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"Six Thousand Years with Ken Ham"

Discussion in 'Creation vs. Evolution' started by church mouse guy, Aug 13, 2018.

  1. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    A few minutes ago Ken Ham, whom you all know from Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter (in northern Kentucky), posted a video on where the figure of six thousand years originates from. The video is just short of seven minutes long and is high quality about the age of the earth. It originates from the Creation Museum in the Legacy Hall in Petersburg, Kentucky:

     
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  2. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    Here is another video about six thousand years. Once again it is pointed out that the millions and millions of years essentially is an idea of the Enlightenment, which I think has been almost forgotten as a period of time although their rejection of Christianity lingers on in Evolution and the latest notions of the age of the earth and the age of the universe. This video is by Bryan Osborne. I am hoping that old earth people will explain what they do with the human family tree from Adam to now.

     
  3. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    1. I wonder how our baptist believer brother views all of this stuff?
     
  4. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    I hope that he tells us.
     
  5. tyndale1946

    tyndale1946 Well-Known Member
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    I remember hearing a comment from an Old Line Baptist preacher I never forgot... He said those who believe in the theory of Evolution forget one thing... Living things do not evolve, they do not evolve from a lower species to a higher... Death was passed upon ALL creation... Creation has never evolved, it has devolved... From the time Adam and Eve sinned all things die... If Dinosaurs perished a million years ago what killed them?... Brother Glen:)

    Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned
     
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  6. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    There is nothing in evolution that would account for the Dna changes required for a species change!
     
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  7. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    From Adam to Abraham about two thousand years. From Abraham to Jesus about two thousand years. From Jesus to you about two thousand years. From Adam to you about six thousand years. God bless you.
     
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  8. tyndale1946

    tyndale1946 Well-Known Member
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    From Jesus Christ to me... Eternity!... Brother Glen:D
     
  9. Baptist Believer

    Baptist Believer Well-Known Member
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    I'm not impressed at all.

    He provides no evidence except for HIS interpretation of the days of Genesis 1 and HIS interpretation of the genealogies. He also spends most of his time assigning anti-religious motivations to those who did serious scientific work to discover that the earth is much older than assumed by persons like Ken Ham. This means nothing in terms of whether he is right or wrong, but I find it strange that he calls God an "eyewitness" to creation instead of the Creator. Of course, he's probably doing that to set up the false dilemma, who to believe God (as interpreted by Ken Ham) or man (as maligned by Ken Ham).

    As a Christian who believed (and still believes) God, I became persuaded that the earth was extremely old by childhood visits to canyons (seeing all the layers of strata) and by a geology class in college (a Christian college, FWIW), where we examined fossils found in road cuts and on/in fossilized coral reefs. Later, on long drives through West Texas and New Mexico, I knew what fossilized reefs look like and could pick out enormous reefs throughout the region, like the Guadalupe Reef Complex.

    A worldwide flood 4,000 years ago simply does not explain nor give enough time for the formation of those reefs, nor their petrification and erosion. Moreover, a worldwide flood would not kill animals, in order from the simplest creatures to most complex, through many varying layers of sediment that turned to rock.

    Of course, that doesn't include all of the other evidence for an old earth including the witness of radioactive elements and their half-lives, the nature of an expanding universe, and the isolation of many species of land animals far away from where the ark landed in the Noah story -- for instance, how did all of those animals get to Australia.

    One can claim that God worked it all out and every sign of great age is due to "apparent age," in ways that were necessary (Adam and Eve not being infants at their creation) and not necessary (for instance, the layers of sediment, fossilized reefs, etc.). Therefore, according to this theory, God has given us false natural witnesses in the very nature of the earth to undermine what He has told us. But that is not the character of God revealed in scripture.

    Beyond all of that, scripture does NOT demand that we interpret Genesis 1-3 the way Ken Ham interprets it. In fact, there is ample evidence IN THE TEXT that it is not to be taken literally.
     
  10. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    For the record, it was Bryan Osborne who said that we have the eyewitness account of the Creator and that we can stand on either man's word or God's word, and not Ken Ham in the two videos linked above. Osborne was educated in Biblical history and actually found a job teaching that in public schools for 13 years before joining AiG.

