Young Earth - Old Earth

[robycop3]

God did not call us to be pre- mid- or post- trib. He called us to be ready for him to come as a thief, at any time, or at any moment. Scripturally Christ could come pre- mid- or post- trib. But it is not God's will for us to know the timing of things, as Christ said...

6 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?
7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.
8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. - Acts 1

As far as 2060AD, I believe Isaac Newton was closest, and to quote him....

“And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half.” –Daniel 12:7

From a folio cataloged as Yahuda MS 7.3g, f. 13v:

"So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, reckoning twelve months to a year & 30 days to a month as was done in the Calendar of the primitive year. And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of lived kingdoms, the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end A.C. 2060.”" - – Isaac Newton

As Charlemagne was crowned king on December 25, 800 by Pope Leo the III so the day of Christ's coming will be on Christmas Day, 2060. If the rapture of the saints (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) occurs seven years before the time of Christ’s coming the date of the rapture 12.25 2053. However… Isaac Newton notes…

'“It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner. This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fancifull men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, & by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail. Christ comes as a thief in the night, & it is not for us to know the times & seasons which God hath put into his own breast." –- Isaac Newton

Christ could come today! And it is his will for us to be ready.

No, Jesus won't return til the "beast" is in power, & the Jews build a new temple in Jerusalem.

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

Carbon 14 is based on decay rate...and differing organic materials decay at differing rates, if I'm not mistaken.
No matter what dating method scientists currently use, I've heard of flaws in all of them.

I as well.

Yeah, so have I, but none that amount to much. They certainly all have limitations, and some calibration may yet be needed, but not six orders of magnitude, not even five.

Here are a couple of references. The latter may be a bit dated (pun intended).
General Reference (2011)
Dating Methods That Work
Detailed Reference (1996)
The Dynamics of Dating

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

Right. Its the answer the world has for the end of the universe. Guess they can't fit the New Jerusalem into the picture puzzle.

Seems like a talking past each other moment. In and of itself, entropy is not an end of the world/universe issue. Entropy is a fundamental of thermodynamics. Energy transfer is never 100% reversible. There are always losses in potential. This is why you are not allowed to apply for a patent for a perpetual motion machine. There is no such thing. It’s a general principle. It would require miracle.

Universal heat death would seem to be the final result, if nothing else were to happen. Everything at the same energy level, no potential for transfer, maximum entropy. But science can say nothing about whether or how God might intervene. Without revelation, no one can. However, this is a completely separate issue, and has nothing at all to do with entropy before the fall, except that the theory you seem to have suggested would also need revelation to support it.

Well, now that I’ve said all that, I’m beginning to suspect what the “non-entropy” theory entails, and doubt I’d bother trying to dissuade someone from it. Instead, I’ll go back and list another point to why I can accept an old earth/old universe interpretation. It’s probably the most important one, but I may yet add another.

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

I don’t know that much can be settled in this thread, but there are some simple, basic reasons why I can accept an old universe and earth.

1. The opening verses of Genesis easily allow that understanding. The heavens and earth exist before the six “days” are mentioned, thus maintaining ex nihilo.
2. According to plenty of Hebrew scholars, even the “days” can be long periods.
3. The Bible does not make an issue of it. It’s never the point. It’s just another case of harmonizing scripture with natural discovery, similar to the Sun-Earth centrality debate, which took a while to resolve, and was in the favor of the non-obvious biblically.
4. By far, the best scientific arguments are on the side of old, which is actually really young from a non-theistic perspective. Time is just not on their side.
5. Doing so means I can focus on the real debate with non-theists, and they have some major (fatal) flaws in their reasoning.

6. This is probably the most important point of all. Bible interpreters work diligently to harmonize seemingly contradictory passages within the Bible, often arriving at conclusions that could never be the result of reading the isolated passages. The creation being God’s awesome handiwork, there is no good reason for me to be surprised at the need to do the same here. And it could just as easily be that those accusing of man-pleasing are instead themselves guilty…of hypocrisy.​

 

[Dave G]

Carbon-14, etc. is quite unreliable. The speeda light is not.

