each point on all your sites, I guess we can do that, but this becomes long and boring in a hurry and any sense of debate is lost in the sheer volume. Why don't you summarize what you think are the very best few arguments in your own words and provide the URLs as a reference. Then we can debate something specific and something you think to be important. Or we can just post opposing URLs for a while without ever trying to form an argument for ourselves. Nah, that would be worst of all.

 

[A_Christian]

Paul of Eugene:

Somewhat? I actually find evolution exagerated in many ways.

UTEOTW:

Your view of Genesis has not added to my knowledge of GOD in anyway! I have learned much more by accepting the literal reading.

I think the logic is that you have been proven wrong. They have found Dino's blood, and that is the only thing I was wishing to demonstrate. One
doesn't find dirty dishes that are 300 million years old, neither should there be any blood on a stone.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

To quote from one of the websites I listed above:

Contrary to the "sensational" claims of the AIG article, no "actual red blood cells" were found. Only fragmentary remnants of heme iron to which were attached a few residual amino acids were all that were detected. In the case of the immunological response, the indications are that it resulted from the sporadic existence of pockets of extensively degraded protein, not intact hemoglobin as the AIG article implies. While somewhat unexpected, this response in no way calls into question the ancient vintage of these specimens. As Dr. Schweitzer noted, the special conditions under which partial preservation can sometimes occur are the subject of current research. What evidence do the creationists have that some limited form of preservation of protein fragments cannot occur under all environmental conditions? If they can offer no such evidence, then their self-serving pronouncements about the age of these fossils is only so much wishful thinking.

 

[BobRyan]

Let Mary Schweitzer, the scientist most involved with this find, take up the story of when her co-workers took turns looking through a microscope at a thin section of this T. rex bone, complete with blood vessel channels.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />
The lab filled with murmurs of amazement, for I had focused on something inside the vessels that none of us had ever noticed before: tiny round objects, translucent red with a dark center. Then a colleague took one look at them and shouted, "You've got red blood cells. You've got red blood cells!".

M. Schweitzer and T. Staedter, 'The Real Jurassic Park', Earth , June 1997 pp. 55-57

</font>[/QUOTE]"To ensure that the samples had not been contaminated with certain bacteria which have heme (but never the protein hemoglobin), extracts of the dinosaur fossil were injected over several weeks into rats. If there was even a minute amount of hemoglobin present in the T. Rex sample, the rats' immune system should build up detectable antibodies against this compound. This is exactly what happened in carefully controlled experiments. "

The point is - these are not 65 million year old biomolecules. Not 65 million year old hemoglobin. The specimen is obviously much younger and that "bothers" some people.

But then -- no "evidence" is "sufficient evidence" to a true devotee of evolutionism. We would not expect atheist evolutionists like Mary Leaky to "willingly accept" data that contradicts the myths of evolutionism.

But Bible believing Christians that fully accept consistency in the Gospel accounts - seem to have no problem with it.

In Christ,

Bob

[ March 17, 2004, 11:54 PM: Message edited by: BobRyan ]

 

[UTEOTW]

More fun! Dino blood! Both BobRyan and A_Christian have now used it or put a link to it. Let's put the claims to the test.

Since Bob has brought the original scientists into the fray, let me use also use their words.

Schweitzer says "Perhaps the mysterious structures were, at best, derived from blood, modified over the millennia by geological processes." So, not actaul blood cells. Also "Geochemical interactions with biomolecules preserved in fossil bone over millions of years are to be expected, and the presence of additional, nonhemoglobin signals detected by the various physical methods is not unexpected given the highly degraded and diagenetically altered biological compounds in the bone."

Now, why do YECers claim that this is fresh dinosaur bone? Perhaps it is from the following quote. "An exceptionally well preserved specimen of the tyrantnosaurid dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex Osborn shows little evidence of permineralization or other diagenetic effects." Diagenetic effects are basically things that happen to the fossil after the animal has died. They may include scavenger activity on the animals body or changes to the fosil itself from the environment. Permineralization is the filling in of the structure with minerals. These two taken together indicate only that this is an exceptionally well perserved fossil. Unfortunately, overzealous YECers have taken that the bone was not completely mineralized to mean that the material was unfossilized and then continued that to the extreme of their being actual cells.

