Isn't it reasonable to doubt Young Earth Creationism?

[6days]

I would disagree strongly with you that the New Testament as it is today isn't a reliable account of Jesus' life. -

And Jesus used the Old Testament as a source of absolute truth, and true history. Jesus life, death and resurrection were all a result of the history recorded in the first chapters of Genesis.

 

[jsanford108]

6days said an ancient earth "destroys the purpose of Calvery". Is he wrong?

Yes.

 

[CabinetMaker]

And that to me is why I consider theistic evolutionists to be more in the "evolutionist" camp than in the "creationist" camp. They tend to believe in a type of evolution that, from a practical standpoint, is indistinguishable from purely natural evolution. And as such, they're far less likely to lobby school boards and otherwise undermine science education.


Those are all very good questions. But honestly, I'm not here to teach a course in evolutionary biology, so I'd say if you're truly interested in those questions you should take a course at a nearby university, or at least read some of the better books written for a lay audience.


And that's consistent with what I said above. Thanks for clarifying.


CLICK HERE to get a very basic rundown of the current state of the issue. I also urge you to click the links embedded in that article and read the material they're summarizing.

But as you can see, at the very least life has been on earth for well over 3 billion years.


As I suggested above, if you're truly interested in those questions you should enroll in an evolutionary biology course, or read some books on evolutionary biology written for general audiences.

Also THIS WEBSITE covers the basics of evolutionary biology and is a decent place to start.

Honestly, at this stage in my life, I am not interested in taking any courses in evolutionary biology. It is not that interesting to me. (I am, however, very interested in the wood turning courses at the local community college.)

I am comfortable in belief that the human form evolved and that God played a significant roll in that evolution. I am comfortable in my belief that when God created Adam, God indwelt Adam that intangible quality of self known as the soul. I am not bothered that my beliefs are not exactly orthodox and expose to no small degree of ridicule from those that are supposed to be my brothers and sisters in Christ. I made peace with science and faith a long long time ago and I don't see that changing.

If you are interested, I believe that science and faith are opposite sides of the same coin: God's creation. Issues of science deal with the creation works and attempts to understand the act of creation. Matters of faith deal with why we are here. They are not mutually exclusive positions.

 

[Stuu]

You misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't attempting to evaluate a biological system from and engineering prospective. Rather, I was asking what it would take for a given system to evolve into what we see today. The next layer is to ask what does it take for two system to develop simultaneously with the same organism. Finally, I was considering parallel evolution of entirely different species into a unique symbiotic life cycle.

I don't mean to beat this up into something bigger than it really is, but just for my own sanity, when you wrote this:

I am an engineer so when I look at the question of evolution I break it down into smaller components and ask questions about the smaller pieces. That tends to leave me with a lot of questions for which I have not found satisfactory answers.

...you might then forgive me for thinking that you were looking at evolution from the point of view of an engineer.

WRT species developing independently into symbiotic relationships, it must occur to you that you can look at one species and treat all other species in its ecosystem as parts of 'the environment' for the purpose of analysing whether the species in question has fitness for survival and reproduction.

The obvious special case of this is evolutionary arms races, going on for millions of years, which result in predators and prey being capable of chasing and running away at very high speeds across the African Savannah, and specialisations like plants that have one animal species as pollinator.

Stuart

 

[jsanford108]

I got into a discussion about young Earth creationism recently. My position was that YECism is completely debunked because it is obvious that there are objects in the night sky that are much older than 6,000 years. For instance, the galaxy Andromeda is roughly 2.5 million light years away. That means that when we look at Andromeda, we don't see it as it is today. We see what it looked like two-and-a-half million years ago. (It takes the light from that galaxy that long to reach us.)

My friend, who is a Christian (but not a YEC) agreed with me, but introduced me to a bit of apologetics that says this: just as God made Adam in a mature state, so too he made the cosmos appear mature. I guess this works, but it sounds a little bit like squaring the circle. After all, in doing this, God has given anyone with a telescope very good reason to doubt the literal accounts in Genesis. My friend even added a nice counter argument along this same vein: we can see stars that are much farther than 6,000 light years years away enter their dying phase. By creationist logic, when we see this, we are in fact seeing stars die that were never born in the first place. That makes no sense!

Unless you are going to see God as a cosmic practical joker, the "mature universe" apologetics are not very plausible. But my reason for starting this thread wasn't just to push that point. My question is for YECs: Isn't it reasonable for a person to conclude that the universe is older than 6,000 years? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that it is. Can you really fault anyone for coming to that very sensible conclusion? After all, even if the accounts in Genesis ARE literally true, God went through a lot of trouble to make it look otherwise. Whether it turns out to be true or not, isn't it reasonable to doubt young earth creationism?

The age of the universe, and subsequently the earth, are not found, nor determinable from the Scriptures. Any theory which fits the age of the universe and earth into the Creation account is purely speculative and theological in nature.

