that's fine right? the earth was there, God was there, everything's good. But wait, the earth was created before there was day and night (verse 3-5), and before there was stars (14-19). Seeing as the sun is a star, and how we tell our time by rotations of the earth on its axis and around the sun how is it safe to assume that each of the 7 days of creation were equal in lenth? I don't see much proof of each of those days being 24 hours long other than on day 4, when God created stars to mark the seasons, days and years. So how do you all of a sudden know how old the earth is?

Really, i don't think of this topic as being anything but pointless, however i've seen many people believe in a set date for the earth's age just as much as they believe there's a God. ( i think the earth's "birthday" was in the fall sometime). Anyways, tell me your thoughts on this, and please don't go attacking me just because i don't agree with you.

4000? More like 6000. I think the millennial rule of Christ will be 6000 to 7000 most likely, sorta like the millennial Sabbath or 6000 years of human civilization and 1000 years of rest in the millennial kingdom as Christ reigns bodily.

quote:

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Originally posted by Faith_Warrior:
II think the millennial rule of Christ will be 6000 to 7000 most likely, sorta like the millennial Sabbath or 6000 years of human civilization and 1000 years of rest in the millennial kingdom as Christ reigns bodily.

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Well, the Hebrew calendar is at 5767, so that would give us another 233 years before that happened, roughly. There are some other evidences, though. The Mayan calendar ends in 2012. If you take no stock in the Mayan calendar, check this out, one measurement of time they use are called baktuns which are 144000 days long (that number familiar?). Their calendar is 13 baktuns long and has a beginning date of 3114 B.C. (about 1/2 way between the creation and the flood) and an ending date of 2012 A.D. There is a very old Catholic prophesy that lists the popes up to the current one. The next pope (Petrus Romanus) is supposed to be the last, "During the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, the seat will be occupied by Peter the Roman, who will feed his sheep in many tribulations; and when these things are finished, the seven-hilled city will be destroyed, and the terrible Judge will judge his people. The End."

But, all joking aside, we'll never know the time of the second coming until Jesus is here, so we'd better be ready.

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|steveth45|
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Personally, I don't care, so long as you don't try and call Genesis an allegory. I had one guy try to convince me that Adam and Eve were apes. Sheesh.

A quick rant on evolution: I don't believe it. I've heard it said, "Given enough monkeys typing randomly on enough typewriters, and you will eventually get the works of shakespeare." Hypothetically true. But, you would also get a loads and loads of random pages along with it. Where are evolution's transistional forms? Where are the dumb monkey's non-shakespeare pages?

I definately believe in a creator. An all-powerful God could have done it in seven seconds. An all-patient God could have done it in seven million years.

I think the question people should ask is, "What is God trying to show *us* by the creation account?" instead of "How old is the earth?"

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penny --Is. 64

[This message has been edited by penny (edited September 28, 2006).]

Scientifically, it should be impossible for the earth to be more than 10,000 years old. However God-tifically anything is possible.

Scientifically, I believe the earth is 10,000 years old, but I'll leave room to say that God may have done something.

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All Your Base Are Belong To Us!!! chown -r us ./base
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless.'' -- Tao of Programming Book 2

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If you can see Chuck Norris, He can see You.
If you Can't see Chuck Norris, you may be seconds away from death.

quote:

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Originally posted by CPUFreak91:
Scientifically, the magnetisim of the earth has been and is slowly decreasing. This causes scientists (including myself, although I'm not a scientist) to believe that the earth cannot be more than 10,000 years old. If the earth was more than 10,000 years old the magnetism would be so great that the planet would explode.

Scientifically, it should be impossible for the earth to be more than 10,000 years old. However God-tifically anything is possible.

Scientifically, I believe the earth is 10,000 years old, but I'll leave room to say that God may have done something.

---

something to be careful about with that reasoning (same applies to Old Earth scientists) is that you need to make sure that the decay rate is constant. if they'res a fluctuation in the past, it screws everything up.

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"Patience, my good citizen, patience. It's bad enough to rob a man of his dream"
-Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities
Soterion Studios

And I've never met much evidence to the contrary(aside from half-baked evolutionary theories)

Lazarus

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Maybe I'll make an avatar. Smiley it will be.

I also second the Answers in Genesis Link

:-)

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Author of FuryBand
Christian Devotionals, blogs, and forums

quote:

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Originally posted by ArchAngel:
something to be careful about with that reasoning (same applies to Old Earth scientists) is that you need to make sure that the decay rate is constant. if they'res a fluctuation in the past, it screws everything up.

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All Your Base Are Belong To Us!!! chown -r us ./base
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless.'' -- Tao of Programming Book 2

quote:

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Originally posted by CPUFreak91:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by ArchAngel:
[b] something to be careful about with that reasoning (same applies to Old Earth scientists) is that you need to make sure that the decay rate is constant. if they'res a fluctuation in the past, it screws everything up.

