I've changed my mind. I now believe the "earth" is 6k years old

[TheBlade]

Hi all.. when I as growing up we had this very nice family (Seventh Day Advent) believed the earth was just 6k years old. My dad who was not a believer at the time LOVED to take this pig skull that was solid rock dated according to man 6million years old. I think man is 6k but the world? NO CLUE

[Roymond]

On 4/26/2018 at 6:37 PM, Retrobyter said:

Shalom, Still Alive.

Actually, you're still using an "accomodation theory," attempting to accomodate the theory of Evolution into the biblical account of Genesis. It doesn't work, and here's why:

Genesis 3:8-20 (KJV)

8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. 9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve (Hebrew: Chavah, with the "ch" sounding like the "ch" in the Scottish word "loch"); because she was the mother of all living.

And, if that's not clear enough, we can also find this:

Romans 5:12-17 (KJV)

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: 13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. 16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. 17For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)

... compounded with this:

Romans 8:18-25 (KJV)

18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. 24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? 25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

Death and decay, according to the Bible, came upon Creation from the Fall of Adam. But, how does Evolution paint history? The WHOLE TIME SPAN of the earth for BILLIONS of years (3.5 billion years, at least) involve death and decay, LONG before Adam would have come along in an "accomodation theory!"

It's better to believe the Creation account of Genesis 1-2 WITHOUT trying to fit Evolution into the equation.

Hebrew scholars clear back before Galileo ever said the Earth moves examined Genesis 1 closely and concluded:

* the universe began as something smaller than a grain of mustard, an idiom for "inconceivably small" and rapidly expanded into something vast beyond imagination

* the universe at the start was willed with a fluid, "waters", that was so dense that light would not flow, until God commanded light into existence and the fluid thinned for light to pass

* the Earth is uncountably old, the six days having been "divine days" of immeasurable duration until humans were made, and since humans pay attention to time, time advanced by human measure thereafter

They weren't trying to fit Genesis into anything, they were just studying it deeply.

Other ancient scholars concluded that the six days weren't actual days, they were "model days" that summed up immense stretches of days during which land slowly emerged and the seas gathered together, and the Earth brought forth animals, etc.  They determined that the Earth was a million years old when Adam was made (using numerical symbology 'backwards').

That's just two of many examples of how scholars with knowledge of Hebrew since they were able to read understood Genesis, men more knowledgeable and wiser than any of us here.

Oh -- and as for death and suffering, rabbis as far back as the Babylonian times said that animal and plant death had always been the case, because they were all "from below", creatures that had come forth from the Earth, while Adam was made personally by God and so while a member of the animal kingdom was also a member of God's kingdom.  Adam was to have been like God to the lesser creatures because his life was breathed by God but theirs came from the Earth.

So don't assume that what Genesis looks like to us in English is what it really is.

[Roymond]

On 4/27/2018 at 3:03 AM, Guest shiloh357 said:

Before Genesis 1:1, there was the dateless eternal past.  The "beginning" of Genesis begins with the creation of our world/universe.  There was "beginning" before Genesis 1:1. 

That bit of speculation was shown to be erroneous decades ago.  "The heavens and the Earth" is a phrase that meant "everything there is".  Time, being a created thing, started at Genesis 1:1; there was no past at the moment of Creation.

On 4/27/2018 at 3:03 AM, Guest shiloh357 said:

No, Revelation 20 tells us that this current universe will be destroyed.  Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.  (Rev 20:11)

That's right.  There is no biblical data to tell us what happened before Genesis 1:1.  And where the Bible is silent, we should be silent.  

Nothing happened "before Genesis 1:1", because Genesis 1:1 is where time began.  Where there is no time, there is no "before".  The heavens (all things spiritual and 'above' man) were created first, so there was time before the Earth was made, in the lesser heaven that comprises the stars and galaxies, but before the creation of the heavens there was no time.

On 4/27/2018 at 3:03 AM, Guest shiloh357 said:

Please don't insult people's intelligence.   No one would assume that Mt. Rushmore didn't exist before the images of the three presidents.  No one is that dumb. 

You'd be surprised how 'dumb' people can be!  One comes to mind from university astronomy class:  this gal wanted to know how light "got to" the stars, since everyone knows that all light comes from the sun! 