Many Christians reject YEC, as natural evidence disproves it. But again, there is no evidence in the Bible which supports YEC theories. The idea of a "mature looking" universe is okay, but it working in an attempt to squeeze evidence into young earth ideas. I disagree with the mature appearance theories, but I have no evidence to support my dissent.

I choose to believe that the scientific estimates for the earth are accurate, while considering the error of carbon dating, humans, etc. As for the universe, there is no current testing that points to an accurate age estimate of the universe, but I do not think it really matters, anyway.

 

[Stuu]

What is your explanation?

1. Genesis is the product of ancient Jews recording origins myths
2. What would you like explained, exactly?

Stuart

 

[jsanford108]

Where did you say how 'god' did anything?

How do you have light separate from the processes that create light, then 'put it into' a star so it can come out again? How did your god do that?
How is can light go at different speeds in different directions? How does your god make that happen?

Your answer remains 'goddidit.

Stuart

1. Genesis is the product of ancient Jews recording origins myths
2. What would you like explained, exactly?

Stuart

Let us use your two points:

1.) What evidence do you have that supports your claim that Genesis is the product of ancient Jews recording origins myths?

2.) Can you explain the questions that you posed early on in the thread, which I quoted above:
a. "How do you have light separate from the processes that create light, then 'put it into' a star so it can come out again? How did your god do that?" For you, the question would be directed at how light was created?

b."How is can light go at different speeds in different directions?" Same question, directed at you.

 

[Stuu]

I am comfortable in belief that the human form evolved and that God played a significant roll in that evolution.

I don't think you should be comfortable until you can reconcile that with why a god is necessary at all. Otherwise it sounds like a convenient self-deception, and might make us wonder why you bothered posting here at all.

Still, it is obviously your comfort at stake and not mine!

Stuart

 

[Jose Fly]

What I said is that the articles themselves are illustrating the contradiction of evolutionary thought with scientific results. The articles are doing this. They do it in the titles, and they do it in the text. The authors of the study are doing this, too. I don't have to, because they are doing it.

That's funny, because I don't see anything in the title, article, or original publication where any of the scientists say anything that resembles "therefore we should reject evolution" as you claimed.

Let's first note the title. You understand, I'm sure, that the idea of the tree of life is that as organisms propagate, they have offspring that is dissimilar enough to the parent that they can be called a different species. This may take a good number of generations, but eventually the offspring are different enough. As this happens over and over to a particular starting organism, its offspring can continue to diversify. Thus, for any one starting organism (or pair of organisms, if necessary), it's descendants ascend (irony intended) to different and better capabilities. This is illustrated by a single trunk of a "tree" branching out into many branches.

So exactly what in the title do you think should lead one to reject evolution?

What this is saying is that the tree of life concept predicts that species will bring forth other species in a linear fashion--with each branch separately branching off further. But Uppsala researchers have found something that doesn't hold to the simple tree of life concept. They distinguish this new concept by claiming it's more of a "bush of life".

So they find that under adaptive radiation (a concept that's been in evolutionary biology for about a century), we get evolution and speciation proceeding in a specific manner that produces a more complex "shape".

Exactly how does that translate to "therefore we should reject evolution"?

This paragraph explains how a bunch ("consortium") of scientists mapped out the order of evolution of 50 bird species with respect to one another, including the "exact order" they had diverged in.

Right....so they mapped out how those species evolved, and according to you that means we should reject evolution?

Two members of the original bunch ("consortium") have looked at the 50 species in another way ("method") which tells a different story ("partially contrasting picture") about how these species are interrelated ("kinship").

So they come up with a more detailed understanding of how these species evolved, therefore we should reject evolution?

Here our buddy Hans says that things didn't go as originally thought ("failed to split into separate lineages"). This is the author of a follow-up study saying the first consensus was really a faulty conclusion.

Yeah, that's how science works. As more data becomes available, you update your models accordingly. As [MENTION=20697]Vulcan Logician[/MENTION] noted, that's a good thing. But for some reason, you creationists keep trying to cast it as a knock against science.

Let's assume for a moment that the consortium's logic was impeccable. That would mean that there was a faulty premise that lead to the faulty conclusion. What was that faulty premise? That life diverges like a tree branching.

Again, more complete data gets incorporated into their model and leads to a better understanding of how these species evolved. And to you that means "therefore we should reject evolution"?

They go on to give their solution to the puzzle--jumping genes. This is an interesting concept that brings to light another failed evolutionary concept, since jumping genes were at one time considered junk DNA. Now they use their conclusion to falsify (if it hadn't already been falsified) the junk DNA status of transposable elements.

Um, no. You've completely misunderstood that. It's specifically because the retrotransposed elements are non-functional that they were able to be used for this analysis. From the original paper...

