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Young Earth Musings


Lady Di 62

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I've been thinking about the young earth believers and have come to point where I'm not sure what they beleive. I know they think the earth is only approx 6K years old.

However, my problem in understanding their views lies in Genesis. Don't a lot of these people beleive in the interpretation that God created the earth in 7 days? Does this mean young earthers think each day was then a 24-hour day? If so, this means that the creationists who think each "day" of God is equal to 1000 of our 24-hr days cannot then be young earthers, because we'd be talking about a minimum of 9K years of earth age, taking the 7K for creation and day of rest and the 2K from Jesus's era to present. Or are these people one and the same and they aren't taking into consideration the 7K years for the creation they beleive in?

I'm not sure exactly how these people think. What's your take on young earthers vs 24-hr day = 1000 yrs?

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Yes, pretty much that is what they believe. They get the 'timeline' but using the genealogies in the bible and guesstimating the timespan of a generation. Some YECs believe that the creation days are 24 hours (just like earth days are now) and some don't. It really depends on the person.

I think anyone who denies the fact of evolution and thinks that the earth was magicked into being via a supernatural being is touched in the head. I can't take them seriously at all.

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I wouldn't necessarily consider those who don't believe in literal 24-hour days to be young-earthers. Some think the days could have been as much as billions of years long.

It is kind of amazing to me that someone could look at the genealogy in the Bible and decide it shows exactly how old the earth this.

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Wow. So you think some young earthers (6K y/o believers) count each day of creation as 1000 yrs? So can they not add? Or do they not think?

I cound understand a young earther who believes a day of creation equaling a 24h day but to beleive in both the 1000 yr theory and the earth is 6K y/o theory at the same time is mind boggling.

BTW, ever notice that the light was created before the sun and moon?

ETA: Yes, in my head I get that there are 24-hr people and 1000 yr people who do beleive the earth is older - I just didn't think it out that way. My mind is still unsure how a 1000 yr person could think the earth is only 6K yrs old since 7x1000=7000.

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A non-literal day person wouldn't believe that the earth is only 6000 years old.

It's weird to imagine thinking about the earth in YEC terms. We have artwork and writings and such from around 3000BC, which for them is barely after the earth began.

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A non-literal day person wouldn't believe that the earth is only 6000 years old.

It's weird to imagine thinking about the earth in YEC terms. We have artwork and writings and such from around 3000BC, which for them is barely after the earth began.

Not to mention that the pyramids would have been built just after the earth was created. Somehow Adam and Eve spawned enough to create enough people to populate the entire Middle East and North Africa in just under a millennia.

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I've never met a YEC who believed in day-ages or whatever they call it. It's all literal 24 hour days and adding up the geneologies for them. (My FIL asked me, since I'm an ancient historian, how old I think the earth is. I said I didn't know - no science education at all, really, alas - and that it wasn't a historical question anyway. He said, I think quite non-snarkily (in retrospect although I didn't take it well at the time), "haven't you read the Bible? It tells you right there." He was still pretty dismissive about my actual ancient-historical expert-opinion that the Genesis account isn't history in genre and even if it were it isn't meant to be read like modern objective/factual history. Because he added up the generations himself, gosh dang it, and there couldn't possibly be any other point to the inclusion of that material in the text. I swear, biblical literalists put themselves into their own tight corner. But I digress.)

I've come across old-earthers who still believe in creation but are more inclined toward much longer "days" and even a gap theory, between an original creation and a later re-formation of the matter in the universe.

And you know that any method of dating that suggests something older than 5K years or so is just flawed and wrong. Anyway, if people live for hundreds of years they could have populated pretty fast, right?

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And where did the women who married Cain and Abel come from? Always did bother me. Did the entire population of the world come from those two? And the Sons of God who came down and mated with humans and birthed giants. Very puzzling.

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They had kids with their sisters. Cain, Abel, and Seth are the only children named, but the Bible says that Adam and Eve had others.