Roby, how far is it to the sun?

 

[Dave G]

Bible interpreters work diligently to harmonize seemingly contradictory passages within the Bible, often arriving at conclusions that could never be the result of reading the isolated passages.

Isn't it odd that the Bible is the only book that seems to need teams of "interpreters" in order to try and understand it?
I remember the first time I stood back and objectively thought about the concept of a "bible college", and realized that.

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

Isn't it odd that the Bible is the only book that seems to need teams of "interpreters" in order to try and understand it?
I remember the first time I stood back and objectively thought about the concept of a "bible college", and realized that.

I’m not sure of what you are getting at, but in my statement the term “interpreters” can be taken collectively or independently--it doesn’t matter. That is, those that interpret the Bible, whether together or separately, are all included.

The point I’m making is that harmonization is required where passages seem to contradict, and many times the result is not at all what you would get from any passage taken just by itself. As a good example, just look at the “Christmas” story accounts in the Gospels.

 

[Dave G]

The point I’m making is that harmonization is required where passages seem to contradict, and many times the result is not at all what you would get from any passage taken just by itself. As a good example, just look at the “Christmas” story accounts in the Gospels

I take them as a "composite", because every word of God is true.
There are no contradictions, only seeming ones.
Understanding takes time, but it isn't impossible.

As for the Creation, 6 literal days, and a "young Earth" is what I believe by faith, because that is what I see in the book of Genesis.


May God bless you.

 

[Aaron]

Well, actually, scientists have appeared to have pushed light beyond 186 K/MPS in a special chamber filled with cesium vapor. & highly pressurized. Once the light had left the chamber, it resumed its normal speed. There's nothing known outside this special environment that appears to speed up light, and the exact mnature of this apparent speedup is not known. While the laser pulse those scientists used appeared to have left that chamber before it had completely entered it, The scientists explained the phenomenom occurred because the cesium atoms seemed to "trade energy" with the leading edge of the laser pulse. However, the light exiting the chamber was not=quite identical to the original laser pulse, & was less-intense.. (And obviously, many other physicists dispute the Princeton peoples' findings.)

One reason a physical object cannot go fast as light is, the faster something goes, the more its atoms & molecules are pressed together, so once it reaches its limit of shrinkage & compression, it can't go any faster. The scale of this effect is too gradual to affect our present space ships.

But in a vacuum, light travels at the same speed constantly.

And GR reminds us that speed is relative to the observer. If I'm standing besire a road & a car with its wondows up goes by me at 100 MPH, & there's a fly buzzing about inside the car, that fly will appear to be flying at 100 MPH, which a fly simply can't do in the open. If someone in the car opens a window, he will seem to be hit by a 100 MPH wind. If the driver of the car has laid on the horn, the pitch of its sound will go up as it approaches, & quickly go lower soon as it passes me. (Doppler effect.) However, as the car approaches, the sound waves do not go faster thab C. 1100 feet/second, sound's speed thru air near sea level. nor is it traveling at less than that speed as it passes. The sound's waves are compressed from my perspective as it approacher, & spread out after it passes. HOWEVER, THE SOUND'S ACTUAL SPPED REMAINS CONSTANT. Same for light, but the Doppler effect for light is observed by us only if its source is moving at very high speed.(Astronomers have noticed a "red shift" in light from objects moving away from us very rapidly.) BUT THE LIGHT IS STILL MOVING AT THE SAME SPEED.

God has caused/allowed us to make these discoveries for a reason, and these discoveries favor an old earth. As for the blue stars, this simply shows more stars are forming. There's an enormous amount of free hydrogen in "space", & when some force such as the gravity of an existing star acts upon some of it to bring it together, a star is born. Over millions of years, stars burn out or explode, & from their remnants, new stars are formed, in a way, same as life on earth is formed from the remains of past life.