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Maybe I'll make an avatar. Smiley it will be.

quote:

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Originally posted by SumGI:
Well, Originally I would think with age. Afterall Adam was aged, the garden was aged, it wouldn't be that weird for stuff to be aged. I have to keep in mind a global flood, and really everything like plants and animals would of died, but plants had seeds and bugs could probably survive. I have a hypothesis of why God said it was OK to eat animals after the flood. I would think it would be that God knows that plant's would be more localized than before the flood. Maybe before the flood you could easily get any kind of fruit or vegetable you needed, but after you may not be able to get all the nutrition you need from the plants around you. I'll stop ranting now.

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Good point! Adam was aged. Didn't think about needing nutrition from the animals as the plants were not centralized.

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All Your Base Are Belong To Us!!! chown -r us ./base
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless.'' -- Tao of Programming Book 2

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Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
--Matt. 19:26

"Time is an excellent teacher, but eventually it kills all of its students."

Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

God's a perfect being, and he doesn't change, so if God created man is his own image, how could he make something that would have to evolve to become a better image, if God himself doesn't evolve? Then you could add this to it as well.

Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

The word very there, in the original Greek, means completey or wholly good. It was completely good, there was no way to make it any better, no real "room for improvement" to use a phrase, no room for or need for evolution at all, because it was completely good. It's things like that that convince me that the Bible is to be taken literally, and that there really is no room for compromise, because I serve a God of completion,perfection, and life, not a God of chaos or death. My God isn't in the habit of making unfinished projects, everything he starts (including me) he will be faithful to complete to utter and complete perfection, just like he did at the beginning.

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How far that little candle throws its beams; So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Portia The Merchant of Venice

The problem is that the tribal custom of the time when tracing lineage was to only list ancestors of noteable merit. A tribe of people which was started by a single man, and could have stayed together for hundreds of years after the founder's death, would often be listed by that man's first name if he did nothing else of major merit. The Bible often does this, but modern translations are often nice enough to add a "tribe of" before the person's name in order to not confuse the modern reader. But not all of these instances are implicitly clear. I'm not sure if Augustine took this into account when making his estimate. Now there were full records, but the problem is that they burned in 70 AD when the Romans sacked Jerusalem.

The Bible itself does not make a big deal about the date of the universe and therefore I'm not going to get too uptight about it. At the same I have a really hard time meshing the available records with anything approaching millions of years, never mind billions. The oldest date I've heard of is from the Sumerians, who claimed their dynasty stretched back for over a 100,000 years and listed each ruler by name. Obviously this contradicts the hardcore 6000 year stance but here is the interesting part: the ONLY break in this list is at the mention of "This is when the worldwide flood occurred" (I paraphrased from the original version of course).

Since "Middle-Earther" is a designation that I coined myself I thought it best to explain it a bit further. To me all Middle-Earther means is that a person believes the universe is somewhere between Newton's estimate of 5500 years to 13.8 billion (+/- 2 billion) years old but has not formed a solid opinion and is awaiting more evidence. It's a fairly "big tent" definition since a person could lean towards more younger or older ages. To describe yourslelf as OEC or YEC means a person has probably formed theology around the position and will be very defensive of a certain "set in stone" date.

And, yes, if it could be proven that the Bible explicitly gives a date I'd have to look into it. Unfortunately all the estimates are just that...estimates. Taking a certain position requires certain assumptions to be made as well as an extrapolation based upon the available data. Not to mention, the scientific empirical evidence doesn't change...it's the interpretation of this evidence and the assumptions that form the interpretation.

While many Young Earth Creationists hold firm to the estimate of the Earth being almost exactly 6000 years old I have no problems with dates that are within several million years. Based upon Carbon dating data it seems unlikely that life, and thus the Earth, hasn't been around for more than 250,000 years (though that's making some uniformistic assumptions) considering that all samples thus far examined with an electron microscope have resulted in a positive. Basically these beliefs are solely based upon assumptions made when considering possible Creation scenarios.

Obviously the Bible doesn't give explicit dates, so if you don't already know this is where most people get the timing of Creation: St Augustine proposed the beginning of the universe at 5,000BC (so ~7000 years old). More recently we have in the 17th century Bishop Ussher of Ireland who, using a strict interpretation of geneologies, claimed the earth was created on the evening preceding October 23, 4004 B.C. So if you go by the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar the universe was exactly 6000 years old as of fall 04. Kepler and Newton did independent research on this topic and both came to a conclusion within several years of each other at around 5500 years.

Now for the hard science. First I'll discuss the dating of objects on the Earth and then I'll discuss the universe.

The Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) group gave its formal presentation of the results of its eight-year research project a while back.