    As for the genealogy of OT being the basis of the 6,000 years, I am sure you that don't mean that the idea comes from Ham as I think it goes back to the church fathers.

    As for radioactive half life, that has many scientific problems and is unreliable.

    I think that they say that the small and simple creatures died first because they could not climb to higher ground in a last attempt to escape the waters.

    After the Genesis Flood, there was an Ice Age of 700 years, lowering sea levels and facilitating the distribution of animals, among other unique post-flood conditions.

    Mt. St. Helens showed how rapidly layers were laid down and canyons formed.

    Another problem is that the Enlightenment was the beginning of geology and the science of geology has long outgrown what the Enlightenment thought was the history of the geology of the earth and the universe.

    Of the geological splendor of the Southwest, there can be no debate. I once saw Mesa Verde, and now I am wondering if at one time they had lakes or ponds left from the Genesis Flood that dried up?
     
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  11. Deacon

    Deacon Well-Known Member
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    I really didn’t want to join this conversation, the idea of a 6000 year old earth wasn’t even acceptable to Morris and Whitcomb in their early book the Genesis Flood. There were just too many simple evidences against it.

    Your simplistic dismissals of scientific theory and basic science make an educated conversation about this topic impossible.

    You’ve mentioned the “Enlightenment”... what you really have a problem with is basic education. You’ve bought hook line and sinker into flood geology, a late19th century explanation of the geologic record that was picked up again in the mid 20th century.

    I have no problem with people interpreting the Bible as saying the eatrth is 6000 years old.
    BUT I DO HAVE A PROB LEM WITH THOSE THAT TRY TO PROVE IT SCIENTIFICALY.

    It’s preaching a false science that only convinces the willingly ignorant.

    Rob
     
    #11 Deacon, Aug 20, 2018
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2018
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  12. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    Hey, look, I am not trying to be simplistic. Wikipedia says that the Enlightenment ended in 1800 so geology was in its infancy then. It is difficult to read what they believed because it was so made up.

    Contrary to your statement, there are highly educated scientists who believe in a young earth. You don't mention how old you think the earth is....
     
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  13. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    Unfortunately, this us not true. Dr. Morris posted an article in 1995 on his website Institute For Creation Research that says that the weight of scientific evidence points to a young earth.

    Ken Ham in the mid 1980s worked for Dr. Morris and received a donation from him when Ham started AiG.

    Dr. Whitcomb lives in Indianapolis and only a month ago was at the Ark Encounter for a book signing. He taught at an Indiana seminary.

    In 2005 Dr. Whitcomb commented on the book that someone said that many have attributed the global revival of scientific biblical creationism to the catalytic effect of "The Genesis Flood."
     
  14. Baptist Believer

    Baptist Believer Well-Known Member
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    My mistake. No matter who said it, it is a false dilemma.

    No, I didn't mean that, the idea of using the genealogies goes back a long way. So do ideas like infant baptism. Just because they have been around a long time doesn't mean they are right and appropriate.

    I have not heard of these "many scientific problems" from credible sources. Our understanding of radioactivity seems rather solid, and we make reliable predictions from our understanding of radioactivity all the time.

    That makes no sense if you actually look at the fossil record. There are too many layers of strata for that to explain much of anything. If the largest and more complex animals were clustered in what would appear to be a high spot, that would be evidence for your theory, but that's not the case.

    I'll grant you the premise -- if the "Genesis Flood" and Ice Age you describe actually happened when you described them. Land bridges could have been uncovered through that part of the world.

    So your premise is that the entire earth was covered by volcanic activity after mature life (including human life) developed? It's weird we don't hear about that in Genesis where volcanos were exploding constantly and releasing enormous quantities of ash and lava throughout the earth, choking out life.

    Moreover, the biggest problem with your Mt. St. Helens explanation is that the vast majority of the layers are sedimentary layers, not layers of volcanic material. And I don't recall Mt. St. Helens creating ANY canyons. In 1995, I toured Mt. St. Helens and the surrounding region (about 15 years after the major eruption of 1980) and didn't see anything that resembled a canyon. Please enlighten me as to how Mt. St. Helens "showed how...canyons formed."