And we must remember, GOD made all the laws of physics, & they CANNIOT be broken or changed by us. Six protons together is an atom of carbon with all the properties of carbon anywhere we can go. Any more or any less protons, & it's an atom of something else. This "law" is inviolable.

You're confusing GR and SR. Special Relativity is what says the speed of light is constant with reference to the observer. That was postulated as a possible explanation for the failure of the Michelson-Morely experiment to detect the motion of the earth. (They weren't testing for the Ether.)

To test GR, one would have to travel all over the universe. But one test appears to have falsified SR. Conducting a Crucial Experiment of the Constancy of the Speed of Light Using GPS

Like I said, you're just citing the fragmented and incomplete info you've been fed.

If all motion is relative (because one cannot say with absolute certainty our observation platform is a moving platform) we can assume our platform to be motionless in the center of mass of a rotating universe, and still explain the observations in accordance with GR, which allows c to assume tremendous values at great distances because of the centrifugal forces.

These are not "discoveries." These are theories postulated to explain the observations of astronomers in accordance with the Cosmological Principle, which is an arbitrary, non-Creationist presupposition.

In short, distant starlight does not prove an old universe.

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

I take them as a "composite", because every word of God is true. There are no contradictions, only seeming ones. Understanding takes time, but it isn't impossible.
As for the Creation, 6 literal days, and a "young Earth" is what I believe by faith, because that is what I see in the book of Genesis. May God bless you.

Yes, as I already intimated, there are no contradictions, only seeming ones.
Every word of God is true, but is every work of God true as well?
When God spoke everything into existence did it then become a lie?
In this some may differ and thus in their harmonization.
I have relied on an untold number of people for the witness and writings available to me.

May God bless you as well.

 

[Aaron]

Creation was a series of miracles. Their first cause was God and His will. He is an active agent in the account. He didn't just speak things into existence and let things happen. He formed things like a potter with clay. The clay jar isn't there because of natural laws and the properties of clay. It's there because of a potter.

And so it is with the Creation Account. God created the heavens and the earth. The word "deep" means a heck of a lot of water. That was the heavens and the earth in one. You couldn't locate the earth, because it wasn't yet formed and not yet divided from the heavens.

I drew a picture.

Then He created light. There is no sun or moon. But there is water. So there is light in the deep now, and there is day and there is night. And that's the first day. Water and light. No preexisting, decimated terrain left desolate by some celestial war. (There is no 'caelum.')

Then He created the expanse. This expanse is in the middle of the waters. That, in turn, means the universe, contrary to the Cosmological Principle, has a center. (And because it has a center, it also has an edge.) This expanse divides the waters which are above it, from the waters which are below it. He called the expanse, "Heaven." We call it, "Space."

The waters which are below the expanse are gathered into one place and are called "seas," and dry land appears. There is our earth taking form. One big ocean and one big super-continent which was later broken up by the Deluge.

Then God caused the land to bring forth plants in one day. Didn't have to wait years for a tree to grow. The term "bring forth" implies that there was growth, but it was supernatural. They didn't suddenly appear with pyrotechnics and Irwin Allen sound effects.

And the fourth day, God put lights expanse of Heaven—er—I mean—in the expanse of space. Their purpose? To shine on the earth. Now God didn't create the light in transit. Just like He didn't make plants appear fully formed. The plants were brought forth supernaturally in one day. And so the lights gave their light upon the earth. The light traveled. It traveled supernaturally in one day. It was an act of God. It is Creation for Heaven's sake. And all attempts at naturalistic explanations have failed. We're in the last days of Big Bang cosmology as well. It's looking much like the portrait of Dorian Gray.

Anyway, there is too much about cosmology that cannot be tested for it to qualify as science. The constancy of the speed of light and the universal speed limit is part of that.

 

[church mouse guy]

Here's more OE evidence: the dendrochronological records of many places.

