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Question about those that think The Earth Is Only 6000 Years


syntex72

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Here's one of my favorite Onion articles, Sumerians Look on in Confusion as God Creates the World.

Anyway, I was raised being taught young earth creation, and in my experience they would simply say that these account are wrong. Here are some responses from Answers in Genesis. Basically, they take the Bible as more authoritative than any secular resources.

Notice the logic there: no other source mentions the Tower of Babel, so the Bible's date must be accurate and thus the Bible can be trusted on other dates as well.

Woo boy, that is circular logic I've never seen the likes of before.

I guess the best books really are the ones that tell you what you already know...

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Yep. My rabbi tends not to publicize this particular belief, but he won't deny it.

Here's an example from the official Chabad website: http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/letters/ ... -Earth.htm

This is actually a classic example of a common Chabad trend. The late Lubavitcher Rebbe (head of the Chabad movement who died in 1994) actually had a university background in math, physics and engineering, and was known to be intelligent. His followers are very proud of this fact - but most of the hardcore ones have absolutely no idea what he is saying, science-wise. So, you can't really have a rational discussion with them about this letter and mention the role of gravity, for example. Since few in the core group (not the mere supporters) go to university or have much basic science background at all, their thought process is simply: "Our leader, who is always right, was a very smart guy who went to university and knows about science. He came up with this response, so it must be right, and we can point to it whenever anyone challenges our belief."

Just read the three letters...WOW. :pink-shock:

Do you happen to know the source of this particular belief?

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In my other forum, there used to be a fundie kid, who was giving charts how to disprove carbon dating and how the great flood just mixed everything up to put it into different layers of sediments, the message board doesnt exist any more but i can have a look at the wayback machine.

look out for GlinnMGraw .. https://web.archive.org/web/20070508230 ... sc-15.html may not be in the thread though as i think he posted it in a later onel

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While I appreciate that the whole 6000 years story is a requirement of their faith, it belongs in their churches and in their hearts. They have no right to insert it into our education system. More and more we are hearing about creationism being taught in schools and/or evolution being removed. It's a real danger to our form of government but there is no push back. That scares me more than any threat from outside the nation.

I don't think I'd say it was a requirement of the Christian faith -- just for certain sects of Christians and other fundamentalist groups.

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I don't think I'd say it was a requirement of the Christian faith -- just for certain sects of Christians and other fundamentalist groups.

It's only a requirement for certain Christians as there are plenty of Christian sects that accept science, including evolution. Some even suggest that evolution was God's way of doing things, and that days for the Creator are not the 24 hour days humans have. It's also thought by those more liberal Christians that science is also part of the divine plan, and that by studying science is another way to connect with God.

Some devout Mormons also buy into the 6,000 years belief of the planet, and they even say that fossils are bits left over from other planets that had life before Earth was created.

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I have a friend who is an extremely devout Catholic and also a medical doctor. She belives that the earth is 6,000 years old. I asked her once how she, with her scientific background, could believe that, and she shrugged and said that if God said that's how it was, it was good enough for her. Her sister, who has a Masters in Bio, has the same mindset.

I don't know how people who deal with evolution in their careers can deny it when it comes to the rest of the entire planet.

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My dad gave me loads of reading and viewing material on the subject, almost all of it from AiG. However, for the most part I find your questions to be too broad. Perhaps if you were to narrow them down a little, I could hunt up the appropriate book and find an answer for you.

(Disclaimer, I don't believe in YEC, but my dad does and strongly.)

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In reality they are denying the world god made for gods word. they contradict each other so lets deny the world instead. wonder how god feels about that?

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It's only a requirement for certain Christians as there are plenty of Christian sects that accept science, including evolution. Some even suggest that evolution was God's way of doing things, and that days for the Creator are not the 24 hour days humans have. It's also thought by those more liberal Christians that science is also part of the divine plan, and that by studying science is another way to connect with God.

Some devout Mormons also buy into the 6,000 years belief of the planet, and they even say that fossils are bits left over from other planets that had life before Earth was created.

This is where I am, pretty much. I don't see how it's any less miraculous for God to have guided/designed/whatever evolution than it is to say he went, Poof! and made the world. To me, evolution has a certain beauty to it ... as though he watched over everything as it was growing and transforming and becoming, almost like a gardener lovingly watching each flower petal unfurl and vine twine around the trellis.