On 4/27/2018 at 3:03 AM, Guest shiloh357 said:

That is what the "Gap Theory" proposes, but it contradicts the Bible and the Hebrew will not allow for there to be a pre-adamite earth prior to the creation account.  

Right -- while the consonants themselves can be read as "in the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth", there's no room for any "gap" that includes a prior heavens and earth; the only "gap" that could be there is the one between "the heavens" and "the earth" so that anything from no time at all to immense spans of time could be contained there, but the desolation and emptiness, the un-shaped-ness, of the earth when our attention is brought to it does not indicate anything more than that at the point our attention is called to the earth it is effectively a 'blank slate' and that this was its natural form, not the result of any unstated events.

 

[Roymond]

On 4/27/2018 at 3:44 AM, Still Alive said:

Actually, no. What I'm accomodating is the evidence, not the theories and hypotheses that people make from it. 

My main focus is on the phrase "beginning" and its context within the context of the teaching of bible. The very first line of genesis 1 could theoretically be interpreted as "In the beginning of this dispensation..." and represent what God started on the clean slate of a bare planetary surface, made bare in the destruction of some sort of dispensation or age before it. And there could have been one before that, and before that, and before that, etc. 

I'm not saying it's true. Rather, the bible is silent on it, which means that saying nothing came before it or saying what I hypothesized above are both speaking to something on which the bible is silent. But the evidence all around us supports the latter more than the former.

I know that idea got popular a generation or so ago, but the addition of "of this dispensation" is just conjecture.  "In beginning", בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית , into which we add the definite article "the", is affirmatively absolute, specifying that this is without room for doubt the instance when time and space and matter and energy originated.  If you change some of the vowel pointings, it can be made to read as you suggest, but it necessitates treating all of 1:1-3 as a single sentence and a very clumsy one at that, not the sort of thing an ancient writer would have begun a piece of literature meant to be heard and remembered by a multitude of people.

[Roymond]

On 4/27/2018 at 4:07 AM, Still Alive said:

This is where we disagree. I believe science is about how and the bible is about why. Science is simply the examination of the world around us and how creation works. Religion is about WHY we are here and our relationship with our creator. The evidence is legion that everything is much older than 6,000 years. But THIS iteration on the earth's surface may, in fact, be 6,000 years old. But even then, most of our "biblical" dating techniques for earth before humans witnessed it is conjecture based on how we interpret the bible. 

The Hebrew might allow for there having been an entirely different universe before this one if you want to stretch the grammar, but there's no room for "THIS iteration on the earth's surface"; you might sneak in a vast period of time  between "heavens" and "earth", or possibly between "earth." and "And the earth", but it's the same earth in verses 2 and 3 as in 1.

On 4/27/2018 at 4:07 AM, Still Alive said:

It's like when the bible says a fire in unquenchable, people think that means it never goes out. But what it means is that it can't be quenched. It will go out on its own, or it could never go out. Both are possible. And so often people see text about "the universe" when It may be about this planet, its atmosphere, etc. 

That's a bit of a brilliant observation about fire! 

On 4/27/2018 at 4:07 AM, Still Alive said:

Could God have placed stars, millions of light years away, 6,000 years ago, and at the same time placed all the electromagnetic light waves/photons between there and here at exactly the same moment to give it the appearance of being old? Sure. But you don't have to believe that to accept what the bible says.

Setting aside the point that creating light "in transit" that never actually came from the stars it appears to be coming from is a bit deceptive....  If you want to stick closely to the literal meaning it's not even necessary, though; light coming from stars and reaching this earth over billions of years can be taken as just part of the creation of "the heavens" before "the earth".  Nothing says they're instantaneous even if taken as just mundane narrative.

On 4/27/2018 at 4:07 AM, Still Alive said:

All one needs to do is consider what was really being written by Moses, John, and anyone else that touches on the subject and realize we are often adding meaning to words and phrases that is really not there. I've caught myself doing it the more I study and I believe I will continue to catch myself doing it as I continue my journey to know the Lord and his plan for me the remainder of my life.

"What was really being written by Moses" -- or whoever set it down -- is something we just don't see in the English because the first Creation account is (at least) two types of ancient literature at once, neither of which we have anything like, while serving at least two functions at once; when understood as those kinds of ancient literature and with those purposes, the first Genesis Creation account shows itself as the work of a highly creative, even genius, writer; it reads -- to use an analogy -- like two or three different symphonies played at the same time and working together perfectly.

