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How Old Is the World

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
Tom Couchman said:
On the title page of this paper I have called myself “a reluctant OEC” (old-earth creationist). That self-appellation means two things. First, and most importantly, it means I don’t believe that this universe, or this world, or any feature of this world, or any living thing which inhabits this world would be here without the direct action of God: first upon Nothingness, to speak into existence Something; and then, repeatedly, upon that Something to compel it to produce what blind chance and material force would never have produced, would never even have been inclined to produce. Much less importantly, as an OEC, I reluctantly accept the notion that the Power required to propel matter and energy which were bent toward disorganization into the opposite direction of that bent was applied by God over a very long period of time, and involved a combination of miracle and ordinary causation. I therefore do not dispute the assertions of science about chronology, though I strongly suspect that science on the matter of chronology knows a lot less than it pretends.

- see Ruminations of a Reluctant OEC
I've always considered Mr. Couchman's article to be an exemplar of Christian integrity. You might find it worth reading ...
 

meogi

Well-Known Member
Mr_Sprinkles said:
LOL, lay off the saki meogi.
Sake, Mr_Sprinkles, sah-keh! ;) And it was my friend mr jack daniels that night... was a bit homesick, so wanted something familiar.

And thank you Runt, again, sorry for getting off topic... I'll try to stay away from here when next I drink.

On to Mr. Couchman:
OEC said:
Are Statements in Scripture Meant to Be Taken as “Scientifically True”?
Most of us will agree that the Bible is not a “science book.” From the principle just discussed, we don’t expect every literal statement in scripture to be “scientifically true.” This negative expectation is simple common sense. “The sun rises in the east” is a “literally true” statement which is not “scientifically true.” Such statements are sometimes said to be “observer-true”; that is, they are true from the perspective of the observer who makes them or the narrator who is telling the story from one observer’s perspective, but they would not be uniformly true for all observers (recall that scientific statements are true for all observers in the same relativistic frame of reference). Those of us who believe in inspired scripture ask only that the same standards be used to evaluate statements in scripture which are used to evaluate literal statements that we make all the time.
Thus, I am deeply troubled to see so many apologists, in a commendable effort to validate the reliability of the Bible, try to use all manner of statements—even those found in obvious poetical contexts like the book of Job—as “scientific facts” which “prove the inspiration of scripture.” I am not saying there are no “scientific facts” in scripture; however, in general this practice is a very bad idea!
Wow, he said it himself, it's not science!

I've already stated that HOGCALLER's presentation that "the Bible does not give a date for the creation of the "world" nor does it say that the "world" was created in 144 hours. Point made; enough said." is fine. But it's not science, and with that, I believe I'm done with this thread. (Thanks for the link Deut, gonna read all of it here shortly)

AND GAH, THIS WYSIWYG THING IS ANNOYING! I'm just trying to make the text go from 3 to 2... but no, if I do one, it's gotta change everything else! WGOISDJFL:KSNDFOISJF
 

t3gah

Well-Known Member
Using the ages listed in the holy scriptures many people have determined that the earth can only be around 6000+ years old. The current standing of years on the Hebrew and Chinese calendars are close to that number.

I fail to see that it could be that young, the earth that is.

I believe the ages started after Adam and Even were ousted from Eden. How long they lived prior to that point is probably a reason why the world seems alot older than people think or say. The dinosaurs are an indication of just how old the world is. IF in the beginning God created the animals and then had Adam name each one, we people will never know just how long that process took since it's not in the scriptures.

Away from the bible we have science. Science has made leaps and bounds in the carbon dating field and chemical analysis area's but they are not perfect. One study found that the chemical analysis could be off by 10's of thousands of years in either direction. A small number I say since we may talking about millions of billions of years. Which might be accumulative with a 10,000 year error margin. Then we have carbon dating which too they have had problems with. Problems you say? How?! Well, since no one on earth can really say how old anything is, the references that they are using are not precise. Oh yes they have conducted experiments in making things old, etc., but still there's a margin of error for all of the tools they use to date things.

Back to the age of the earth.

It's older than anyone on earth and the total sum of all the people that have lived on it. Mathematically speaking of course.
 

meogi

Well-Known Member
t3gah said:
The dinosaurs are an indication of just how old the world is.
The dinosaurs are not an indication of just how old the world is. 200 million years ago is nothing compared to 4.5 billion.
t3gah said:
Then we have carbon dating which too they have had problems with.
There's nothing wrong with carbon dating. It's when you try to date something older than ~50,000 years that it becomes unpredictable. You don't use carbon dating for dating really old fossils/rocks; potassium/argon is used instead.
t3gah said:
It's older than anyone on earth and the total sum of all the people that have lived on it. Mathematically speaking of course.
The earth formed, at most, 5Ga (billion years ago). Current population is ~6.2 billion. Why exactly do you say all the people before now + now is less than the age of the earth?
 

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle
in his defence dinosaurs do show that the earth is older than humanity's existance on it.
Not the actuall age, but very old. ;)

wa:do
 
The earth was really created..(drumroll)...(poing) A relly long time ago! The earth is very old. Older than anyone could ever live. It was born before everything.
 

hoomer

Member
ha ha this has so many typos..new keyboards gotta ove em

dating the earth..what an innane past time....how silly...reductionism......
Lets take an apple and smash it with a hammer and study apple mush in order to see how an apple tree grows!!!!

"religious" dates abound..they aren't literal they are poetic......some think that a paradigm shift in conciousness of mankind ccured around 6000 yrs ago...or possiby 10,000 who knows....

How old is the earth!

Go forth and read James Gleik's book CHAOS....which asks...."how long is the coast line of Britain"......in order to decide how long said land mass is...the author proposes we must get closer and closer into the land and measure with increasing acuracy.....to do this woud me that the coast line of Britain has an infinate length....

We can apply this to the age of the earth...and see the age of the earh is timeless....

But thats the problem with reductionism...too much of the 8th emanation (qabbalah)....too much logic..and rationalisation......

"we must see the whole not the parts" ---some wise hindu dude....a panentheist..like myself..

the height of knowledge is to know nothing ----frater crc[/QUOTE]
 

Torgo

New Member
Barring some kind of revolutionary discovery in physics or cosmology, it seems pretty clear (and has been for about a decade or two now) that the age of the solar system is between 4.5 and 5 billion years and the age of the universe is between 10 and 15 billion years. Pretty much no one who knows the evidence and theories will argue with that. The uncertainty comes from the fact that in order to get the age of the universe you need to take lots of measurements from all around the universe to get the small random motions and irregularities in the redshift, density, etc to cancel out, and the fact that there is always contamination and error in any measurement.

Even though I am MOST definitely a Christian, I put little to no faith in the literal accuracy of books written thousands of years ago in a pre-scientific age in another language which have gone through countless retellings, recopyings and translations. Even if they were the literal word of God, what possible reason could there be to tell people whose vision of the world was probably still a flat plate with a dome on it about the big bang and the condensation of the earth from interstellar dust - "in the beginning there was hydrogen and photons...". You'd just confuse them. You need to think about what could make the authors and recopyers write and copy what they did - basic ideas rather than facts which were probably lost long ago (at least for much of the old testament).

In any case there is one thing in the whole creationist/young universe thing that I have never understood: WHY does "natural" have to mean "purposeless"????? So WHAT if this planet collapsed under its own gravity from a dust cloud. In the same way, so WHAT if I developed according to the laws of genetics and biochemistry from one cell. Why does that make a difference to the purpose and meaning of it all??
 
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