In this interesting discussion in the 'What Seventh-day Adventists Believe' forum, Steve9534 wrote:



I thought this forum was the more appropriate venue to spend some time looking at these issues.

Bob Ryan had also raised the 'Adam was created mature' issue in relation to the age of the earth in that thread.

To take that one first - it takes us some distance, but not all the way.

If God created the world mature, that would make sense. Not only Adam and Eve, but the trees and animals would have been created mature, as part of a functioning ecosystem. So it's true that on Sabbath morning of creation week, the world might look as though it had been there for a very long time - at least the couple of hundred years it takes for large trees to grow. There would presumably also have needed to be riverbeds and ravines, though, so perhaps it would look as though thousands of years of erosion had taken place.

This would all work, except for that pesky fossil record/geological column. There's a pretty clear sequence of fossils that goes from very simple to more complex creatures. It has been argued that that was all laid down in the Flood, but it's hard to see how it could be as well-sorted as it is by a 40-day to one year process of catastrophic flooding.

This is why it's a hard question - if God created the fossil record to look the way it does, either he was actively trying to trick us, or he made the world look mature by making it look as though life had evolved (in the same way Adam and Eve and the trees looked like they had lived).

Or, you know, maybe life actually did evolve...

Now to take the various issues Steve raised.

By way of groundwork though:

(a) I agree that not all evidence is subjective, but at the same time my consistent observation has been that people will draw different conclusions from the same evidence. I can't convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. In the vast majority of these discussions all of the (active - not sure about the lurkers) participants end up going away with the same beliefs and opinions they came with. We hope that we've enjoyed the process, and maybe learned a few things along the way... but realistically more often people just harden their positions.

(b) It's not my goal to turn anyone into an evolutionist, and definitely not to shake anyone's faith. I'm a science educator, and I'm interested in treating science with appropriate thought and respect. I'm also a Bible-believing Adventist and believe in treating faith and Scripture with respect. On issues of Origins I don't have a firm position... but I do find that very bad science is often brought forward in support of Young Earth Creationism, and I do tend to critique that bad science.

OK, now that's out of the way (I think the regulars here know that stuff, but Steve and Bob are new):

the rates of mineral accumulation in the sea point to a young earth age

This is a theory that has been discredited for quite a long time, since Wegener came up with his theory of plate tectonics. We now know that new rock is formed in the centre of the oceans, moves outward from there to the edges of the continental plates then dives (is subducted) under the plates, carrying its burden of sediment with it.

the rate of decay of the earths magnetic field is such that if it had occurred at a constant rate, no life could have existed here a million years ago

But we know very well that it has not occurred at a constant rate. Magnetic 'striping' of sea floor rocks show that the earth's magentic field has repeatedly 'flipped' so that south is north and vice versa. It's possible that the current observed decreases in the field mean we are moving toward another flip. But the argument is incoherent for another reason - the magnetic field is protective, not dangerous. It protects us from solar radiation. If it was stronger in the past that would be better for living things, not make life impossible.

Have you read of the rate of slowing of the earth's rotation? Again, if it is slowing at a constant rate, the earth would have been rotating too fast for life to exist as we know it millions or billions of years ago

The effect is tiny - 0.0018 seconds per century was one estimate I found (on a creationist site). If Earth is 4.5 billion years old, as many scientists believe, and if this trend has been constant (and given that it is essentially caused by the moon, that seems plausible), the difference in the length of the day would be 81,000 seconds. The current length of a day is 86,400 seconds, so the day would have been considerably shorter. Life larger than a single cell, though, is believed to have been around for only about 1.5 billion years, so that would yield a day 27,000 seconds shorter than now at that time, or about 16.5 hours. I'm not sure how that would preclude life...

The rate and number of genetic mutations in human mitochondria point to a young age for the first man/woman

Evolutionists date the first humans at only about 100,000 years ago. That's a blink in evolutionary terms, and not enough time for any very great genetic mutations to arise.

Radioactive defects in granite rocks imply they were formed quickly, not over millions of years

Granite is a metamorphic rock, formed in volcanoes. It would make sense that it is formed quickly as granite, though the pieces of rock that make it up may be older. I'd need to see more detail on this issue to really comment.

The presence of radioactive C14 in virtually everything argues for a young earth age

Carbon-14 is consistently produced by cosmic ray bombardment in the upper atmosphere, and has a relatively stable presence in the atmosphere, with a few well-known patterns of change. Since it is constantly replenished, the claim that it should all have decayed by now is not correct.