[Roymond]

On 4/27/2018 at 4:24 AM, Guest shiloh357 said:

What happened is that we have placed science in authority over Scripture and allowed scientists to hi-jack the interpretation of the Bible.  

That's where the idea that everything the Bible says has to be scientifically accurate came from!  Nothing in the Bible suggests that it intends to tell us anything about science, and until the emergence of the idea of scientific materialism it wasn't treated that way; but scientific materialism got absorbed by many people in the church and so got forced onto the scriptures.

On 4/27/2018 at 4:24 AM, Guest shiloh357 said:

 

Now we have those who tell us that the Bible is true only insofar as science will allow it to be true and if the Bible and science are in contradiction, science wins the benefit of the doubt over the Bible.  Science has become the infallible standard against which the Bible is judged, when  it should be the other way around.   The claims of Scripture should be the lens through which science is studied and understood.

Exactly -- so we should stop trying to force the scriptures to teach science and just read them as the ancient literature they are!  As St. Augustine noted long ago, trying to force the scriptures into  saying things the writers had no care about just makes us look foolish and shuts minds against the Gospel.

Thousands of years, millions of years, billions of years; none of that is relevant to the scriptures and Christians should stop trying to force the Bible to teach any of those!  The Bible isn't about when and where and what, it's about who and why.  So the claims of scripture really have nothing to say about science, what they have to say is about God and man and the relationship between them.

[Roymond]

On 4/27/2018 at 7:34 AM, Still Alive said:

Since it doesn't say that, that is merely your inference. 

Let me be clear: I'm not saying I KNOW what it means. Rather, I'm saying it is sparse enough on information to allow multiple perspectives within the context. 

And the context is this: The bible is about man's origins, God's personality, and man's relationship with God and responsibilities. With that context, "in the beginning" could be interpreted to mean "in the beginning of time" or it could mean "in the beginning of the story of man, created by God, in His image."

One can accept either of these and the whole story can work, and the latter actually works better the more we know about the earth, the other bodies in our solar system, and the universe. To an ancient shepherd, it means "in the beginning of time and creation", but to anyone aware of what mankind has discovered about creation, it could also mean "in the beginning of the story of man", which follows previous stories. Who knows? Maybe the seven thunders were about to speak of those previous stories.

The greater context, i.e. the cultural and literary, is also important.  The most significant aspect here is that the first Genesis Creation account follows the order of events in the Egyptian creation account but changes pretty much everything else.  Start with light:  in the Egyptian (and most ancient near eastern) view, light was just there, as was darkness, but -- in modern colloquial terms -- the writer is saying, "No, you dummies -- light is something that God made!'  And it goes on that way, taking things that the Egyptians considered gods -- earth, sky, and sea being prominent -- and repeatedly says, "No, that's something God made".  In other words, the writer took the story that the Israelites had heard all their lives from the Egyptians and said, "Those things aren't gods, they're things God made".   And the biggest slam to Egyptian mythology is where two of their greatest gods don't even get names in the Hebrew account, they're just objects with jobs:  a big light for the day, and a lesser light for the night; God uses those "lights" to establish time -- day and night, and ultimately seasons and years.  In terms of the impact the Genesis account would have had on any Egyptians who heard it, I like to sum it up as, "All your gods are belong to YHWH!"

So the theme of the first Creation account is that anything the Egyptians (and other neighbors) considered to be a deity is something God made, plus things they thought were just always there, like light and darkness.  And within that theme I'd say time has to count as one of those things the pagans thought was always there but the Genesis writer is saying, "No, God created it".  That's perhaps the biggest point against the Egyptian view; their creation stories didn't account for light or time or darkness, those were just there, but the Genesis account says that if it exists, God made it -- like the poem says,

Quote

"all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,  all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all"

except the Genesis writer extends that to 'all things tiny and obscure, things we can't see they're so small, all things gross or pitiful, the Lord God made them all.'

[Roymond]

On 4/27/2018 at 9:08 AM, Guest shiloh357 said:

Eternity is time.  It is not linear, it is indefinite, but it is still time. 

