The Evidence

[Todd the Mut]

The "EVIDENCE" is the same for both the scientist that believe in a literal creation and those that believe in millions and billions of years.

The premise each interpret the evidence is based on a preconceived belief set. Two scientist looking at the same pile of bones, or stratum in the rocks, each with opposing belief sets, will come to two different conclusions.

The difference between the two is simply this:

The million and billion of years scientist are best, 100 years old themselves, and have based their belief set on someone who probably didn't live to be 100. Yet people believe what they say because they carry the title "scientist" and wear a white lab coat.

With the bible believing creationist, they base their belief set, on the word of one who claims He was there in the beginning. Not only does He claims to have been there, but claims to have actually created the heavens and the earth and all therein.

However the millions and billions of years guys find faith in man to be more reassuring than faith in God. AND:

Rom 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

[Guest AV1611_USER]

No, people believe the earth's 4.6 billion year age because of the many many agreeing radiometric dates obtained from meteorites.

And who gave us those radiometric dates? The scientists!

[apothanein kerdos]

No, people believe the earth's 4.6 billion year age because of the many many agreeing radiometric dates obtained from meteorites.

That's what I always thought.

There are some parts of science that are testable (such as the date of the earth) and not really influenced by a philosophical presupposition, and there are other parts that are influenced by a philosophical presupposition (such as life/matter forming spontaneously).

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[quote name='Todd the Mut

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I said it in another topic, and I'll say it here. Biblically, God created a mature earth. We date things by carbon decay. I would suggest that if God created a mature earth, some materials would already have been in various states of decay.

Ah, so god created the world to look old, so that there would be no way of testing scientifically what it's true age was?

Well I could apply the same argument to say that he created the world last Wednesday and planted memories in our heads to make us think the world was older. In fact, I could apply the same argument to say that at any given moment, the world was created only nanoseconds ago. How do you know any different if god specifically made it so that we couldn't tell?

No, dear Atheist. science only has the one way of dating, and that one way is flawed because it is based on the supposition that all carbon atoms started at a set point. We have already seen the flaws in this method (for example, the living mollusk dated to be a million years old). Though it can be a fairly good method for dating, it makes an assumption that there is no creator and goes from there - in essence, proving there is no god by using that supposition as a starting point.

Here's a point to consider. If the earth appears billions of years old, acts as if it's billions of years old, and affects our lives in ways that suggest it's billions of years old, aren't our actions guided best by the assumption that it is billions of years old? I mean, if the earth reacts to our actions as if it billions of years old, shouldn't our actions be guided by the assumption that it is? (not that the age of the earth would ever really affect anyone, but assume for discussion's sake that you're a geologist, or something, who's actions are actually affected by this)

When you say the earth effects our lives as though it's a billion years old, I take that to mean you know how the earth would effect our lives if it were only, say, 10,000 years old?

[apothanein kerdos]

The "God created a mature" earth fails for a few different reasons.

The first one is that it is somewhat of a Pandora's box on the study of reality. What is to stop someone from saying we were created 5 minutes ago with memory built into us? The significance in this is that all the "history" we see would then be on God's shoulders and not man's. Likewise, if the world is created to appear old, all the violent history we see within the fossil record is on God's shoulders and not on man.

Secondly, it's a false comparison to other passages of scripture. Consider a few examples:

1) When Jesus healed the blind, they could see fully and did not have to wait. It began in an instance but had the appearance of age

2) Adam and Eve were created with the appearance of being old but were not

3) Jesus turned water into wine and it appeared old when it was not

4) Therefore, when God creates, He creates things with the appearance of age.

This, of course, is not only an invalid argument, I'd argue it's untrue.

First, logically, it commits an error by taking anomalies and making them the norm. Put into a syllogism, it shows up as invalid.

More importantly, however, is that this is one of those rare times where this actually impacts the truth. Generally, an improper syllogism will only affect how the argument needs to be worded, not if the argument is true. In this case, however, a properly ordered syllogism based on this concept would be forced to leave the matter open ended - that is, it could not say absolutely that God could create with age, only that He might be able to. It would look like this:

When God performs a miracle, it is often (sometimes) created new but looks old

The world has the appearance of age

Therefore, it is possible that God created the world with the appearance of maturity

This is properly worded, but takes away much of the bite of the argument. Logically it works, but only to a certain point.

I believe the argument fails when it comes in contact with a simple observation. To all the examples given, there are natural alternatives to the examples. That is, water turning into wine instantly is a miracle...but this could still occur (and does occur) naturally. A person given sight is a miracle, but it still occurs naturally. Adam and Eve being mature at creation is a miracle, but it still occurs naturally.

Thus, to all of these we see naturalistic alternatives. However, if God created the world mature, there would be no naturalistic alternative...thus it is a different situation than the others and cannot be applied. Does this make sense?

This is why I whole-heartedly accept that the world appears old because the world is old.

[tired-of-fakes]

Do you not think that God would guide the authors of the bible so as to say what he desired for it to say? And are arguing a Creationism vs. Evolution idea or just the differing views on the age of the earth? If it is the second, I ask if it truly matters.

[apothanein kerdos]

You speak about logical syllogism in your post but isn

[apothanein kerdos]

Regardless of how old the earth is, Newton based his 6000 year old earth on his scientific observations of nature and his understanding of Holy Writ, neither of which suggested to him the earth was billions of years old.

What natural observations did he use?

Regardless, his view doesn't matter in this instance. There are other scientists more qualified than he is on the subject that disagree...and also use scripture to come to that conclusion.

Maybe you can expand your thinking a wee bit. What does a

[apothanein kerdos]

All of them.

Such as?