One of the theories for the way we see the earth vs the million of years theory is the flood. Could you explain how that would be possible or impossible, from a science point of view. To have a world wide flood, everything covered, would truly be horrendous event on a planet body of any size. If you don't believe in the possibility of such an event, would you please try to explain what the world might look like in the aftermath of such an event.
Thanks!

I think the Flood has come to be a bit of a catch-all explanation used by creationists to counter evidence about the age of the earth. Things like the erosion of the Grand Canyon, which would take hundreds of thousands or millions of years to happen with the river, are explained as happening quickly in the flood. Similarly multiple layers of deposition and so on.

From just a textual position, it's not hard to understand the Bible writers seeing a very large local flood in their region as a global flood. Without modern media and without a helicopter to check the extent of the flooding, if your region floods it seems as though the whole world is flooded. The only way around this is some kind of direct word (e.g. vision or speech) from God to confirm that the whole earth is covered, or 'verbal inspiration' of the Bible. Interestingly, since the declared purpose of the flood was to wash away human iniquity, and since humans may not have spread over the entire globe in the years between Eden and the flood, a large local flood would have got the job done anyway...

Scientifically speaking there are two main issues:

1. Where did the water come from, and where did it go? Certainly adding enough water to cover all of the existing mountains on earth now would be an immense miracle, and it would have to be miraculously made to vanish after the flood.

2. There just is not the evidence over the whole world of a catastrophic flood about 4000 years ago. There would be expected to be a consistent layer of sediment at the 4000 year ago strata all over the world that would provide the evidence, and no such strata are found. Of course, creationists will (somewhat circularly) point to all the evidences for a long earth that they want to reinterpret as evidences for a flood, and say that they provide evidence for a flood.

As I've said before, I believe God's power is infinite. There is nothing God cannot do. Importing, or creating from scratch, a few trillion tons of water and then getting rid of it again - easy stuff for God. So the question is not 'can He?' but 'did He?'

Okay, lets assume there was one large land mass, all continents/plates whole. Since we are no sure of what a perfect world looks like, perhaps not even the high mtn peaks that we now have, just low to medium hill and valleys. Could not the amount of water needed to cover such still cause a massive imbalance as to have restructuring of the surface of the world? Not trying to be stupid, naive or unthinking, but these are alternatives suggested.

Is there a good source book looking at the flood story vs natural happening for the look that we have of the world today. Not looking for proof of either, just a good scientific examination. My personal view point is "I don't know based on Bible explanation, but any thing is possible outside of God creating an earth made to look ancient." I have come to the place where I do not see it as a salvation issue, for me, as it does not change how I view and understand God. Not a 'slippery slope' that some would have us believe.

I don't want to completely derail this thread into consideration of the Flood, since it is only a small part of the evidence around a young earth.

And no, CoAspen, I'm not aware of a good book that addresses the evidence for an against a global flood - I'd have to google, but it's probably better if you do that yourself since you'll be better able to judge what you'd enjoy reading.

It seems extremely improbable to me that a flood could reconfigure the continents from a single large landmass to their current configuration - or that if it did so that flood would be survivable by people in a wooden boat, since it would involve exposing magma to the waters of the flood. Water is incredibly powerful, but we would be talking about trillions of tons of rock being moved thousands of kilometres in a few days.

God could do it, of course, but did he?

Incidentally, just for fun, given that Everest is about 8800 m high above sea level we can do a rough calculation of the total amount of water required to flood the whole world deeper than the tallest mountain. Earth's radius is about 6400 km. That gives a volume for the planet of 514,718,540 million cubic metres. If we increase the radius by 8800 m we increase the volume to 516,134,989 million cubic kilometres. The difference is 1,416,449 million cubic metres, otherwise expressed is 1.4 trillion cubic metres. One cubic metre of water weighs one metric tonne, so 1.4 trillion tons of extra water would be required, on top of what is already in the world's oceans.

Indeed and this would also be true of the radioactive content of the earth's crust that causes heating. It would be fully functional.

We would also have balanced concentrations of parent and daughter product (Potassium - Argon for example). And we would have both C12 and N14 -- possibly even C14 but that is debatable.



There is the catch - how many laboratories can accurately simulate a world wide flood and then measure the effects of turbidity currents and silt deposits at all stages of land dranage?