As one of my Greek professors would have put it, eternity is more than time, but it is never less than that.

And my astronomy professor inadvertently commented on this when he asked the class, "Why is there only one dimension of time?"

[Roymond]

On 4/27/2018 at 12:12 PM, Guest shiloh357 said:

The Bible gives us enough data to know that the earth is 6,000 years old.  That is not speculation. 

Except it doesn't.  Numerous scholars down the centuries have said that the Earth is much older than 6,000 years, from a million to uncountable.  Most of them knew the Hebrew because they grew up reading and speaking it from the time they could walk, much better than anyone here.

On 4/27/2018 at 12:12 PM, Guest shiloh357 said:

.  Modern science dates the bones by rocks and the rocks by the bones.  It is completely circular. 

Um, no, it isn't. That statement includes two statements each of which is true under certain specific conditions but which ignores radiometric, magnetic, thermal, luminescence, electron resonance... I'm probably forgetting a couple. 

In fact rocks can be dated by the folding of the layers, or at least minimum ages can be established.  This works because it's been established in laboratories just how fast rocks and the crystals inside them can bend without shattering; using this method the Himalayas have a minimum age of many hundreds of thousands of years old, and other mountain ranges give even greater minimum ages.

On 4/27/2018 at 12:12 PM, Guest shiloh357 said:

Modern science is atheistic in its worldview and interprets evidence in a manner that accommodates that worldview.

Nope.  Almost all my university science professors were devout Christians, and if a colleague was caught "interpet[ing] evidence in a manner that accomodates" any particular worldview those professors would have jumped on that -- as would most other colleagues who were Deist or Agnostic.  Professors love to publish papers, and one easy way to get a paper published is to find bias in someone else's research.

On 4/27/2018 at 12:12 PM, Guest shiloh357 said:

Your "explanation"  doesn't fit with the biblical data and the biblical data is the plumline for judging and interpreting physical data.  There is nothing irrational about the earth being 6,000 years old.

What biblical data?  If you're talking about supposedly scientific statements, first show me where the Bible claims to teach science! 

Indeed the idea that everything in the Bible has to be 100% scientifically and historically accurate doesn't come from the scriptures, it comes from a philosophy called scientific materialism which holds that unless something is 100% scientifically correct it can't be true.  Trying to force Bible verses to speak scientifically is just as big an error as forcing the scriptures to fit Aristotle (which led the Roman Catholic church seriously astray) or to fit any other human philosophy.

On 4/27/2018 at 12:12 PM, Guest shiloh357 said:

  Even if you're not an evolutionist, the notion that the earth is billions of years old only exists to accommodate Evolution.  It's now a case where Christians have to compromise with the world and subjugate the Bible to the atheistic worldview of modern science.

Nope.  Serious Hebrew scholars back before Galileo ever considered the idea that the Earth moves, purely on the basis of the Hebrew, concluded that the universe is ancient almost beyond conceivability and that the Earth is old beyond human counting.  They weren't trying to "accommodate Evolution" because the idea of evolution hadn't been invented yet, they were just trying to interpret the Hebrew deeply and thoroughly.

Also nope:  the "notion that the earth is billions of years old" doesn't rely on evolution at all, it relies on geological and astronomical science totally apart from evolution.

A final point:  in university I knew several guys who were atheist or agnostic when they started their studies,but due to their study of science they came to believe there must be a Creator/Designer, and most of them started to study the Bible and became Christians.  The branch of science these guys were studying?  Evolution.  So contrary to the view you express, evolution does not require atheism; if it did, those guys would not have come to Christ.

[Roymond]

On 4/27/2018 at 12:30 PM, Guest shiloh357 said:

The entire platform for the earth being millions of years old... is an attack on the Bible's authority.   

Nope.  The Bible doesn't give an age for the Earth; it really doesn't even give an age for the expulsion from Eden.  And most scientists who are atheists don't care enough about the Bible to slant their research by attacking it.

On 4/27/2018 at 12:30 PM, Guest shiloh357 said:

 So your only alternatives to are to say the days are really long epochs of time or believe the Bible the earth was created in 6 literal days ....

False dichotomy:  judging by the literary type of the first Genesis Creation account, the six days aren't probably meant literally.  There are choices other than the two you give, choices held by great Christians down the centuries.