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In my other forum, there used to be a fundie kid, who was giving charts how to disprove carbon dating and how the great flood just mixed everything up to put it into different layers of sediments, the message board doesnt exist any more but i can have a look at the wayback machine.

look out for GlinnMGraw .. https://web.archive.org/web/20070508230 ... sc-15.html may not be in the thread though as i think he posted it in a later onel

a quote from your link

The belief that the atoms of a "Big Bang" eventually produced people ALL BY THEMSELVES (that is, without any intelligent guidance) is contrary to the well-proven Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the fundamentals of Information Theory. The universe is known to be "running down" yet evolution postulates it is "building up". Atoms to people evolution is much more a "religious belief" than a scientific fact.

I am quite familiar with science deniers claiming evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics even though it doesn't, but I have never heard of them using information theory to back up their claims. I admit I am no expert on Information Theory and don't know much about its science applications, but the fundamentals of it is that "meaning is irrelevant" (ie this meaning of this message is irrelevant in the transmission of its data. or something like that). How do fundies use this to deny evolution? This one is new to me.

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You mean Usher the rapper? LOL

I suspect Usher the rapper has more sense.

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This is where I am, pretty much. I don't see how it's any less miraculous for God to have guided/designed/whatever evolution than it is to say he went, Poof! and made the world. To me, evolution has a certain beauty to it ... as though he watched over everything as it was growing and transforming and becoming, almost like a gardener lovingly watching each flower petal unfurl and vine twine around the trellis.

This is exactly try how I feel about it. To me God is logical and evolution is the logical means of creation.

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It's only a requirement for certain Christians as there are plenty of Christian sects that accept science, including evolution. Some even suggest that evolution was God's way of doing things, and that days for the Creator are not the 24 hour days humans have. It's also thought by those more liberal Christians that science is also part of the divine plan, and that by studying science is another way to connect with God.

Some devout Mormons also buy into the 6,000 years belief of the planet, and they even say that fossils are bits left over from other planets that had life before Earth was created.

The main problem Christian fundamentalists have with the idea of an old earth is that it makes it difficult to believe that the entire drama with Adam and Eve and the Fall literally happened. If you take away the Adam and Eve story, then there was no Fall, no original sin, and no reason for Christ to have lived or died, at least not as described in "traditional Christianity." Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures are also problematic because 1. their very existence implies that the Earth is much older than 6,000 years 2. Genesis states that animals and plants were put on Earth specifically for human use, which is obviously not true if living things existed for millions of years before humans showed up 3. Genesis also states that death only came to this world through the Fall, which is obviously not true if plants and animals were living and dying millions of years before humans existed. I know that many Christians do reconcile their faith with evolution and an old earth, but it's really hard to do that if you insist on a literal reading of Genesis, as fundamentalists do.

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I agree with your point as long as you keep it to fundamentalist Christianity, but it doesn't work with traditional Christianity. :)

Also a hefty portion of Christianity doesn't believe in original sin.

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I'd say most Christians and even plenty on the more conservative side of the spectrum aren't young earth. We go to a church* that's part of a denomination (PCA) that ranges from conservative evangelical to fundie light for the most part, and a few weeks ago our pastor mentions wile reading through the genealogy of Moses that "just as free information" you can't use ancient Hebrew genealogies to date the world because they tended to skip generations that was one of the major fallacies of those who claim belief in a young earth. Probably part of why his kids go to public school. I know I found a church here that's highly recommend on the military spouse pages that with a little digging is Indepen Baptist and they actually include belief in a young earth as part of their official statement of faith. And we didn't go any further than their website because we couldn't go to a church that seemed to require you to believe that.

*PCA is basically a compromise denomination for me and my husband. He spent his teenage years in an independent baptist church that said he was committing sexual immorality by wrestling a girl in a high school wrestling tournament, KJV only, the works. I grew up moderate (CBF combined with SBC for traditional reasons while ignoring most of the crap they spewed) baptist with female pastors and deacons and the only official use of KJV a was for Bible Drill because someone thought it was prettier. Attending church is important to us, and we don't want to go to separate churches. We've gone to more mission minded (as in meet physical needs because Jeaus loves you and not here's a tract dorant matter if you're hungry) on the more liberal side for PCA churches, and when we were interviewed by the elders to join our current church I told them I think the PCA is wrong on women's issues and that it was a compromise denomination. I know others here might make different decisions.