1. Helium residuals: Radiogenic helium from zircons, extracted from granitic cores three miles deep at high temperatures, was still present in the biotite. Conventional wisdom would have expected all the helium atoms to have escaped long ago. The team made predictions about how the helium measurements would fit various models. They calibrated the escape rate as a function of temperature and graphed their results...which matched their model. The fission-track analysis makes it hard to believe that the samples could have remained below the annealing temperature for hundreds of millions of years, throughout multiple episodes of plate tectonics, volcanism and impacts. The radiogenic helium from deep-earth cores should have escaped long ago.

A couple months back I read a critique of their work by a geophysicist who was a materialistic philosopher and a Darwinist. While he found a couple errors they were so small that they only modified the results by less than 3%. No gross errors could be found but the man "felt" that there must be something wrong (exactly what he didn't say).

2. Radiohalo signatures: The team followed up on earlier work by Robert Gentry on radiohalos, the burn marks in granites resulting from alpha-particle ejections from the decay of uranium. Polonium halos adjacent to uranium halos were ubiquitous. Because of their extremely short half-lives, they would have had to have formed within months, minutes or even milliseconds (in the case of Po-214). The researchers took this to mean that to have migrated from the zircons, the polonium halos would have to be same age as the fully-developed uranium halos, yet the uranium halos appear to show millions of years worth of decay if measured at present rates.

3. Discordant isochrons: Igneous rock samples from multiple sites in the Grand Canyon, judged ideal for radiometric dating, were sent to leading test labs and cross-checked by four independent isochron methods with multiple data points and good statistics. The tests were double-blind; the RATE team had no control over the analysis, and the lab had no knowledge of the expected ages. If the methods were reliable, all the dates should have been the same, but all the results differed radically from each other, some by 200% or 300% for the same rock. Discordant results of this magnitude, indeed, call the entire procedure, including its assumptions and theoretical underpinnings, into question.

4. Carbon-14; Samples from coal beds in multiple locales yielded measurable amounts of carbon-14. According to conventional wisdom, it would be unthinkable� for any radiocarbon to be present, because it would be undetectable in just 100,000 years, but the coal beds are assumed to be hundreds of millions of years old. The team also found intact carbon-14 in diamonds, thought to have formed over a billion years ago.

The ICR scientists were frank about difficulties with their findings when it came to their beliefs. They acknowledged that fission-track counts and radiohalo density give evidence that millions of years worth of radioactive decay products had been generated, if measured at today's rates. To reconcile the above findings with the abundance of decay products, they hypothesized the decay rates had been accelerated in the past--which opponents will take as an ad hoc suggestion. This suggestion, however, produces other problems. Large amounts of heat and dangerous levels of radiation for organisms on the earth would have resulted from accelerated nuclear decay. Nevertheless, the hard data indicate that radiometric dating methods are unreliable at least, and do not support a historical narrative based upon materialistic philosophy at best.

Here is an explanation of current methods for determining the age of the universe:

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101age.html

The assertions made there are actually fairly controversial even among those who are materialists but it's a good overview of the "standard" answer. Calculating the age of the universe is only accurate if the assumptions built into the models being used are also accurate. I haven't seen a cosmological model that doesn't have its problems. One thing I try to remember is that within a Biblical framework there isn't a requirement for a cosmological model to be one in which God worked through, and is limited to, entirely materialistic principles. At the same time it need not be entirely supernatural. Who is to say if in a certain portion of Creating God used physics-as-we-know-them or the physics that extend to an unknown higher realm? A man-made model with a mixture of known physics and unknown laws of "nature" might get some aspects correct and then be horribly wrong elsewhere, thus rendering the whole thing useless.

According to the July issue of Astronomy magazine, the Universe is comprised mostly of fudge – or at least fudge factors, anyway. The article by James Trefil from George Mason University describes the current thinking among astrophysicists as to the eventual fate of the universe. Since the Big Bang, there has been an expansion: "On one hand, the expansion could reverse, in which case, all the matter in the universe would come together again – the Big Crunch... On the other hand, the expansion could go on forever, leading to a bleak, cold, and empty future – the Big Chill."

There is a happy medium called the “flat universe,” where we don’t Crunch or Chill, but coast happily outward forever. There is a quantity of matter in the universe necessary for the happy coasting. It is called the critical density, and theorists believe that the universe must be at that value in order to observe what we see today. There is a problem, however: “If you count up all the stuff astronomers see – stars, dust clouds, and other kinds of ordinary, or baryonic, matter – it totals about 4 percent of the critical density.” This is way too little to get to the critical density.

In addition, astronomers note that galaxies rotate strangely. The arms of the galaxies, being further away, should, over time, separate from the inner regions of the galaxy. Enter fudge factor #1, dark matter: The only way for this to happen is for the visible galaxy to be surrounded by a sphere, or halo, of something else – something not visible, something dark. This stuff is called ‘dark matter’. Even though it is not visible, the author states, “We know that over 90 percent of material in galaxies like the Milky Way is dark matter....” Even when you add this generous fudge to the universe, “the density of the universe comes to about a third of the critical density.”