    I have personally examined Mt. St. Helens, fossilized coral reefs in West Texas and New Mexico, explored road cuts and located fossils, and have examined strata in at least five major canyons in the American West. I am well aware of the Enlightenment (and critique it rather harshly in some areas), but it does not change the obvious evidence that the earth is extremely old.

    Salt water lakes and ponds would not explain the reefs. Moreover, we have the example of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, which I have also visited. It does not have coral reefs or reefs that resemble the prehistoric reefs in Texas and New Mexico. However it does have algae that creates deposits, but nothing like the enormously tall structures I am referring to.

    So in short, you really don't have any evidence or explanation that disproves my reasonable interpretation of the evidence for an extremely old earth.
     
  15. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    1. On the issue of the OT chronology, I think that Ussher's book has been reprinted "The Annals of the World" has been reprinted and is widely available. According to the Institute for Creation Research, about 100 other people have issued articles on this chronology with more or less the same results. So there it is. Here is the link in case you want to study that point: Can the Ussher Chronology Be Trusted? I have a book called The Chronology of the Old Testament by Dr. Floyd Nolen Jones but I have not had time to read it.

    2. On the issue of radioactivity, uniformitarianism can only assume that the rate has always been the same since no one knows. A catastrophic world-wide flood that covered the mountain of that time with 20 feet of water disrupts the idea of uniformitarianism. There have been several threads on the subject here. Here are some conclusions on the subject when a thread that I posted in May:

    Radioactive dating is bad science.

    1. It assumes that all of the daughter atoms were derived from the parent atoms. No one knows the history of the sample being tested.

    2. Noah's Flood or some other geological event could have contaminated the sample. It assumes that uniformitarianism is true and there was no possibility of contamination.

    3. It assumes that the slow rates of radioactive decay as measured today were always the same. No one can prove that the rates of decay have been constant since the beginning of the world because there is no observation or record that old.

    (Based upon comments by Dr. Andrew Snelling in an AiG video entitled "Age of the Earth.")

    4. On the order of the fossils, this would be to some extent the burial order and could be changed by later upheavals, etc. However this is what I was trying to say partially:

    Indeed, not only did the animals and plants have to be buried rapidly by huge masses of water-transported sediments to be fossilized, but the general vertical order of burial is also consistent with the biblical flood. The first fossils in the record are of marine animals exclusively, and it is only higher in the strata that fossils of land animals are found, because the Flood began in the ocean basins (“the fountains of the great deep burst open”) and the ocean waters then flooded over the continents. How else would there be marine fossils in sedimentary layers stretching over large areas of the continents? Added to this, “the floodgates of heaven” were simultaneously opened, and both volcanism and earth movements accompanied these upheavals.

    Doesn’t the Order of Fossils in Rock Record Favor Long Ages?

    5. On volcanos. Scientific creationism teaches that after the flood and the moving continents, etc., there was massive volcanic activity all over the earth. On the question of Mount St. Helens, it formed a couple of canyons overnight and deposited hundreds of feet of layers, one thin layer right after another. Here is a scientific summary of what happened: Mt. St. Helens and Catastrophism


     
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  16. Baptist Believer

    Baptist Believer Well-Known Member
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    I have sat upon Floyd Jones' teaching in person a fair amount in the mid 1980s, and knew the man casually. He was quite insightful about some things, but had huge blind spots in others (KJVOism among them). I have read most of his writings and listened to hundreds of hours of his teaching (in person and on cassette tapes that he used to distribute). I have heard many of his teachings promoting YEC and have lived long enough to see many of his assertions proven wrong. He even had to go back and edit the masters of his teaching tapes to change his denials that there were no other planets in existence other than in our solar system, etc. I don't think that Jones presents a compelling argument that the genealogies between Abraham and Adam are historical. He has also proven many times that he speaks well beyond the evidence, claiming his opinions are truth backed up by science and the word of God. Except among his most devoted disciples, he has blown his credibility in these matters.