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I've wondered about how they reproduced also. I'd think using the sisters (if one is to take the bible literally) would have contaminated the gene pool. I suppose Lilith could have made a reappearance, but even Lilith adding her genes wouldn't be enough for good breeding stock. I read somewhere (maybe here) that someone said they were taught that there were other humans outside the Garden of Eden for the sons to mate with. If I was going on the assumption that the bible is literal, I'd have to align myself with that theory for it to be plausible. However, I take Adam, Eve, and Lilith (love that uppity woman!) to be creation myths, so for me this is all supposition.

So, Kaetrin, you are saying that most YEC beleive in 24 hr days for creation days? I guess that makes sense. I hope others will chime in tomorrow. It would be nice if a lurker who believed in YE would come out to give me more info. My sister is fundy-lite-lite but I don't want to stir anything up by asking her.

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Hey, I'm a lurker/fairly infrequent poster. I guess I classify as fundie lite, but anyway, I was raised learning Young Earth and my family used Answers in Genesis a lot.

Basically, how I was taught, The literal creation account states that the world was created in 6 24-hr days. I don't see how you could be a young earth creationist and not believe that because the foundation of YE'ers are biblical literalists, and to not be a literalist about a 24 hr day is already contradicting yourself.

As far as quick population of the earth, lifespans in the OT are reported to have been very long. It seems to be normal for ppl to have lived for 500 years or more, so that explains how there could have been a quick population growth over just a thousand years or so. I always understood that to mean that Adam and Eve would have definitely put the Duggars to shame. However, if you believe in a literal account of creation, you probably also believe in the flood, where everyone was killed off except for 8 people, so you would have had to start back again from scratch. If I recall, people still had fairly long lifespans even after the flood for awhile.

Also, most YE'ers also say that genetic possibilities were more varied back then, meaning that it was OK to marry your sister; you wouldn't end up with a bunch of kids with genetic defects.

I think there was more I was thinking of saying, but I can't remember right now....

I for one, would be interested in getting a more in depth explanation of evolution. As someone raised from a creationist point of view, evolution makes sense to me as it displays itself within species, such as the classic peppered moth example, but fail to see how evolution can produce new species. It seems to me that the more one breeds, the more "inbred" things get...more specifically adapted to a certain climate, but also containing more genetic defects, while when "outbreeding" (like crossing a horse and a donkey), the result is often sterile offspring. Is there something obvious I'm missing? I still consider myself a creationist since I can accept the existence of God, but while still officially holding a YE position, I will readily admit that I wasn't there to see the whole thing happen and God could also have formed the world through evolution. At any rate, I don't think it's worth losing sleep over and certainly not worth losing friends over.

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I for one, would be interested in getting a more in depth explanation of evolution. As someone raised from a creationist point of view, evolution makes sense to me as it displays itself within species, such as the classic peppered moth example, but fail to see how evolution can produce new species. It seems to me that the more one breeds, the more "inbred" things get...more specifically adapted to a certain climate, but also containing more genetic defects, while when "outbreeding" (like crossing a horse and a donkey), the result is often sterile offspring. Is there something obvious I'm missing? I still consider myself a creationist since I can accept the existence of God, but while still officially holding a YE position, I will readily admit that I wasn't there to see the whole thing happen and God could also have formed the world through evolution. At any rate, I don't think it's worth losing sleep over and certainly not worth losing friends over.

Please keep in mind that evolution has NOTHING to do with how the earth was created. That falls under the umbrella of abiogenesis. YEC and IDers like to lump them together and while they are both sciences, they are definitely not the same thing. It is a favourite tactic of deniers to just bombard with questions, ideas, thoughts and mumbo-jumbo so that a person with facts (or without) could not possibly answer them all. They can then say 'HAHA! I've caught you! You couldn't answer X, Y and Z, you've only answered A, B and C!' This tactic has been mastered by William Lane Craig and it is why so many people fall all over him saying he is a genius. He's smart and he knows how to use verbal gymnastics but he is intellectually dishonest.

I think you are also still assuming that over time a cat will turn into a dog or, as Ray Comfort likes to say, a duck and a crocodile will merge to become crocoduck. This is not how evolution works. Not even slightly. I will leave it up to the links I provided to give you a better understanding because I can't explain it worth shit.