We learned a lot of interesting things with Mt St Helens and Spirit lake. Including the nicely layered and carved "insta-canyon" in that first year complete with a small stream running down the center as the finished product.



Or we are still grasping at straws in our pursuit of nature that we call science.

For example - check out the soft tissue finds in dinosaurs -- in fact that "dino mummy" is pretty interesting for surprises about soft tissue.

What do you bet the C14 content of those soft tissues would also be "surprising"??

The doctrine was that soft tissue could not survive 60 million years and so would not be associated with dinosaurs -- yet when they accidently found the first example -- suddenly they turned up examples all over the place and the reason that it was not found before? "Nobody looked because nobody expected to find it".

in Christ,

Bob

The problem there is that YEC has never done anything to compare with the pure junk-science history of Darwinist evolutionism.

Haeckle's fraudulent exhibits supporting his "Ontogenty recapitulates phylogeny" mythology -- hypped in science text books for 50 years.

Osborn's "Ape Man" (Nebraska man) used to promote Darwinism just prior to the Scopes monkey trial.

Simpson's reproduction of Marsh's fraudulent horse series that was later admitted by atheist darwinists to have "never happened in nature".

The 50 year fraud of Piltdown man.

the 30 year fraud of the recent Neanderthal hoax.

The list goes on and on.

It is so rife that darwinists themsevles come to believe this fraudelent practice is status quo (as Haeckle tried to argue at his trial).

Atheist Darwinist Colin Patterson - Sr Paleontologist British Museum of natural history was quite correct when he observed "Stories about how one thing came from another ... stories easy enough to make up but they are not science because they can not be tested".

in Christ,

Bob

There is a good Creation science solution for that problem here - complete with graphs to show how it accounts for the reversals during the tectonic activity at the flood.



in Christ,

Bob

The cosmic ray C14 production from N14 in the upper atmosphere is actually a huge problem for Darwinian evolutionism because it limits the age of the atmosphere to less than 30,000 years based on the fact that we are still "accumulating" C14 through N14->C14 SPR in the upper atmosphere faster than the backlog of C14 today is decaying back to N14 through beta decay over it's 5600 year half-life.



in Christ,

Bob

Dr Russell Humphreys also believes that God first created a big ball of water where our planet is, and only later turned that water into other elements, and those elements kept the magnetic alignment that God had magically put into the water because water in itself does not have any magnetic alignment. (From the site linked above on the magnetic field changes.)

The geological column is not something that is nice and neat with the oldest rocks on the bottom and the youngest rocks on top. There is a lot of circular reasoning in dating the layers of the geological column. Layers of rock are dated using the fossils in them and fossils are dated by the layer of rock they are found in.

If we want to believe the flood was a local event we may as well toss our Bibles into the fireplace and look for the true God in some other religion. The flood story is consistently told the same way throughout the Bible. If it is not true, the Bible is not true and Christianity is a fraud.

I find this tendency (it appeared in another thread today) to say 'if the Bible isn't interpreted my way, it should be thrown out' to be disturbing...

It is not about interpreting it "my" way. How do we get away from the Biblical teaching that the flood was worldwide? God gave Noah 120 years advanced warning. If it was a local flood, Noah could have walked just about any place on Earth to get away from it in 120 years. There are text after text after text that teach the flood was worldwide.

In 2 Peter we are taught the flood teaches us about the final judgment. "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men" These verses speak of the world in context of both creation and the flood. The world was created out of water, was later destroyed of water. There very same world that was created in the beginning was later flooded.

I find it disturbing when people suggest that if the Bible actually means what it says then God is guilty of trickery. What they are actually saying is that if they cannot understand how God did what He claims to have done than God is guilty of trying to trick them. But God never told man to try and figure out how old the Earth is by radio dating or any other method. It is man who insists on putting God on trial by trying to figure out things that have not been revealed to us - that being the means and methods God used to accomplish His great works.

The Bible is not a science book. Too often evolutionists, theistic or secular, try to read the Bible as a science book and thus be able to disprove it. The Bible isn't written to explain scientifically how God created the Earth or the scientific details of the Flood. The Bible is a history book. It records historic events that are relevant to the salvation of mankind. Our concerns need not be if the Bible is scientifically correct since it isn't a science textbook. Our concerns need only be if it is historically correct. That is, did the things it claims happened actually happen.