The Big Bang-based cosmological model predicted that if we were able to measure the velocity of galaxies over time, it would follow a profile one would expect of an energetic explosion – high velocity early, then a slowing as the energy of the explosion dissipated. The physicists devised a method by which they could observe more distant stars, where distance equates to farther looks into the past by their reckoning, and see what earlier velocities were. Unfortunately, there was a bombshell: "Against all expectations, they found the most distant galaxies are receding from Earth more slowly than nearby ones... The expansion is accelerating!"

Enter fudge factor #2: “dark energy.” In order to make the expansion get faster later, physicists had to attribute to dark energy the ability to counteract the slowing force of gravity with an impulsive force that would boost the expansion enough to account for the faster current rates. The matter equivalent of dark energy (remember E=mc2 ?) fills up the rest of the matter required to bring the universe to critical density. This dark energy, by the way, is also invisible and unobservable.

Between dark matter and dark energy, these fudge factors fill in gaps of 96 percent of what is observed in order to get old-age math to work out. Now even that's not enough to call it a completely bogus idea...but it's certainly enough for any reasonable person to not get dogmatic over it. Same goes for the White Hole-based cosmological model proposed by Humphrey:

http://www.jracademy.com/~warcholj/cyberchallenge2002/webdoc3.html

http://www.creationwiki.net/index.php?title=White_Hole_Cosmology

I quickly scanned that but they both appears to summarize it pretty well. But even that model supposedly has problems (although I haven't looked too much into them).

Problem with any cosmological model is that God doesn't have to play by the rules...He invents the rules at whim. So any model which assumes "normal" physics for certain segments of Creation may end up contradicting the evidence simply because God didn't feel the need to use "normal" physics at those points. Needless to say that means I'm not very optimistic about us (humans as a whole) EVER coming up with a cosmological model that is correct in all aspects.

Dr. Steven L. Goldman also has this quote:

quote:

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A second area in astrophysics that can be construed as a cloud on the horizon is that recent observations in the years 2002-2003 suggest that – not just suggest, recent observations tell astronomers that when the universe was less than 3 billion years old, there were already galactic clusters. Not only were there galaxies... but here we have, astronomers have discovered, a modest galactic cluster (I believe that it has something like 30 some-odd galaxies in it) that goes back to less than 3 billion years after the big bang. That’s much too much structure to have after only two and a half or 2.7 billion years of expansion. So that is another problem that astrophysics needs to come to grips with.
It’s not a small problem, either, because the extent of the structure that we can discover in the universe has implications for whether big bang and inflation are really capable of providing a model of the universe. So it’s a small – it may seem like a small problem to non-specialists, but within astrophysics it’s a significant challenge.
And then there’s the question of whether we are in fact reading the microwave background radiation correctly. Because all of this theory is empirically supported by interpreting extremely minute ripples in the microwave background radiation. And from those ripples, ripples in temperature, temperature inequalities on the order of ten thousandths of a degree Kelvin are – that’s the basis for trying to explain why there is as much structure as there is in the universe. If we’re misinterpreting the microwave background radiation data, then really we have a whole new picture of the universe that might emerge. So, that’s one set of clouds that one can anticipate that over the next decade we will potentially be seeing significant modifications in our conceptualization of the universe and its origin, and maybe even of its fate.

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That was from 2004. In just this last couple months, JPL issued a press release stating that the Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence for clusters of galaxies 9 billion years old (or at least they're estimated to be 9 billion lightyears away). In the standard dating scheme, this was when the universe was a “mere” 4.5 billion years old. Nature magazine reported the discovery by the Swift satellite of the earliest gamma-ray burst ever found. The burst “happened 12.8 billion years ago, corresponding to a time when the Universe was just 890 million years old, close to the reionization era,” they said. “This means that not only did stars form in this short period of time after the Big Bang, but also that enough time had elapsed for them to evolve and collapse into black holes”. A press release from the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics announced “Ubiquitous galaxies discovered in the Early Universe.” Observations in far-ultraviolet and near-infrared found galaxies at redshift z=6.7, assumed to be within 5% of the birth of the universe. Most of them were spirals, not irregulars as theory had predicted.

On a side note, the White Hole cosmological model predicts that the further we look out into the universe, the more ancient galaxies we should find.

Notice that all these distance estimates were made based upon the redshift. Interesting thing is that there are a growing number of scientists who believe that using the redshift may not be the most reliable method. They back this up with many observations.