I would really suggest reading everything and anything at Talk Origins (http://www.talkorigins.org/). It is an amazing resource. You may also want to look for the book The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins as well as The Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan.

Aside from that you can hit up Bill Nye:

xbrVxrsBLuw

And Carl Sagan:

yet1xkAv_HY

And Neil Degrasse Tyson:

jTCoKlB0s4Y

For simple explanations of various ideas and theories (scientific theories, not la de dah theories like the YEC and IDers would have to think they are):

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

There is also:

The Skeptic's Dictionary: http://www.skepdic.com/

Iron Chariots: http://wiki.ironchariots.org/

Reddit on Evolution: http://www.reddit.com/search?q=evolution

Reddit on Abiogenesis: http://www.reddit.com/search?q=abiogenesis

Reddit on Big Bang: http://www.reddit.com/search?q=big+bang

Hope that helps you on your journey!

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Basically, how I was taught, The literal creation account states that the world was created in 6 24-hr days. I don't see how you could be a young earth creationist and not believe that because the foundation of YE'ers are biblical literalists, and to not be a literalist about a 24 hr day is already contradicting yourself.

As far as quick population of the earth, lifespans in the OT are reported to have been very long. It seems to be normal for ppl to have lived for 500 years or more, so that explains how there could have been a quick population growth over just a thousand years or so.

Also, most YE'ers also say that genetic possibilities were more varied back then, meaning that it was OK to marry your sister; you wouldn't end up with a bunch of kids with genetic defects.

This is very interesting. It makes more sense that a biblical literalist would literally believe the day of creation = a 24h day. Please say more about your young earth views. Do you believe what the scientists say, for the most part, about there being a primordial ooze, just all the time it took earth to evolve is in the 6K years? Or is the belief more of Adam and Eve just like in the bible? What about Lilith? Does young earth belief always coincide with God popping people and species into existance or can a young earther believe a compressed scientific time frame? What about radio carbon dating?

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Hi Fundiefoodie,

Your post is really interesting to me as I have been reading up on creationist beliefs and how these are causing difficulties for science instructors (mainly in the USA). I met my first real 'live' YEC last year. It was both fascinating and frustrating to me to learn about her beliefs. Pretty much everyone in my family is involved in some way in science: my parents are both in the field of medical research. It's very weird when someone rejects the model by which people actually earn their living! Evolution is the base theory on which my folks construct experiments that have produced (amongst other things) diagnostic tests that are used in clinics and hospitals around the world.

The thing about creationism that really stands out for me (in both reading yec literature and listening to my colleague say the things she often does) is the straw-man idea of science that it builds up. It literally has nothing to do with anything science does or even is. For example, my workmate often makes the pronouncement "Evolution is just random chance" - when no science textbook would ever contain such a statement. It is good to know you are willing to look at sources outside the religious literature, my colleague flat out refuses.

I took special note of this from your post:

I still consider myself a creationist since I can accept the existence of God, but while still officially holding a YE position, I will readily admit that I wasn't there to see the whole thing happen and God could also have formed the world through evolution.

The bolded bit seems to be the most important part of the creationist misconception of what science actually is. The YEC sources seem to take this position that science is only what is observable in real time. This is actually a method for exploring the world thought up by Aristotle over 2,000 years ago; he called this natural philosophy. Modern science is a method for exploring the natural world (really the universe now, since we've moved beyond our planet) but it developed greatly beyond the Aristotelian conception in those centuries. The modern scientific method is about 200 years old - but it works so much better than natural philosophy - think of the plodding progression of scientific achievement until the 1800s and how much more was discovered in those little centuries than all the ones before!

The main way in which the scientific method differs from natural philosophy is that it is predictive and generates new information, rather than offering post hoc explanations for observable phenomena. Scientists use theories (like evolution) as models that allow them to make hypotheses, or predictions. They can devise tests to see if these predictions are accurate. If repeated tests confirm the hypotheses, the model on which it is based is retained. Creationism (as I've seen it) is not falsifiable: it cannot be used to make predictions that produce evidence.