    All Snelling is doing is trying to cast doubt on what is testable. Sure, we can't know FOR CERTAIN that it is true, but it harmonizes nicely with all of the other evidence that God has given.

    That does not explain the multiple stratified layers of great depth, nor the layers with no fossils.

    Easy. Huge shallow seas that covered much of Texas (for instance) that created much of the hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) that are extracted today.

    If that's true, why doesn't the Bible mention it. And if, as you have said in another place, why did God put dinosaurs on the ark only to kill them off shortly afterward through volcanic activity and climate change? That seems quite strange.

    The layers are primarily volcanic ash, which is quite different than what I'm talking about. Also the "canyons" you refer to were carved by the Toutle River originally, and then filled by loose ash and soils. That's completely unlike the Grand Canyon, Santa Elena Canyon, Brice Canyon, Palo Duro Canyon, etc. More here.

    The biggest problem with these arguments you present is that I'm actually, hands-on, familiar with much of the evidence, except for the radiation.
     
  17. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    On the case of the Chronology, creationist believe Jones on that one apparently. I have not had time to read it although I have had it since October. I read a whole bunch of books at the same time but now I read less and less. Solomon commented on reading: Ecclesiastes 12:12 (KJV) And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books [there is] no end; and much study [is] a weariness of the flesh.

    On the radioactive dating, Snelling is just one of many, of course. They gave them some stones from Mt. St. Helens and they tested old. The whole system is suspect. Couldn't the Flood have changed everything?

    On the fossils, basically they are a burial ground and huge tsunamis could have moved them all over. Africa is said to have been made flat by wave after wave of tsunamis. This flood was incredible in that it entirely destroyed the world that Noah knew before. When it ended, there were seven continents instead of one, for example. The ocean seabeds are thought to be new and that accounts for the lack of sediments on the ocean floor except for the last four thousand years or so. Seas covered everything. In Indiana, you find it in the limestone sold worldwide as Bedford Limestone. Indiana also is the 5th state in coal mining and has lots of natural gas, etc.

    Scripture does not mention much after the flood except the refusal of the people to disperse and the attempt of Nimrod to establish what I think was a one-world government and religion in Babel with himself as supreme dictator. I think that the ice is mentioned in Job: Job 38:29 (KJV) Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? After the flood, the waters were hot from the volcanos that opened up and the crust ripped apart. Volcanic activity has been reported from that time all over. The dust would have cooled the earth by blocking the sun and the warm water would have caused snow and rain. So you would have cool summers and cold winters for 500 years for the ice sheets to form and then 200 years for them to melt.

    Mount St. Helens shows that the landscape changes rapidly. It is modern so that we know the time involved. Grand Canyon would have been formed rapidly from floodwaters trapped in huge lakes that suddenly broke free. This is shown is lesser floods such as the Lake Missoula flood that involved water thought to be twice the size of today's Lake Erie--that water breaking free and going into the Pacific and altering the landscape all along the way.
     
    #17 church mouse guy, Aug 20, 2018
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2018
  18. Deacon

    Deacon Well-Known Member
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    I have friends who work in science-based industries and also hold to a young earth.
    It perplexes me, I don't know how they do it.
    I value their friendship too much to challenge them deeply on the topic
    I know their beliefs/they know mine (it was a topic with a lot of contentious potential that I brought up during a church examination for a position of leadership).
    Most of those I know who believe in a YE choose not to confront the contradictions rather they separate their religious beliefs from their scientific knowledge (non-overlapping magisterium [cf. S.J Gould]) .

    IMO, some of the major snake oil salesmen of Young Earth (those who merchandise the belief) are master con artists - perhaps deluded or auto brain-washed by years of salesmanship.

    Just my opinion...

    Rob
     
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  19. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    The Flood was world wide per Scriptures, fits the geological record best, and ken Ham also ties His views on genesis onto how Jesus and the scriptures viewed it!
     
  20. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    Dr Morris was excellent in this area, as is Ken Ham now, and would suggest that the big problem would be that both Creationists and theistic evolutionists would see and be using the same data, but that one world view is to see the scriptures as being the foundation truth standrad, and the others accepted scientifi facts!
     
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