Stephan's Quintet is a famous group of five galaxies discovered by Edouard Stephan in 1877 at Marseille Observatory. Because the group is tangled in filaments of matter from each other, astronomers assumed they were near each other and were interacting. The cluster sparked a controversy in the 60's when Geoffrey and Margaret Burbridge obtained spectra of the constituent galaxies. The galaxies' shift toward red on the spectrum suggested (based on expanding-universe assumptions) that all but one are receding from Earth at about the same velocity (~6000 km/s). The redshift from NGC 7320 suggests it is receding much less rapidly (~800 km/s) and therefore must be considerably closer to us. Astronomers such as the Burbidges and Halton Arp argued that the discordant redshift of this galaxy invalidates the cornerstone of Big Bang and expanding-universe cosmology: the assumption that redshift gives a reliable basis for calculating velocity and deducing present distance.

This position is backed up by the more recent observation that NGC 7318B, NGC 7319, and NGC 7320 are interacting with each other. But the supposed distance of NGC 7320 from the others, based on assumptions about redshift, should preclude such interactions. On top of that the galaxy NGC 7319 is the location of one of the most shocking challenges to the standard view of redshift: in front of the galaxy's dense core lies a quasar, an object whose redshift implies it should be more than 90 times farther away from us than the big galaxy behind it!

Measuring redshift is just one of the available methods, but it's also the foundation for modern astronomy. All the other methods are balanced against this one with the assumptions that the derived results are at least somewhat accurate. So assuming the standard methods of measuring distance are flawed, just exactly how could we determine distance? It's possible we might just have to make do with uncertainty. Unfortunately that would leave many a scientists career hanging over the precipice...so obviously that's why we have a strong negative reaction to such alternative science.

Now WMAP is used for making the estimate of 13.8 billion years. But what if the assumptions made about the raw data were flawed?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060905104549.htm

quote:

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The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang."

In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background.

A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by 31 clusters of galaxies.

"These shadows are a well-known thing that has been predicted for years," said Lieu. "This is the only direct method of determining the distance to the origin of the cosmic microwave background. Up to now, all the evidence that it originated from as far back in time as the Big Bang fireball has been circumstantial.

"If you see a shadow, however, it means the radiation comes from behind the cluster. If you don't see a shadow, then you have something of a problem. Among the 31 clusters that we studied, some show a shadow effect and others do not."

Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background. Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background.

If the standard Big Bang theory of the universe is accurate and the background microwave radiation came to Earth from the furthest edges of the universe, then massive X-ray emitting clusters of galaxies nearest our own Milky Way galaxy should all cast shadows on the microwave background.

These findings are scheduled to be published in the Sept. 1, 2006, edition of the "Astrophysical Journal".

Taken together, the data shows a shadow effect about one-fourth of what was predicted - an amount roughly equal in strength to natural variations previously seen in the microwave background across the entire sky.

"Either it (the microwave background) isn't coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown away, or ... there is something else going on," said Lieu. "One possibility is to say the clusters themselves are microwave emitting sources, either from an embedded point source or from a halo of microwave-emitting material that is part of the cluster environment.

"Based on all that we know about radiation sources and halos around clusters, however, you wouldn't expect to see this kind of emission. And it would be implausible to suggest that several clusters could all emit microwaves at just the right frequency and intensity to match the cosmic background radiation."

Predicted as early as 1948 and discovered in 1965, the cosmic microwave background is a faint glow of weak radiation that apparently permeates the universe. Because it is seen coming from every direction in nearly uniform power and frequency, cosmologists theorized that the microwave background is afterglow radiation left over by the Big Bang that created the universe.

If that were the case, the background microwave radiation reaching Earth today would have traveled billions of light years through space from the furthest edges of the universe.

Galaxy clusters are the largest organized structures in the universe. Each cluster can contain hundreds of galaxies like the Milky Way, each with billions of stars. The gravity created at the center of some clusters traps gas that is hot enough to emit X-rays.

This gas is also hot enough to lose its electrons (or ionize), filling millions of cubic light years of space inside the galactic clusters with swarming clouds of free electrons. It is these free electrons which bump into and interact with individual photons of microwave radiation, deflecting them away from their original paths and creating the shadowing effect. This shadowing effect was first predicted in 1969 by the Russian scientists Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov Zel'dovich.

Like shadow puppets on a wall, however, these shadows would only form if all three ingredients (light, object and observer) are in the correct order. If an object casts no shadow, it might be because the light source is closer to the observer than the object. That might mean that the cosmic microwave background didn't originate at the far edges of the universe, although there are no obvious or popular alternative sources.

The WMAP dataset is available to the public and other scientists are already testing the UAH group's results, Lieu said, although no one has yet reported finding any flaws in their analysis.

Just over a year ago Lieu and Dr. Jonathan Mittaz, a UAH research associate, published results of a study using WMAP data to look for evidence of "lensing" effects which should have been seen (but weren't) if the microwave background was a Big Bang remnant.

---

Now because of Einstein we also assume that the speed of light is constant. It's possible it's variable, or at least WAS variable during creation, but if we assume that the distance estimates are correct we still have to deal with that particular issue.