Anyway, I'll try to link to PZ Myers, who explains the problem with the Aristotelian position much better than I (sorry he is writing to a little girl, but it is the best explanation I've come across):

[link=]http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/03/dear-emma-b/[/link]

I hope that worked.

Also, most scientists are actually theists. You don't have to stop believing in God to accept scientific evidence of how the universe formed/ abiogenesis/ speciation! PZ Myers is an atheist, but there are other people like Francis Collins who are very sincere believers.

edited: I can't get the link to work :oops:

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Also, most scientists are actually theists.

Not entirely true.

A survey looking at "greater" scientists (defined as those belonging to the National Academy of Sciences). It found that 65% of biological scientists expressed a "disbelief in a personal God", and 79% of physical scientists. Most of the others were agnostics. Only 7% expressed a "belief in a personal God."

Source: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html

Though this was a study done using data from 400 scientists I think it is still a pretty good cross-section.

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Not entirely true.

A survey looking at "greater" scientists (defined as those belonging to the National Academy of Sciences). It found that 65% of biological scientists expressed a "disbelief in a personal God", and 79% of physical scientists. Most of the others were agnostics. Only 7% expressed a "belief in a personal God."

Yes, I've seen that survey - but looking at FundieFoodie's post it seemed that she thought that belief in a god and acceptance of science were mutually exclusive. And it is true that most scientists or people in science-related fields are theists.

It seems extremely important that a person be given an understanding of what science really is and what it does. I do think it troublesome that the most powerful nation on earth could vote in a creationist like Santorum - can you imagine what he would do to federally funded science and education programmes? Fundamentalists/ demi-fundies have no idea how their lives are affected by modern methods of inquiry and what could happen if they abandon the process in favour of cargo-cult science.

My YEC colleague is terrified of even picking up a text or watching a video that might disconfirm her beliefs, lest she be damned to eternal torment. Isn't it better to present it as: hey, read this book and you'll totally understand science, plus you may look at that neat Anglican church differently when you're through - as opposed to: hey, if you read the same books I do you'll totally be one of those atheist evolutionists?

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Yes, I've seen that survey - but looking at FundieFoodie's post it seemed that she thought that belief in a god and acceptance of science were mutually exclusive. And it is true that most scientists or people in science-related fields are theists.

Do you have a citation for that? I actually used that study in a paper I wrote and if I was wrong I would like to know. I found nothing to suggest otherwise or even show that there is data to say anything like that. So yeah, I am really interested...because if such data exists, I was very, very wrong in my writing and research.

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I've been thinking about the young earth believers and have come to point where I'm not sure what they beleive. I know they think the earth is only approx 6K years old.

However, my problem in understanding their views lies in Genesis. Don't a lot of these people beleive in the interpretation that God created the earth in 7 days? Does this mean young earthers think each day was then a 24-hour day? If so, this means that the creationists who think each "day" of God is equal to 1000 of our 24-hr days cannot then be young earthers, because we'd be talking about a minimum of 9K years of earth age, taking the 7K for creation and day of rest and the 2K from Jesus's era to present. Or are these people one and the same and they aren't taking into consideration the 7K years for the creation they beleive in?

I'm not sure exactly how these people think. What's your take on young earthers vs 24-hr day = 1000 yrs?

Silly, there you go doing the ebil math and reasoning! Just believe. Praise Jebus and pass the KJV bible! :pray: :pray: :pray:

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Not entirely true.

A survey looking at "greater" scientists (defined as those belonging to the National Academy of Sciences). It found that 65% of biological scientists expressed a "disbelief in a personal God", and 79% of physical scientists. Most of the others were agnostics. Only 7% expressed a "belief in a personal God."

Source: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html

Though this was a study done using data from 400 scientists I think it is still a pretty good cross-section.

A disbelief in a personal god does not exclude one from being a theist

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Also, most YE'ers also say that genetic possibilities were more varied back then, meaning that it was OK to marry your sister; you wouldn't end up with a bunch of kids with genetic defects.

I am curious to find out how that works...because seriously that may be the most anti-fact, ant-science argument I ever heard.

