Yes you're right.
Jeez I hate being a "lib'rul", I'm so bloody reasonable!
Eat the rich avoid Rush
Yes you're right.
Jeez I hate being a "lib'rul", I'm so bloody reasonable!
Pork Eater
I stand corrected. Believing that Jesus made fossils to confuse us is actually highly intelligent.Originally Posted by glockmail
Pork, good for you, bad for Muslims and Jews.
Eat the rich avoid Rush
That's not the point Nuc, it's a bloody stupid idea but not everyone holds it.
Pork Eater
You know, i saw John Howard on TV talking about it yesterday. He also said the thylacine never existed, Jesus just painted some stripes on a dingo so that a bunch of hippie environmentalists would have something to whine about.
Pork, good for you, bad for Muslims and Jews.
Gunny's nightmare
So stop it!
Gunny's nightmare
If he said it, it must be true.
Eat the rich avoid Rush
Nuc, if John Howard said, "g'day" to me I'd check my watch to make sure it wasn't night.
Eat the rich avoid Rush
Born to it...dawg. Damn got to stop that fo schizzle my schnitzel or however it goes.So stop it!
Eat the rich avoid Rush
Actually no Jesus painted some stripes on a drongo and called it Collingwood.
Liberal moonbat
God must hate Collingwood. Why else would it never come close to reaching the AFL Grand Final?
Club Played Won Lost Drawn For Against % Points
1 West Coast 5 5 0 0 461 333 138.44 20
2 Port Adelaide 5 4 1 0 486 405 120.00 16
3 Sydney 5 3 2 0 410 336 122.02 12
4 Adelaide 5 3 2 0 389 342 113.74 12
5 Essendon 5 3 2 0 527 474 111.18 12
6 Brisbane Lions 5 3 2 0 439 401 109.48 12
7 Collingwood 5 3 2 0 433 419 103.34 12
8 Hawthorn 5 3 2 0 420 415 101.20 12
Last edited by gabosaurus; 05-01-2007 at 12:43 PM.
Gunny's nightmare
Born into liberalism. A red diaper baby?
Member
We as Christians have been facing this debate for a long time now.
There is this inherent fear among some of us that if we accept that, those fossils are millions of years old, that this makes the bible hogwash in the face of the Genesis creation account.
There is a big old "but" here, as the Genesis account of creation can be interpretted in Hebrew as 24 hour days, epics or eras. The latter two being a period of time, not set in hours, days, or years specifically.
Now remember that Day one had no night and day so if day one is 24 hours and there's no 24 hours deliniated as of yet, then this bring us into an interesting situation. Why did God use a 24 hour type of definition of a time period if there was no basis of time before there was a night and day and a spinning earth?
When God made the light and earth rotating on it's axis, then we started to have that 24 hour period, so "day" in Genesis as used prior to the 24 hour period of time, seems to raise some strong advocacy for an era or epic of creation time.
I feel that my faith is very strong and is wholly based on scripture, yet how must I discount accurate scientific, radioactive dating of fossils? Is my answer, to be just, "I don't know or for some mysterious reason God made the fossils seem old via radioactive dating, but we don't know his reasons?"?
This radioactive dating is so accurate and so consistent with God's natural set laws of physics/Chemistry etc...
I've mentioned in previous threads that Uranium 238 isotopic dating is used for the extremely old pieces of rock found on earth, and is exclusively or more commonly used in igneous type rocks. Igneous rocks are those that are created from Magma both that which is extruded to the atmosphere on the surface of the earth and cools(lava) to hard rock and that which stays buried beneath the earth's surface for eons, and slowly cools in magma chambers(granite) beneath extinct or dormant volcanoes. Lava is the common name for magma that cools on the earths surface. Granite, and Gabbro are two main igneous rock types that are cooled deep beneath the earth's surface and then are exposed by erosion eons later.
Both examples of igneous rock start out with minute amounts of just about every known element, yet there is a great index element thats rarer than Uranium 235 called U 238. When igneous rock is formed in the bowels of a volcanoe or a magma chamber miles below earth's surface, the common element U235 is initially created. The moment U235 is created, U238 is also created in lesser amounts. Now the neat thing about U238 is that it decays at a set time rate into another element know as PB106 or Lead 106, which is a very rare isotope of more common lead. Lead 106 does not appear at the time of the creation of igneous rock, as it is only found as a result of rotting or decaying U238.
Now here's the clincher. U238's decay rate is very slow, but measurable by man's very delicate and precise instruments. By measuring U238 decay rates in lab conditions, it has been accurately determined that it will take approximately 4.5 billion years for 50% of the U38 in any given igneous rock to decay to PB106.
Now here is how this God-created timing device is used by scientists(also the way atomic clocks so acurrately work). Since there is no way to change the decay rate/speed of U238 to PB106, scientists/geologists have a way of dating the age of most igneous rocks. In other words they can date when that magma first cooled and it's internal atomic U238 clock started ticking away to ever increasing amounts/percentages of PB106 versus the ever decreasing percentages of U238.
This is the mind blower folks. By very careful measurement of U238 decay they have found the oldest igneous rocks on planet earth to be around or close to 3 billion years old. Similarly they have found this to be the case with some samples of moon rocks from the Apollo missions in the 60's and 70's. Actually the moon rocks have come out much older than the earth samples as it is believed that erosion, and weathering has probably made it difficult to locate any older existing/intact igneous examples on earth.
So Christians, what do we do? We even have the dilemma of Carbon 14 dating. When anything is burned or charred you get isotopes of Carbon. The more common Carbon 12 and the less common Carbon 14 isotope. The same principle is applied to date things found in conjuntion with charred objects found in caves and other diggings. I can't remember the half life or the decay life of Carbon 14 down to another isotope, but again we are looking at very accurate means of dating things, but now we are dealing with thousands of years versus billions of years for half life decay rates.