The world before the Flood was likely unlike the world we now live in. Biblical records reflect men living to be almost 1,000 years old. Doesn't Ellen White say Adam was 15 feet tall? We find fossils of animals which are enormous by our standards today. We have so little knowledge of what the world was like then it is simply pseudo-science to try and guess why things are they way we find them in the fossil record. It can be a fun academic exercise but ultimately we won't know until Jesus takes us home and even then we will only know if He decides to reveal it to us.

I think the suggestion that God is a trickster is a desperate move to try to reconcile the Bible and nature. The contradictions are just that stark. When I say it, I only bring it up to reject it. I do not believe that God tries to trick us. That means that we have more work to do in reconciling our (fallible) understanding of the natural world around us with our (fallible) understanding of Scripture.

What I have trouble understanding is why you're completely willing to say "The Bible is not a science book", and then go to enormous lengths to claim that it is scientifically accurate. If you were instead to recognise that when the Bible talks of a worldwide flood it is speaking subjectively rather than objectively, which is completely consistent with your position, you wouldn't be placed in this difficult position.

You guys have basically brought it down to 'treat the Bible as a science book, or throw it away'. Given that choice, I reject that choice, treat the Bible as a spiritual book and continue to believe in it.

Because the Bible is not a science book, it doesn't have to pass any science test. However it is a history book.

When it says that God created the Earth in six literal days it is talking about history. If it were a science book it would tell us scientifically how God created the Earth and we could try and repeat the process ourselves - or at least try to grasp it.

Take a look at fiber optics. There are people in the world that will never be able to grasp how light can carry voice and data through glass fiber. Moreover how thousands of phone conversations can be carried through the same fiber optic line at the same time. That is because within humanity there are some that are smarter than others. Let's just say we have some humans of higher intelligence and other humans of lower intelligence. Yet regardless of whether or not a person understands how fiber optics work, they can pick up the phone and call someone and record such a conversation as a historic fact. They can tell the world the conversation happened but could never explain scientifically how it happened.

That is the difference between being historically accurate and scientifically accurate. The Bible records history. God created the world in six days. God flooded the world. God stopped time to give the army of Israel more time to fight. The Bible doesn't record scientific explanations for these events. In fact, since God is so much more intelligent than we are, we must confess to being a lower form of intelligence and perhaps not even able to grasp the science behind these events if it were revealed to us.

True distinction. But there is also a distinction between more knowledgable and less knowledgable. I guess God could have shown Moses a holy video of creation and the flood. I don't believe that's how inspiration works, but say it does. Even so, does the video have a time code along the bottom? How does Moses, thousands of years before science or even Greek natural philosophy, interpret what he sees? What language does he use to write it down? What metaphors does he have to use because there is no language for what he is observing?

Look, I've said it a million times: I absolutely, 100% believe that God could have created the earth in a single miraculous week 6000 years ago. I do. I believe God's power is unlimited. But to anyone with any sort of decent understanding of the evidence, the earth looks much much older. Given that, there is a conflict. Some solve it by ignoring the evidence. Some solve it by looking both at the evidence and at the way we understand the Bible. And the latter can be mistaken. Not the Bible, our understanding of it. How many Christians believe the Bible requires Sunday worship?

Look at the poll I started today. Despite all the dogmatism, even the young earth creationist group disagrees *dramatically* about the age of the universe, based on their reading of Scripture. If it's not possible to reach agreement on that massive and profound question, how can they be so dogmatic about the rest of their interpretation?

We make certain assumptions when we look at the evidence. The ancient world (the world before the Flood) is a great unknown to us. Were radioactive decay rates the same then as now? How much carbon was in the air? Was there a universal global temperature maintained by greenhouse gases? Were there oceans and seas? The comment in the Bible that there was no rain is one hint that it was a vastly different ecological system. So are our assumptions faulty?

The strictest of creationists will use the genealogies to date the Earth. Most Adventists disagree with that method. However few believe the Adam & Eve were created millions of years ago. The Bible is clear on somethings as historic facts. The Bible does not address the age of the universe directly. The creation story does mention the stars but even there the language used is not specific and the whole emphasis of the story is on the origins of Earth.

The message of the Bible is inspired, the specific words were chosen by the authors and overtime translators have made minor changes. How dogmatic should we be? Well, first we must admit that the Bible is our only direct communication we have from God. The purpose of the book is for God to reveal Himself for the salvation of man. If it is not historically correct what does that tell us about God? Or what does it tell us about the Bible? I am not talking about science. I am talking about history.