The standard cosmological model assumes the universe is flat. If the universe is indeed a non-Euclidean shape then starlight distance calculations need to be modified using this conversion formula:

S=2R tan-1(r/2R)

Interestingly enough, over the last couple years there was evidence made available that the universe wasn't flat but some scientists "believed" that couldn't be the case since it conflicted with many mathematical models. Funnily enough, some of these same scientists (atheists, btw) have reversed their position so they can favor a multiverse model which requires that spacetime be negatively curved in order to bypass some of the fine-tuning problems...

Using the formula above I could take the straight-line distance calculations and convert them into non-Eucledian space. To make it easy on myself I'm going to use a radius of curvature of 5 light years.

Inputting the Euclidean Distance as "1" light year I get "0.997". But obviously that's not too interesting to us. I input "30" and get "12.5". I input "10,000" and I get "15.7". I input 1,000,000 and I get "15.7111111etc".

My point is that if the standard cosmological model is wrong and the universe is curved space then all of the sudden the distance estimates go from 10,000 light years to 15.7 since curved space puts a limit on how far the light has to travel. I've heard some astronomers admit that the entire universe could fit into an area within a 200 light-year radius from the earth if certain assumptions were changed. Now obviously if the universe is indeed in shape like a saddle the biggest thing we'd need to know for doing distance calculations is the radius of curvature. I just used 5 because it was easy but it's always possible it's a much larger number.

I do think it's kind of funny that atheists are now supporting cosmological models that require curved space in order to support multiverses. They don't seem to realize they're screwed either way. With the current models they're stuck with fine-tuning and with negatively curved space all of the sudden you have a whole lot less time for life to have evolved. Or at least they seem so focused on writing a plausible mathematical model that supports multiverses that they don't seem to have considered this issue. (Or there's always the possibility I'm misunderstanding something... )

Just in case anyone was wondering I have a mini science blog I maintain on christianwriters.com and I pulled most of this information from there, my own articles elsewhere, and from long forum posts I saved on my computer. I've written and blogged on a lot of stuff so I can quickly throw together a gargantuan post.

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"Patience, my good citizen, patience. It's bad enough to rob a man of his dream"
-Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities
Soterion Studios

Lazarus

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How far that little candle throws its beams; So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Portia The Merchant of Venice

quote:

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Originally posted by Ereon:
The age itself isn't so important to me, so it's not the age concept of the "old earthers" that I've always resisted, it's the concept of forcing the Bible to fit in their box so they can make the easy choice and compromise.

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Agreed. Hugh Ross's organization Reasons to Believe starts with the assumption that modern cosmology and astronomy is accurate and then attempts to force-fit the Bible into that position. In fact, he spends a lot of his time just defending man-made ideas that may turn out to be false... ICR and AiG, on the other hand, start with the assumption that man-made Biblical chronology estimates are correct and go from there. A 6-day creation scenario is definitely something to be defended, since it's directly in the Bible in multiple places outside of Genesis, but I don't say the same for those estimates.

What I've always wondered... At the time before God created the Earth, Sky, Sun and the Solar system, and not fogetting the rest of Space, Time, and the Universe, and whatever all the above is contained in... I wonder where God was contained before all of the above was created ?... I have'nt got even the foggiest idea !. What's everyone elses oppinion if any ?.

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It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice !

quote:

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Originally posted by CheeseStorm:
Finite mind + Infinite concept = Fail

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No:
Finite mind + Infinite concept = Faith

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"Patience, my good citizen, patience. It's bad enough to rob a man of his dream"
-Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities
Soterion Studios

Finite Mind + Calculus + infinite concept - PI / 2^1000 = success OR failure + 2

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It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice !

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"Patience, my good citizen, patience. It's bad enough to rob a man of his dream"
-Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities
Soterion Studios

God just is.

Lazarus

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proverbs 17:28
Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

proverbs 25:7
open rebuke is better than secret love.

www.gfa.org - Gospel for Asia

www.persecution.com - Voice of the Martyrs

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Originally posted by steve_ancell:
I've also wondered... if God created everything, how was God created?. Did God also create one-self ?. If God did create everything including one-self, could this mean that God is everything ?. WOW !... God is a super great being.

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Since He is not bound by time but actually created time, He has always existed. There was no starting point, there probably were no points at all, just existence outside of what we know as time.

If He were bound by time than there would be no existence except for himself. Since He is eternal, if HE had to progress to the time of creation form an eternal state governed by time than He would never reach that time when creation would start. You simply cant go to a beginning if it is an eternal state, you will always be going back if it is governed by time which would not be eternal. So for God, there is no beginning nor end for He is not governed by time but exists outside of any time constraints. This is why He knows the beginning from the end, this is why His 100% accurate prophecies exist which He has told us of, for He sees it all as it has happened even before he started time for us to inhabit.

For Him, there is no past, present or future but He defines these terms for us to exist in. He exists in our future, present and past all in one conscious state of being from an eternal state of existence. He never changes, but exists the same as in our beginning and further ahead into the eternal state… by how we perceive it by time at least.