So some archeologists enter a cave, and find evidence of a cooking fire with some carbon deposits from firewood or burned bones, etc. They apply the same dating process with Carbon 14 as with the U238 method of decay rate-ratio of end product isotope found versus original index element.
Unfortunately for Young Earth advocates of the Christian faith, Carbon 14 dating puts the earth well past 10k-15k years.
******
Accepting an old earth concept as a Christian is not going against scripture at all. It is not embracing evolution as the mode of life's origin either.
It is looking at plain bold empirical, scientific facts that are based on natural laws put in place by God Himself. The One who is always consistent, as confirmed in scripture. "He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.". In other words except for when God intercedes and does miracles that totally go against the natural laws of nature, as is recorded so many times in scripture, God has also revealed His very consistent nature through the very natural laws of His creation. He's revealed His consistency through the very integration of Calculus to predict the very bonds of electron orbits of both large atomic structured elements versus the tiny-est being Hydrogen, with just one electron in orbit.
Chemists can predict chemical reactions between various chemical mixtures mathematically as God has even made the mass or make-up of His physical creation consistent with natural laws that He set in motion back in the Genesis account. Chemists can predict how elements will bond or come apart.....etc.. It's a complex game of "clue" on a grand scale. If you have enough evidence you can predict the outcome without a doubt.
Us Christians must realize that there was a time when the people of our faith believed that the Sun orbited the earth, but who as a Christian would accept that thesis now?
Evidence demands a verdict, if that evidence is empiracally explained through objective experimentation or explanation.
Us Christians realize that there are many mysteries that won't be answered in a lifetime to scientists or to ourselves. There are so many "whys?" yet we don't have to be threatened by good science. I mean science that doesn't have an agenda or a bias, but uses deduction and not induction to arrive at results.
Old earth Christians are not trying to make Genesis say something (induction) to assuage or prove scientific data. Actually, scientific data, based on good deductive work/reasoning has continued to re-inforce the evidence of divine creation.
We are not supposed to make the bible say what we want it to say. We are supposed to let the bible tell us what it has to say, or what God has to communicate.
There are doctrinal absolutes in the bible and there are non-doctrinal disputes in the bible. I think the day's versus eras/epochs issue falls into an area of taking objective reality/observations of our creation and also considering the rather looseness of definition of "days".
Disputes of non doctrinal issues in my opinon would be
1. mode of baptism....sprinkling versus immersion
2. Communion every Sunday or once a month
3. Choir robes or suits and nice dresses
4. Types of Christian music in the area of beat......rock, old hymns, classical, etc...
5. Possibly even the tongues phenomena too.
None of these things add a "hill of beans" to ones salvation. God saves, we don't. Jesus is the means to God through His Crucified, buried, ressurrected, and ascended life.
If you want to be a young earth Christain......fine. Don't look down your nose at Old earth Christians, and vice a versa! There are more important issues than splitting hairs, and churches over these issues. We are all supposed to be "Salt and Light" to this very lost, confused, misdirected world, but if we bicker over non-doctrinal issues we destroy our personal and corporate testimonies to the world that Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Light.
Mohammed before starting or initiating Islam, actually was a seeker and actually was very interested in Christianity as his possible choice of faith. Unfortunately, he was totally miffed or turned-off by all the dissension, and bickering and lack of unity that he observed in the Christian body or church. We stand indicted, and Islam was born!
Let's not let tradition or what others say dictate what God's Spirit speaks softly and gently within our deepest inner most self. Don't follow anything without following the example of the Bereans that didn't even accept Paul's teachings without going to scripture to make sure they were not being misled. Paul commended them and was not offended.
Last edited by eighballsidepocket; 05-02-2007 at 01:22 PM.
Regards, Eightballsidepocket
"Nothing should be said anonymously behind a P.C., that can't be respectfully said in person"
Liberal moonbat
"Is anyone else disturbed by the idea of a prankster God running around and planting dinosaur fossils in order to screw with us?"
---Bill Hicks
Member
Well, for one thing, what you are saying is that God is being inconsistent with His revealed character in the bible, and to that point I totally agree with you.
I've yet to read in both the O.T. or N.T. where God did things to confuse us in a way that would cause us to less-esteem, venerate, love, or respect Him. Seems that this would totally erode our trust in Him, if He acted this way... planting multimillion year old fossils or things to confuse or fool us..........What would be His motive, or what would this reveal of His character to mankind?
*****
Sadly, many will try their darndest to make reasons for the dinosaur bones being so old, based on preconceived ideas of scripture and not follow some good old deductive study of scripture, and the actual definitions of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic word translations/definitions. The bible does not contradict an Old Earth, any more than it says, that the Sun revolves around the earth. Poor Copernicus was called a blasphemer by the "church" for suggesting such a possibility.
So we have these very old fossils that are obviously the remains of past living creatures. What do we do with them? Hope they will go away? We can't. Is it possible that our 6 days of Creation in the Genesis account is not a totally accurate translation of the Hebrew word for "days"?
We must remember that the Hebrew vocabulary was much smaller in actual word count, than our present day english language. Many Hebrew words therefore served more than one definition, based on their location, and context in any given sentence. Actually there were not sentences, so to speak back then. This also makes it very difficult for translators, as to determine "breaks" in this old Hebrew writing.
Last edited by eighballsidepocket; 05-03-2007 at 01:04 PM.
Regards, Eightballsidepocket
"Nothing should be said anonymously behind a P.C., that can't be respectfully said in person"
Gunny's nightmare
In order to be consistent, "literalists" need to approve of lesbianism.
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