The smoking gun, of the Earth’s age

It was the Jew that declared a day complete at sunset. Hence is was not a 24 hour period as we label a day.

We still have a period we call a day, and a period we call a night, and we might just label both as a day.

Scripture at times does the same.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Actually, it is God's word in Genesis 1 that repeatedly says a day is an evening and a morning, which means the night and the day which is 24 hours.

 

I'm an old earth creationist. I take scripture literally, also.

And taking it literally, yom can mean a 24 hr day, a period of time, an eon.

Scripture also tells me with the Lord one day is as a thousand years. I don't think that means we can exactly muliply one 24 hour human day as one thousand years to God. We live in time; God does not.

What if the earth spun faster in the past? Or slower?

The point is God did create everything there is. He did it in an orderly manner. The sun and the moon and the sea and the sea creatures are not gods.

And it really is ok to leave some things as mysteries known only to God.

winman--can I suggest a bit more studying on the geneologies? They don't run totally straight as you are adding up. To the Jews a grandson or many times great grandson can be listed as "son of". A good study Bible will help you find some geneologies listed one way in one place, and with a different number of "ancestors" for a person in another. Often they just listed the prominent progenitures.

Theories of creation, all of them, run ahead and say more than the scripture tells us.

I'm content to accept the Bible and leave the rest to God....He will tell me in due time all the details in eternity.

 

The recent effort to exchange the plain text of Scripture for some convoluted interpretation is little more than a weak attempt to prop up a failed theory of the origin of man. It is the age old desire to remove God from the pages of history & to replace Him with ourselves.
I think it is hilarious that the more scientists study our universe the more it points to an intelligent Designer. Modern anti-Creator "science" is more faith than science. Reason, intelligence & common-sense reveal the absurdity of believing that all of the complex, precise order that is required for the universe to function & exist formed autonomously.
There is only one book that explains the origin, purpose, nature, & future of mankind.

 

No, you don't. Where in the Scripture does it tell us of an old earth? Everything in Scripture points to a young earth. In order to believe in an old earth, you must dismiss parts of Scripture or claim that they are "symbolic".

 

You have to make a lot of assumptions without basis in order to come to your conclusions. That is precisely what has become of modern "science". Instead of overlooking known facts & evidence in order to fit your beliefs into Scripture, compare the known facts of the universe to Scripture. The result will dissolve any old earth creation theories you may have.

 

You can be an old earther and still believe that Bible accurately depicts the creation through present day.

To suggest the only view is the young earther view is ridiculous. There are a multitude of legitimate options out there for understanding models for the creation.

Honestly though I think this question is one that is epistemologically unreachable. We need not know the details if we lose focus on the designer.

No one here denies that God created the universe, everything in it, and is sovereign over its existence.

 

Where do you place the dinosaur skeletons that have been unearthed in Alberta, Canada?

They don't appear in scripture that I have seen, but there they are in fact. Actually, there isn't much about North America period. We know it exists,,,,,,,,and has done for some time.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Because I am not dogmatic that the earth is 6000 years old I am a "lost cause"????

I have no idea how old the earth is. Knowing that God created it and all of its life forms is sufficent enough for me.

 

Amen, and amen.

 

Not really. People can suggest what they like. Your suggestions probably appear ridiculous to some. Some people just choose to take Gods' Word literally. Nothing is ridiculous about that. They may see you not taking it as such utterly ridiculous.

 

The Bible cannot be its own authority. If books can be self-authenticating then we should also accept the Book of Mormon and the Qu’ran both of which claim to be the “word of God.”

 

He could start with a glass of arsenic!!!
Literally!

Cheers,

Jim

 

You know you never see too many one eyed literalists out there...just sayin' if you're gonna take one part you need to take it all

There is literalism and there is a strict hermeneutic. Most evangelicals fall within a robustly strict hermeneutic which can also be described as literalism. I fall within this view of Scripture.

Here's the point, I take Scripture at what it says. It says the entire creation was completed in 6 days. I believe that...though I am not completely certain why God decided on 6 days when He could have just done it one day.

My point is essentially two fold:

1. It is likely that Adam and Eve experienced significant time in the Garden of Eden and that given the unique Hebrew used to describe the Garden and its creation/placement that it was not isolated to the same metaphysical time relationship as the rest of the Earth. Thus Adam and Eve weren't created on day six, God took a break, and they sinned on day eight. When they did sin and only when they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden do they suddenly take on age. It would seem the age ascribed to Adam refers to his post-Garden years...not inclusive of his Garden years.

2. Since God clearly creates with age built in (again, Adam wasn't created as an infant) we cannot definitively know the actual age of the creation. It appears to be very, very old. Do I understand why? Absolutely not. This is not an area that we can speak definitively about. When science tries to tell us how old things are we cannot know with definiteness that they are being precise since the actual thing appears to be something that it actually might be in terms of God's created reality. Thus all we can be certain of, and even this has a faith statement built in, is that the recorded time of humanity since the Garden is about 8,000 years or so.

My point is that we cannot act like Adam and Eve and the Creation event happened then on day 8 they sinned and got kicked out. I mean there is no way to tell give the temporal constraints of the text.

You can believe the Bible is both truth and faithful in its testimony and disagree that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Most of the major apologists I know are all old earthers too. (I will not rattle off names but everybody would recognize them)

There is something to be said for the epistemic distance we have from any absolute knowledge given the creative acts of God and the shroud of mystery about them (and Him.) We, as mortal humans, cannot know everything with absolute certainty. Empiricism is a faulty system in that we are limited by our fallen cognition about the events taking place that this very moment. While we each have faculty to understand the metaphysical reality of our existence it is only a perceived metaphysical existence. The epistemic difficulty which is obvious since the failure of Cartesian Modernism leave with the reality that we, to a greater or lesser extent, live off faith. We cannot know some (most) things absolutely. That is okay.

 

Do you believe Proverbs 26:4 to be literal? I do. So I will refrain.

 

That's messed up man. Salty's not a fool.

 

Not so. But keep thinking. I'm intrigued. Better to have one eye opened, rather than as you having them both closed.

 

It is self-authenticating in that it is contains the written accounts of fulfilled prophecies that spanned hundreds & thousands of years. It also contains references to scientific facts & prehistorical cultures which have been proven true within the past century. No other collection of documents can claim the same evidential truth.