Creation is height, width, depth and time, He sets the boundaries from an eternal state and occupies both eternal and finite at the same instance as if He is reaching in from his outside existence. These finite boundaries are not limitless, only His eternal state is limitless in that there is no beginning nor end to His existence.

I often consider creation as a bubble, outside the bubble is only eternity, it is like a flash of a moment that always is, always was and always shall be because God always was, is and forever shall be, and within the limitless vastness of eternity this bubble was created to hold in place the created things. There is no time and space outside this bubble, but everyplace you look is God in his existence. You can maybe look, but you would still be coming from a point to do so. You can even visit and stay, and we shall, but for us we shall always be coming from a point of creation by which God holds mastery over for He has always been, even before eternity if that were possible.

One of my favorite books of the Bible that touches on just how big God is, is the book of Isaiah. Very much worth a deep study if you have not done so yet.

[This message has been edited by Faith_Warrior (edited October 15, 2006).]

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It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice !

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"Patience, my good citizen, patience. It's bad enough to rob a man of his dream"
-Sydney Carton, Tale of Two Cities
Soterion Studios

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Originally posted by ArchAngel:
God the Father is a she?

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Good point !

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It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice !

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Originally posted by steve_ancell:
I'm not sure if anyone's noticed how I refer to God as "One", "One-self", "Thee", or just simply "God". This is because having never met God, I don't know if "Thee" is "He" or "She". What I want to know is do I have the right to refer to God as "He" or "She" ?.

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Well that’s a whole other can of beans to open. Man, and Woman were created in the image of God. But on a relational-ship standpoint He is masculine e.g. God the Father and God the Son. He is not really bound to gender as we are, well only by his choice which I am referring to through Jesus since God incarnate has taken up this physical form for all eternity to come. Since Jesus is fully God and now fully man than he has taken on the masculine gender in His eternal state thus God is masculine.

In a spiritual sense, God is both masculine and feminine while not either, or more accurately, neutral. In Genesis 1, the Spirit of God [Holy Ghost] is described in the feminine form according to Hebrew textual grammar which is only masculine or feminine. Even objects such as books are in a masculine or feminine form though.

For a man or woman, they are not really masculine or feminine at their base, that is to say the soul has no real gender, but the tent in which it dwells does. Being masculine or feminine is truly defined by the body in which one dwells, but there is a family structure in which God has created and participates in. So you have God the Father in which He referrers to himself in the masculine, God the Son which has taken up the physical form of masculine, and God the Holy Ghost which is in substance with the Father and Son as one God but is not entirely bound by masculine or feminine form. Three persons of the One God, sort of like water, ice and vapor; all of the same substance but three forms that are distinctly different, yet the same. But don’t ask me to explain that more precisely, can an ant describe a human? I doubt our language could even outline the meaning if it were even describable by us.

But as referring to God as He or She, it’s certainly He, that is how He has described himself and is a form He has taken on in the physical sense through Jesus.

As for meeting God (you mentioned), I have. Not face to face yet, but can a blind man meet someone without the need for sight or touch? Yes, one can, and does. I have on many levels but nothing I will describe here, some (elsewhere) have called me nuts from my stories, but I have been a born-again Christian for a quarter of a century so it’s given me the opportunity to experience more days than others in fellowship with God. But I am still as a blind man in a sense.

[This message has been edited by Faith_Warrior (edited October 15, 2006).]

that was what i've been trying to tell everyone i know ,in genesis when the bible says 1 day it could mean 1,000,000,000 years for all we know,even after creation of adam when humans said 1day how do we know they meant 24hours they could be meaning 24years,it takes the sun 24hours to revolve around the earth now but it could take much longer in those days,many things have changed since genesis,like people use to live 900+ years back then.since god created the sun he could have made the sun to take like years to revolve around the earth and made it 24hours at some point after genesis. ^__^

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a real programmer can write assembly code in any language

I'm not sure about the sun taking 24 hours to revolve around the earth.

or the sun revolving around the earth.

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Yes, I'm still better than you
Soterion Studios

quote:

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Man, and Woman were created in the image of God.

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Correction: Man was created in the image of God, Woman was created from man.

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MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

quote:

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Originally posted by ArchAngel:
well, the word they use for Day in hebrew can refer to any period of time, from a 24 hour day to an Age.

I'm not sure about the sun taking 24 hours to revolve around the earth.

or the sun revolving around the earth.

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*Claps* Excellent point.

Anyway "ahem"...
How could the plants and grass have survived? They were created the third day, the sun and moon the fourth. They would have all died if they went for a million(or however long) years without sunlight. That's one reason I think they are literal 24 hour days.