In places where very old trees are living, there are often found dead, long-preserved remains of the same tree species. An examination of the growth rings found in living trees is compared with those found in the dead ones. It's found those records overlap, that some of the old rings in the living trees match newer rings found in dead trees, and the link can be traced thru successively-older remains. Thus, in several diverse places, the records go back over 12K years. There's simply no valid dismissal of such findings.


The stuff didn't appear to be very loose. The layers of rock are the same on both sides of the Grand Canyon. And the growth ring record is almost beyond dispute. (Yes, I know some YEs mention that some trees might have more than one growth ring a year, but they're easily identified. And some trees apparently recorded Noah's flood from over 5K years ago, but but only a "mini-ice-age" of about 3 years' duration, not enough to cause a mass extinction.)

Old earthers have sixty theories of the Ice Age because they can't agree among themselves. They say Woolly Mammoths were instantly frozen which would need a temperature of something such as 150 below all of a sudden. Deep time has more scientific problems than answers. It is a facet of evolution predating DNA, which rendered evolution as scientifically backward.

 

[robycop3]

Roby, how far is it to the sun?

Roughly 93 million miles.

How far is it to the Andromeda galaxy, the farthest object visible to the naked eye?

 

[robycop3]

You're confusing GR and SR. Special Relativity is what says the speed of light is constant with reference to the observer. That was postulated as a possible explanation for the failure of the Michelson-Morely experiment to detect the motion of the earth. (They weren't testing for the Ether.)

To test GR, one would have to travel all over the universe. But one test appears to have falsified SR. Conducting a Crucial Experiment of the Constancy of the Speed of Light Using GPS

Like I said, you're just citing the fragmented and incomplete info you've been fed.

If all motion is relative (because one cannot say with absolute certainty our observation platform is a moving platform) we can assume our platform to be motionless in the center of mass of a rotating universe, and still explain the observations in accordance with GR, which allows c to assume tremendous values at great distances because of the centrifugal forces.

These are not "discoveries." These are theories postulated to explain the observations of astronomers in accordance with the Cosmological Principle, which is an arbitrary, non-Creationist presupposition.

In short, distant starlight does not prove an old universe.

It's obvious we're moving quite-rapidly. Being in the latitude I am, I'm going about 1K MPH as the earth rotates on its axis. The earth rotates around the sun at C. 67K mph. The solar system revolves around the center of the galaxy at C. 490K /MPH. The galaxy itself is moving about 800 miles a second. So, we're hardly sitting still!

But we don't feel these motions cuz everything around us, including the atmosphere, is moving at the same speed & direction.

But again, while science has been able to slow light down to some 38 MPH by passing it thru a type of transparent gel, they cannot speed it up faster than C. 186 K/second. That same standard of speed applies to all kinds of rays, ethereal waves such as radio, electricity, magnetism, etc. Seems God has set a maximum speed for any natural thing. And only entities with no mass can go that fast.

 

[Aaron]

It's obvious we're moving quite-rapidly.

Einstein and Hawking would disagree. It's the preferred model, but it's far from a scientific certainty.

The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either coordinate system could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: 'the sun is at rest and the Earth moves,' or 'the sun moves and the Earth is at rest,' would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different coordinate systems.

Einstein, The Evolution of Physics.​

So which is real, the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. ... one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the Earth or the sun to be at rest.

Hawking, The Grand Design.
​

Einstein's theory of general relativity ... asserts that it is impossible for a human observer to determine whether any material body is in a state of absolute rest (i.e., immobile in space). It claims that only motion of two material bodies relative to one another can be physically detected. According to this theory the geocentric and heliocentric viewpoints are equally valid representations of reality, and it makes no sense whatsoever scientifically to speak of one as being true and the other false.

Geocentricity and Creation
​

But again, while science has been able to slow light down to some 38 MPH by passing it thru a type of transparent gel, they cannot speed it up faster than C. 186 K/second.