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I am curious to find out how that works...because seriously that may be the most anti-fact, ant-science argument I ever heard.

It's based on a mixture of theology and pseudo-science. The world was created perfectly, so Adam and Eve had no genetic problems and there was no reason their children couldn't reproduce together, but once sin entered the world everything began to degrade. They use the second law of thermodynamics to support this.

(And actually, even now the offspring of siblings will probably be just fine. Also, oddly, the healthiest offspring are those of 2nd or 3rd cousins.)

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Do you have a citation for that?

I assume you mean the last sentence of mine that you quoted? You were right, at least for the American scientific community. There was a 1996 survey conducted/ published in Nature that showed a majority of American scientists (60.7%) were non-theists and then the subsequent study in '98 you linked to showed the difference between the general scientific community, and those in the top of their fields. That was all over various science blogs several years ago. I used to use this when I coached debate teams to teach students to distinguish between sound authority used as supporting evidence and a fallacious argument from authority.

That'll teach me to talk out of my arse about things I half-way remember from years back. :doh:

I'll amend my statement:

And it is true that most some scientists or people in science-related fields are theists.

I still think my point about presentation is valid.

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I am curious to find out how that works...because seriously that may be the most anti-fact, ant-science argument I ever heard.

The idea that our dna was "perfect" before the flood has been trotted out quite a bit. After the flood the radiation levels on earth changed and our dna began to degrade and modify and then the bad genes started happening. If you notice in the Bible the lifespans of people begin to decline after the flood. This is purported as evidence of this hypothesis.

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Time is a complete relative idea. It is man made, because we are the only ones who track it, and the perception of it varies amongst cultures.

Creationists do believe in literal 24-hours for the first week. But what they don't take into consideration is the speed of that time. Time varies in the universe- time on the moon is different than time on this earth, for example. What may be one hour hear may be another planet's 200 years, but in our perception, only an hour has passed. It may be that in the beginning of the earth, time moved slow, allowing all development to have happened. But in our today's perception, it would only seem like 24 hours.

Plus, the Bible doesn't mention hours. All it says was "day 1" or second day, etc. Who knows how many hours that day contained?

My opinion is based on the book Genesis and the Big Bang by Gerald Schroeder. It's extremely complex, and I didn't understand everything, but I understood the gist. It's very interesting.

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This is very interesting. It makes more sense that a biblical literalist would literally believe the day of creation = a 24h day. Please say more about your young earth views. Do you believe what the scientists say, for the most part, about there being a primordial ooze, just all the time it took earth to evolve is in the 6K years? Or is the belief more of Adam and Eve just like in the bible? What about Lilith? Does young earth belief always coincide with God popping people and species into existance or can a young earther believe a compressed scientific time frame? What about radio carbon dating?

I'm not fundiefoodie, but I grew up being taught literal YEC, and here's what I remember. There was no primordial ooze because God made everything from nothing, just by speaking, in its more-or-less fully developed form.

(There is an old-earth creationist argument that reads the Genesis account as suggesting that there was preexisting matter. They bring in another verse from Isaiah or somewhere that I forget, and say that maybe God made stuff a lot earlier and then it was destroyed in the rebellion of Satan, and then he re-made it, which is the account in Genesis. I don't know what they conclude about the actual age of the earth, though.)

I never heard of Lilith as a child or teenager. She's not in the Bible so obviously not relevant. :-) Most YE-ers are highly skeptical if not outright dismissive of carbon dating. I even heard the suggestion that God made the earth to LOOK old but it really isn't. I don't remember the reasoning for that.

In general, YEC believers tie themselves in all kinds of knots trying to explain the inconsistencies in their position, but they can't give it up easily because it is so deeply connected to certain theological presuppositions. Extreme Biblical literalism, yes, but it's not ultimately about physical origins. They are also very anxious about the idea that if human beings evolved, then the story of the Fall also can't be literal so where did sin and death come from? The whole problem of evil and the need for redemption can't be explained by their system any more. That, I think, is why you hear people like Ken Ham saying that you can't be a Real Christian if you don't believe in a literal Genesis.

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