Again, in a later paper the scientists say "Clearly these structures are not functional cells. However, one possibility is that they represent diagenetic alteration of original blood remnants, such as complexes of hemoglobin breakdown products, a possibility supported by other data that demonstrate that organic components remain in these dinosaur tissues."

Basically, the fossil was well perserved enough that a few organic compounds were isolated that may have come from the original dinosaur.

One final quote from the scientists involved. "Young Earth Creationists are like the "Flat Earth" people of last century, they latch on to pieces of straw, ignoring the bale. No cells have been found in any dinosaurs, but the remnants of red bloodcells have been hypothesized on the basis of Heme, a kind of iron produced biologically."

For a complete history of how a well respected scientists has had her work perverted by YECers you can read the following. It is just one more example of the deceit that the leaders of YEC are willing to commit since they have no real evidence. It makes me sick that people calling themselves "Christian" can justify such activity. The worst thing is, just about every time you give me some sort of "evidence" it can be traced back to the same kind or activity. Sometimes less extreme, sometimes much more. You accuse science of being nothing but "lies" but it is the YEC leaders who seem to be doing the most.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/blood.html

 

[UTEOTW]

As far as Leakey goes...

Australopithecus had legs that were curved for walking upright.

Its knee was that of an upright walker.

Its pelvis was that of an upright walker.

Its vertebra are curved in such a way as to indicate an upright posture.

The placement of the foramen magnum, the hole in the skull where the spinal cord passes down to the body, indicated that it walked upright.

Hmmm. I guess Australopithecus did walk upright and the footprints were made by Australopithecus rather than modern man. No need to make my standard comment, I think the point is made, but I will give my references.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/beasts/evidence/prog4/page2_2.shtml
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/b.html
Cartage/Lucy Link: Click Here
http://library.thinkquest.org/19926/java/library/article/28a.htm?tqskip1=1

[ March 18, 2004, 03:03 PM: Message edited by: Gina L ]

 

[A_Christian]

Why don't you just give it up. The flat earth people, and those that burned witches, and those that attacked missionaries are still with us. They now are called liberals. They make fun of people who hold to a historic Genesis. They ridicule those that believe that sin is actually sin. They go to designer "churches" where they will be cuddled and petted. And they give all sorts of legal reasons why Christianity and education don't mix.

Why not just read the following:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/94/12/6291.pdf

EVOLUTIONISTS WROTE THE ARTICULE----You may note that they also use words such as maybe and perhaps and possibly and suggest. Such terms are not limited to Creationists.

Perhaps, you will one day pull your foot out of your mouth and your head out of the sand of human understanding...

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Calling believers in a flat earth "liberals" is turning the word to it's complete opposite meaning! The flat earthers have a proud history of refusing to give in to modern science in terms of deep space. That dates way back to the era of Martin Luthor. Hanging on to one's beliefs in spite of evidence is the hallmark of extreme conservatism, not liberalism. By the way, why don't you buy their arguments, since they use essentially the same reasoning you use to reject modern science in terms of deep time?

 

[UTEOTW]

Excellent paper A_Christian. Loved it.

Now, what part exactly do you think supports YEC?

The paper is a wonderful refutation of the idea that these bones are recent. Read paragraphs 4 and 5 of the first section to get a good explanation of how heme compounds can be preserved and stabilized over geologic time. Read the last paragraph of the Results section which spells out in that the results are "not dependent on fully intact protein, and even very small peptides" would be sufficient to give the results they found.

This is a great paper. The work, from the perspective of someone outside the field, is well supported. Of course anytime you see something about dinosaurs with Jack Horner as a collaborator, you know you are going to have something good. As I show time and time again, the things that YECers suggest the data say are not the way things are and require twisting things into a pretzel to get their claims. This paper shows very well how Wieland had to deliberately mischaracterize the actual findings to support what he is trying to say. Them bones is old.

Next argument please. With references.

 

[A_Christian]

Paul of Eugene:

The Bible doesn't say that the world is F L A T.

The Bible doesn't say that man evolved from single cell organisms over billions of years.

The Bible doesn't say that the earth is the center of GOD's Universe.

The Bible does say that GOD hung the circle of the earth on nothing.

The Bible does say that man was created apart from the other creatures on the sixth day.

The Bible does say that everything was created for the glory of GOD.

A liberal is someone who limits the power of GOD while promoting man's OWN ajenda. The witch doctor, the Buddhist, the evoultionist. There is no real difference. They are all living a lie.