God can, and most likely did on Day Four. And according to GR, gravity can speed it up many times faster than the SR speed limit.

I'm done, though. Go on with your the-speed-of-light-proves-an-old-universe-despite-Genesis notions. You've obviously independently verified each postulation of Relativity and now know certain things are absolute facts despite the assertions by Relativity's own apostles to the contrary.

 

[Deacon]

Roby,
I read an article somewhere that said that a scientist once tried testing a shellfish with Carbon-14 dating, and found it to be thousands of years old...
It was still alive.

This is almost an apocryphal account by now.
Carbon dating is fairly reliable within certain parameters.
Dating shellfish falls outside of these parameters for obvious reasons, the shell is composed of aquatic materials found to be rich in older carbonates.
There are many factors that contribute to inaccuracies in the results of Carbon14 dating, even the location, marine, estuary, or fresh water river source needs to be factored into the analysis.

Scientific Creationism has a reputation for the casual dismissal of any scientific evidences which negate its theories.

Rob

 

[HankD]

ANDROMEDA 2.537 million light years away, estimated to contain 1 trillion stars.

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

This is almost an apocryphal account by now.
Carbon dating is fairly reliable within certain parameters.
Dating shellfish falls outside of these parameters for obvious reasons, the shell is composed of aquatic materials found to be rich in older carbonates.
There are many factors that contribute to inaccuracies in the results of Carbon14 dating, even the location, marine, estuary, or fresh water river source needs to be factored into the analysis.

Scientific Creationism has a reputation for the casual dismissal of any scientific evidences which negate its theories.

Rob

And all this time I was thinking they lived to be thousands of years old!

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

Einstein and Hawking would disagree. It's the preferred model, but it's far from a scientific certainty.

The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either coordinate system could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: 'the sun is at rest and the Earth moves,' or 'the sun moves and the Earth is at rest,' would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different coordinate systems.

Einstein, The Evolution of Physics.​

So which is real, the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. ... one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the Earth or the sun to be at rest.

Hawking, The Grand Design.
​

Einstein's theory of general relativity ... asserts that it is impossible for a human observer to determine whether any material body is in a state of absolute rest (i.e., immobile in space). It claims that only motion of two material bodies relative to one another can be physically detected. According to this theory the geocentric and heliocentric viewpoints are equally valid representations of reality, and it makes no sense whatsoever scientifically to speak of one as being true and the other false.

Geocentricity and Creation
​

God can, and most likely did on Day Four. And according to GR, gravity can speed it up many times faster than the SR speed limit.

I'm done, though. Go on with your the-speed-of-light-proves-an-old-universe-despite-Genesis notions. You've obviously independently verified each postulation of Relativity and now know certain things are absolute facts despite the assertions by Relativity's own apostles to the contrary.

Granted the two quotations (of the quantum denier Albert “God does not play dice” Einstein and the oracular professor Stephen “philosophy is dead” Hawking) allow that mathematically Earth can be considered motionless, untilted, while the massive Sun dances and races round it daily (from 93 million miles away!) and yearly to simulate our tilted, rotating, revolving Earth. But that hardly sounds reasonable from a physical standpoint, nor does the apparent retrograde motion of the other planets made physical reality. The Moon should still work well with a geocentric model, though, so there’s that.

 

[church mouse guy]

This is almost an apocryphal account by now.
Carbon dating is fairly reliable within certain parameters.
Dating shellfish falls outside of these parameters for obvious reasons, the shell is composed of aquatic materials found to be rich in older carbonates.
There are many factors that contribute to inaccuracies in the results of Carbon14 dating, even the location, marine, estuary, or fresh water river source needs to be factored into the analysis.

Scientific Creationism has a reputation for the casual dismissal of any scientific evidences which negate its theories.

Rob

Scientific Creationism should be willing to discuss anything since Evolution has been rendered impossible by DNA. Deep time has so many scientific problems. For example, for the last almost 15 billion years they have been unable to explain the origin of the moon.