Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Age of the earth?

Literal days are specified, morning and evening of each day of Creation, morning and evening of the first day, the morning and evening of the second etcetera, including a list of generations from Adam, Bishop Ussher's calculations and so on....

My argument is unscathed by that. Perhaps you didn't understand what I said. While Adam was the first man (by God's reckoning), Genesis does not state that he was the first member of his (our) zoological species. "Forming him from the mud" is shorthand allegory for the natural processes that led to his coming into existence. It had already been stated, after all, that God commanded the waters to bring forth all the moving creatures that have life. That's an all inclusive statement. Adam was a moving creature that had life.

Look, underneath the shaman's robes and the funny headdress, I'm about as Christian as they come.

Still, I can walk my own farm and see the effect that glaciers had. If you tell me the Earth is 4 billion or 14 billion years old, I'll listen. A lot of what God does takes time.

There is a hole in the ground at my salt lick. I've been pouring in bags of rock salt every year for the deer. The deer have created quite a crater, carrying of bits of soil in their gut. I was bored one day and tried to calculate how long it would take them to dig a cellar and how much salt it would take. My head started to hurt.

On the other hand, there's a cave on the shores of Lake Victoria-- a monstrous thing. It has no water running into it, so they know it wasn't formed like normal karst. They figure it was the elephants, for God-knows-how-long going to a huge salt lick. Given how fast it takes, those elephants have been working on it probably longer than there have been elephants.

Do I believe the Bible? Yes, and in the case of Genesis, I believe at some time primordial a bunch of sheep herders got the lowdown from on High in the terms they understood and did their best to remember it. I believe that Moses got the straight dope from God in the best terms he could understand. I believe that Christ came to the world and gave us the straight dope as best as we could understand. You can throw Paul in there. I think he was one of the best examples of how God sends folks out to explain things.

None of these revelations told me anything about how to fix a computer or reload for 30-06, and I don't rely on the Bible for this info as a result. I also don't take a sheep herder's word on things like Geology, Astronomy, or Cosmology.

Very well said.

You keep repeating this falsehood which you would not believe if you had completed high school math unless some religious quack claiming to be a scientist had not hammered it into your head.

In fact, if you know (a) the percentage of the original isotope and the percentage of final isotope in a given sample and (b) you measure the rate of decay, it is simple to calculate the original age before decay.

Thanks. I have close family that hold to a young/flat earth based on purely Biblical interpretation. One merely has to go for a ride in a modern jet to see the curvature of the earth, but somehow that isn't good enough. I can take them to parts of their own county and show them formations that took hundreds of thousands of years to create, but they blame the Flood.

Years ago, I had a neighbor who came by to see what I was doing out in the driveway. I had my 8 inch Dobsonian out and I was observing the Andromeda Galaxy. He was fascinated. I offered him a peek, but he declined. He said his Bible was enough and didn't want to confuse things. This was a mid-level exec with MCI corp and was lead on the P&G account. Yikes.

Me? I used to sit on a cliff overlooking the Mill Creek in Cincinnati. It's an extension of the Licking River and in times past it ran the other way and eventually used to dump into the Ohio when it ran up the Little Miami, crossed over to the Great Miami well north of Cincinnati and ran down what is now the Great Miami. The below-ground aquifers are still there. To me the carving of river channels over thousands of years is a grand spectacle of God's influence in the world.

It was a cute girl that turned him YEC.

Yu just can't get it. God, Himself, wrote with His finger on stone He rested on the seventh day. He defined days in the first chapter of the Bible. Only someone who wants to add to God's Word distorts the facts. Saint Peter tells us those who distort God's Word distort it to their own destruction.

Where's the interpretation? Words mean things. When put in sentences they even mean more.

You think the Word of God made flesh had limited understanding? He created everything, including your brain. You insult Him.

Another one who is missing the point. General Richards gave two commands on two succeeding days. He could have given six commands on six succeeding days, then rested on the seventh day. But the commands may have taken weeks or months to be fully carried out. From our perspective, in the year 2023, reading the history of his commands, and that they were carried out, and that he saw that they were good, there's no grammatical reason to assume they were fully carried out on the days the commands were issued.

You are a smooth brain that works for Satan.


False prophet!

Words are the source of misunderstandings.




P

Anyone who gives any credence to your bullshit does so to their own destruction.

Well just who says that God wrote thusly? Some ignorant illiterate stone age goat herder? Some ignorant high-school dropout who thinks everything that goat herders said is peachy keen? Some dark ages Catholic bishops who decided what should be included in their Bible in between burning people at the stake?

Who are you, Ringman, to claim that you know what God did?

Is the Bible fact or fiction?

Well, so far this is the Fire's version of a fairly reasonable discussion. I hope it stays that way. It is quite evident we each have our own beliefs and understanding of how/when the earth was formed, how we believe in God and Jesus, and what the bible contributes to these ideals. The diversity of thought on the details seems to be a result of our teachings by different sources, which is understandable. I know very intelligent people who cling to the belief that the earth is 6000 years old by their bible teachings and I would never tell them to their faces I believe they are foolish. I also know a number of very accomplished engineers in several fields and almost every one of them has come to the conclusion that the universe is far too orderly and mathematically correct for the formation to be an accident- there has to be an intelligent being behind it. So, what does that mean? If there was intelligent design behind the formation of the universe- a being most of us call God- then there was also as part of the design the forming of all the planets, moons, black holes, etc... that make up the universe. I don't believe that happened in 7 days- at least not in our human 7 days as we understand them. As it has been said in the bible- God's time is as a blink of the eye. We may not understand His time any more than a worm understands us, so arguing about it is as a breath in the wind...

Well, that is a good question. There is a good amount of fact in the bible- many geographical locations and descriptions are accurate enough that places and buildings have been located and verified. Also, the listing of the families in the old testament is a historical reference to which the accuracy can and has been traced for lineage.

Since the Bible was put together some time after Jesus' time, and relies on stories which have been told and retold for centuries and interpreted by different sects of the Christian faithful it can't be relied on substantially to be factual in all matters. Also, due to the many interpretations by different sects it was a great battle to decide which interpretations were include in the final text and which were discarded. Also, since much of the bible is formed as story telling to teach in parables, the meaning is more spiritual than factual and must be interpreted by the faithful to gain meaning IMO...

This particular discussion could go on for quite some time...

Parts are fact, and parts are allegory. It's not generally hard to differentiate.