If God didn't create the world in six days than the Bible is historically wrong about that. If the Flood wasn't world-wide, another historical error. If time didn't stand still for the Israli army, another historical error. If Jonah wasn't swallowed by a big fish, if Moses didn't cross the Red Sea on dry ground, if David didn't kill Goliath with a small stone, if Daniel didn't survive the lion's den or his three friends the fiery furnace or if Jesus didn't walk on water, how can we possibly believe that Jesus rose Himself from the dead? Why would anyone believe in the Resurrection but question the other stories without scientific explanation? And if we don't believe in the Resurrection than we really should toss our Bibles in the fire because without the Resurrection there is no hope and our faith is in vain.

You can not have it both ways. Either the Bible is a science book or it isn't, a history book or it isn't, a spiritual book or it isn't! Which do you say it is? Make your choice and let it be that! There are more questions that answers if you choose the first two. Your attempt at trying to predict a slippery slope from your examples does not follow. Your supposition of "if it isn't this, than it must be that" is simply your view point and does not take into consideration of any other explanation. Your assumption is that if the Bible isn't saying what you believe it is saying, than its a lie! Speak for your self, I do not believe that way and find such a simplistic view of the Bible and God as insulting to the brain which he created in me. Your quote , we can agree on, totally, why not leave it at that? My faith does not depend on an event that happened in the past and has virtually little, if any, detail as to the how. The writer left limited details, based on their understanding of the events. The story of the flood was not about the flood, but rather the God of the destruction and his ability to save mankind, a constant recurring theme through out the Bible and concluding with Revelation.

Anyone want to have a go at rebutting my rebuttals of that list of evidences?

If C14 were being produced 30% faster than it is decaying, we would be seeing a rapidly increasing atmospheric concentration of C14. What is actually being observed is a relatively constant level, with a spike in the 1950s due to nuclear testing now beginning to decay away. The model that yields a 30,000 year upper limit for the age of the earth is another creation of Russell Humphreys, I believe, and is easily falisified by just looking at the actual levels of C14 in the atmosphere over the past 60 years or so. If it had been increasing by 30% per year over 60 years it would be almost 7 million times as great as it was at that time.

The 30,000 year limit assumes that the SPR rate has been relatively constant and it merely shows that at some point the total decay rate of all C14 back to N14 should equal the SPR rate withint 30,000 years. Libby is the source for that.

I don't know of any source that refutes that since we know the half life of C14.

As for the fact that C14 is measured to be increasing each year -- Sewell 1999 is one of the sources for that. SPR 18.8 atoms per gram per minute and SDR 16.1 atoms per gram per minute.


in Christ,

Bob

Many of our atheist friends argue that the Bible is nothing more than a book of Aesop's fables -- good morals and lousy facts.

http://www.wingclips.com/cart.php?target=product&product_id=16679&category_id=778

But as Bible believing Christians we believe that the source of the text is God -- and that He does know a thing or two about "events" - actual historic events... and can relate those events to humans "with accuracy".

So when God thunders His own law from the top of Sinai and He himself says "SIX DAYS you shall labor...for IN SIX DAYS the Lord MADE.."

We can believe Him. No room for "now God did you want us to believe you as a spritiual authority OR should we believe you as someone who knows what actually happened! -- certainly not BOTH".

in Christ,

Bob

The Bible is a history book not a science book. The only ones that dispute what the Bible says about creation or the Flood are those that have decided to doubt it. The language used is quite clear and repeated throughout the Scriptures by several different authors.

Have a look at the 'Getting The Story Straight' thread.

While it is true that "SIX DAYS you shall labor ... for in SIX DAYS the Lord Made" is a pretty direct statement from the Bible impossible to ignore (unless you parse it out so that one part of the 4th commandment can be ignored while trying to bend and wrench the other part) -- and while it is true that the timeline summary of Creation given in the 4th commandment DOES obviously match the timeline summary given in Gen 1-2:3 -- there are OTHER issues that are up for grabs.

In Gen 1:2 Was the lifeless earth formless and void as a SOMETHING the way we see it in Jer 4:23 during the millennium or was it a nothing in Gen 1:2? These minor points can be debated one way or the other without doing any damage to the "ALL that in them is" claim about God creating all life on earth in the same timline as we find that "SIX DAYS you shall labor".

Which get's us back to your point.

in Christ,

Bob