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Problem with any cosmological model is that God doesn't have to play by the rules...He invents the rules at whim. So any model which assumes "normal" physics for certain segments of Creation may end up contradicting the evidence simply because God didn't feel the need to use "normal" physics at those points. Needless to say that means I'm not very optimistic about us (humans as a whole) EVER coming up with a cosmological model that is correct in all aspects.

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Or the evidence might be interpreted using logical reasoning in a particular framework to contradict the Bible. The reasoning might be correct but unfortunately the framework might not represent reality. It's sometimes fully possible to have 2 or more parties looking at the same exact data points and come to mutually exclusive conclusions until more evidence is gathered. Emotional reasoning or personal beliefs are usually the only reason a particular conclusion is given preference.

One could argue that God conserved the plants and grass with his power. After all, that'd be pretty easy next to all the other things He's doing. Am I going to support that argument? No, not really. I'm just pointing out why claims made on this subject must be tentative. There are too many unknowns.

Exodus 20:11
11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Seem pretty clear cut? Not according to Reasons to Believe:

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/other_papers/introduction _to_the_creation_date_debate.shtml

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Exodus 20:11 is often held up as undeniable proof of 24-hour creation days. If that is true, what of Leviticus 25:1-4, which uses the creation week pattern in terms of years? Apparently the creation week is used as a pattern of “one out of seven” in both cases, not a real-time reference. A similar type of pattern is the eight day “Feast of the Tabernacles” in Leviticus 23:33-36. It celebrated God’s protection in the desert that lasted forty years - obviously eight days is not a one-to-one correlation with forty years. Also consider that Moses authored both of these passages.

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Let's take a look at the verse in question:

Leviticus 25
1 The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai, 2 "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the LORD. 3 For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. 4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.

I can "comprehend" their logical train of thought but the comparison seems tenuous at best. Exodus "appears" to be a direct statement of fact while both verses in Leviticus use a symbolic reference. A direct correlation by Moses would not be logical in that instance, since what farmer would base planting cycles upon days? A feast lasting 40 days would likely bankrupt any nation. In the Exodus example I cannot think of a reason for Moses to have used symbolism...UNLESS Moses is assuming long ages that are left unstated in the actual text because he is assuming the reader already knows about the long ages. But that explanation is even more tenuous.

While debating this position's veracity, I also realize that the squabbling between Old Earth and Young Earth Creationists has created a schism that should not exist. I believe these scientific and theological differences should be put aside in favor of working together. This schism has only allowed materialistic philosophers and atheists to gain breathing room where none should exist.

On a related subject we know what intelligence is capable of. But we have never observed the creation of novel cell types, tissue types, organs, and body plans by a non-intelligent mechanism--this is only inferred based upon a logical framework. So which is the "better explanation" at this current time? Now personally I wouldn't have a problem with the idea of God using front-loading (although limited front-loading could also apply even in a standard Creationist model) or progressive creation or intelligent evolution or a number of positions. I do lean more towards certain positions because of personal inclinations but at the same time I realize the evidence isn't good enough to conclusively support any one stance. Talk Origins was purposefully set up by an atheist in order to "evangelize" his beliefs. While the claims are tentative they are represented as certain, which is dishonest. In contrast Bill Dembski on Uncommon Descent has made it clear he's uncertain on many points related to historical narratives. He also allows for differing viewpoints.

[This message has been edited by Gump (edited November 28, 2006).]

p.s. I don't know which theory it falls under but I hold to an unknown age of the universe (including the earth's rocky strata) w/ a literal 6-day creation / refreshing of nature culminating in Adam (and subsequently, Eve). Some of the terms used in the Genesis account are (or have shades of) "revitalizing" rather than ex-niliho (sp?).

As another scientist explains in reference to chromosomal rearrangement:

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The implication for ID is that the potential for many new and
significantly different species pre-exists in the genome and is expressed not by noisy random mutation of coding genes but rather by a fixed variety of chromosomal reorganizations. In other words much of phylogeny, the extents and limitations thereof, were front-loaded by an intelligent designer. Individual genes thus become mere component building blocks with high noise immunity and position effect of reorganized chromosomes causes the major taxonomic diversifications. This also explains how the information required to generate new species is conserved without being expressed over geological timespans. Conservation absent selection pressure is the major objection to the front-loading hypothesis. Because the loss of entire chromosomes is a disastrous mutation the unexpressed potential in chromosomal reorganization is conserved for geologic timespans.

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As an interesting aside this guy is not a Christian--he considers himself either an agnostic or a deist--who believes that the evidence requires a designer.

[This message has been edited by Gump (edited November 28, 2006).]

Is that sort of like the God-directed evolution only "pre-loaded" rather than God making a tweak here and a tweak there during the life of the 'tree'?

i heard some one say "if god invented plants before the sun wouldn't all the plant's die?", well since god made life he certainly can keep it as long as he wants to if he wanted plants to survive without the sun they would.if he wanted us to live with out food we would.

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a real programmer can write assembly code in any language

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a real programmer can write assembly code in any language

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