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There was a blog I read a year or so ago where the blogger claimed that she could teach fundies how to defend six day creationism and provide "proof" that God exists. She got tons of comments that disproved everything she wrote but she refused to admit that her "proof" was a pile of bullshit and then she just stopped blogging because it was clear she was making a fool of herself.

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I am quite familiar with science deniers claiming evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics even though it doesn't, but I have never heard of them using information theory to back up their claims. I admit I am no expert on Information Theory and don't know much about its science applications, but the fundamentals of it is that "meaning is irrelevant" (ie this meaning of this message is irrelevant in the transmission of its data. or something like that). How do fundies use this to deny evolution? This one is new to me.

This one really infuriates me, since it's not an argument at all, it's just semantic bullshit. I teach this stuff from time to time- the 2nd law is very clear you can't reduce overall entropy. But we see local decreases in entropy all the time- you have at least one (and probably more) devices in your house that decrease entropy. They are called freezers- high entropy liquid water goes in, lower entropy ice comes out. This isn't magic- it manages this by taking electricity to compress a working fluid, expanding the fluid rapidly to cool it, and then dumping the heat generated by the compressor through an external exchanger. Since the process is always less than 100% efficient you generate more entropy overall, but you still have ice. (Please don't make me explain a Peltier cooler though- my brain hurts when I do that)

In a similar fashion life is a local decrease in entropy. Creationists know this is impossible since the Sun doesn't exist, and certainly doesn't provide massive amounts of energy to the Earth.

Adding in the "information theory" angle is pointless- it's *exactly* the same argument, and fails for exactly the same reason. (Although the creationists love to bury this argument in math most people can't follow) We see information increases in life all the time- the most obvious example is duplication in DNA replication. Sometimes you get an error where a chunk of DNA gets copied more than once, so your end copy is longer than the start. Presto- more information. This sort of duplication is probably why we have color vision and dogs don't- one of the genes for red color vision duplicated back when primates were first getting started, and then mutated to be sensitive to a different wavelength of light (green). This mutation then got conserved since it gave an advantage in finding foods like brightly colored fruits. (So much for "mutations are always bad" as well) This isn't hard to understand, unless you're trying to make sure you don't understand it.

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It's only a requirement for certain Christians as there are plenty of Christian sects that accept science, including evolution. Some even suggest that evolution was God's way of doing things, and that days for the Creator are not the 24 hour days humans have. It's also thought by those more liberal Christians that science is also part of the divine plan, and that by studying science is another way to connect with God.

Some devout Mormons also buy into the 6,000 years belief of the planet, and they even say that fossils are bits left over from other planets that had life before Earth was created.

Yes - most of the Christians I know only have a problem when science directly contradicts the Bible. They wouldn't see the Bible as a scientific textbook, but as the word of God, so the Bible trumps where there is a disagreement. But mostly they would see science as explaining the world that God made, and uncovering more and more of its wonders. So to give an example: the Bible says everything was created after its own kind. That would rule out evolution between species, but there's nothing to say that "cat kind" couldn't have developed into lions, tigers, bobcats, servals, house cats etc etc. Most of my Christian friends would say they believe God made the world, but there is a wide spectrum of different beliefs about *how* He did that.

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Large swaths of Christianity do not abide by YEC - the Catholic Church has endorsed the science behind evolution.

I don't think you can argue with YEC's. They already deny the facts and have made up answers to make their worldview fit. You can't reason with that kind of denial.

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Large swaths of Christianity do not abide by YEC - the Catholic Church has endorsed the science behind evolution.

I don't think you can argue with YEC's. They already deny the facts and have made up answers to make their worldview fit. You can't reason with that kind of denial.

No you can't. I've tried with my husband and it's a losing battle. People who believe that have been indoctrinated. There is no reasoning with them.

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  • 3 months later...

Although I may have waited too long to enter the most recent "Caption Contest" for Raptureversary June 2015, Day 2, Id like to share my meme here, as it relates to the topic at hand...

n7aaw.jpgvia Imgflip Meme Maker

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