Homoplasy via independent RE insertion requires the retrotransposition of the same RE subtype into precisely the same genomic location, in the same orientation, and featuring an identical target site duplication. In addition to these factors that make independent insertions very rare, the LTR retrotransposons studied here have a low copy number (e.g., 3,138 copies in the zebra finch genome), were active only for a short time period around the neoavian radiation [10], and show no target site preference among thousands of reconstructed ancestral target sequences of inserted elements (S2 Fig). We therefore propose that the probability of homoplasy caused by independent insertions among our RE markers is extremely low.​

If those REs were functional, the above wouldn't make any sense at all.

Jumping genes are the supposed solution to the conundrum that "for instance, a cuckoo can be more closely related to a hummingbird than a pigeon in a certain part of its genome, while the opposite holds true in another part." In other words, the cuckoo looks like it descended from a hummingbird (or vice versa) if you look at one part of the genome, and from a pigeon (or vice versa) when you look at another part, BECAUSE that's what the genome says! Which can't be if species descend in a linear branching pattern. Thus the authors say the "tree" looks more like a "bush". Jumping genes allow us to consider that species are descended from a single progenitor through a tangled mess of relationships where branches reconnect and divide again.

So again, more complete data produces a more complex picture of bird evolution.

And "transposable elements" go back and forth, thus needing the prefix "retro" added on.

Again, you have this completely wrong. "Retrotransposons" are genetic parasites that exploit their host's genome by getting it to "copy and paste" the parasite's genome in various places in the host's genome. The "retro" prefix refers to it replicating via the copy-n-paste method, rather than the "cut-n-paste" method of transposons.

Remember that genetics was the savior of Darwin's theory, becoming the foundation of the "modern synthesis" of the theory of evolution. But now, as we see in the article, scientists have to use words like "incomplete lineage sorting" to express a concept that says the genetics aren't obeying the theory.

As noted above, adaptive radiation has been a part of evolutionary theory for a very long time. This research shows that adaptive radiation events can produce evolutionary patterns that differ from non-radiation patterns.

And as [MENTION=20697]Vulcan Logician[/MENTION] pondered, one has to wonder why creationists seem to think that modifying a model to account for new data is somehow a knock against science. The only thing I can figure is it's because in the world of creationism, things never change and deviating from scripture is viewed as heresy.

 

[Jose Fly]

Honestly, at this stage in my life, I am not interested in taking any courses in evolutionary biology. It is not that interesting to me. (I am, however, very interested in the wood turning courses at the local community college.)

I am comfortable in belief that the human form evolved and that God played a significant roll in that evolution. I am comfortable in my belief that when God created Adam, God indwelt Adam that intangible quality of self known as the soul. I am not bothered that my beliefs are not exactly orthodox and expose to no small degree of ridicule from those that are supposed to be my brothers and sisters in Christ. I made peace with science and faith a long long time ago and I don't see that changing.

If you are interested, I believe that science and faith are opposite sides of the same coin: God's creation. Issues of science deal with the creation works and attempts to understand the act of creation. Matters of faith deal with why we are here. They are not mutually exclusive positions.

Fair enough. Thanks for the good discussion.

 

[Stuu]

1.) What evidence do you have that supports your claim that Genesis is the product of ancient Jews recording origins myths?

Because the ancient Jews had no way of knowing much of anything about how the universe works, and if there is any such thing as being right, then Genesis is completely wrong, even treating it metaphorically.

2.) Can you explain the questions that you posed early on in the thread, which I quoted above:
a. "How do you have light separate from the processes that create light,

You don't, there is nothing to explain. Light is produced by electromagnetic processes such as electrons falling from higher energy orbitals to lower.

then 'put it into' a star so it can come out again?

Light comes out of stars as a result of electrons falling from higher energy orbitals to lower ones, and the electrons are promoted as a result of the radiation produced by the nuclear fusion within the star.

How did your god do that?"

There are no gods of any kind.

For you, the question would be directed at how light was created?

Light is created all the time, by falling electrons and other electromagnetic processes.

b."How is can light go at different speeds in different directions?" Same question, directed at you.

I don't think we have any evidence that it does, do we? We aren't talking about the behaviour of light in a black hole, I assume.

Stuart

 

[CabinetMaker]

I don't mean to beat this up into something bigger than it really is, but just for my own sanity, when you wrote this:

...you might then forgive me for thinking that you were looking at evolution from the point of view of an engineer.

I think you may have over thought what I said a bit. I was intending to convey a method of problem solving.

WRT species developing independently into symbiotic relationships, it must occur to you that you can look at one species and treat all other species in its ecosystem as parts of 'the environment' for the purpose of analysing whether the species in question has fitness for survival and reproduction.

The obvious special case of this is evolutionary arms races, going on for millions of years, which result in predators and prey being capable of chasing and running away at very high speeds across the African Savannah, and specialisations like plants that have one animal species as pollinator.

Stuart

All this is true but doesn't really address any of the deeper questions I have. (See above regarding mutation rates and development time.) The fundamental problem that remains for me is that mutations at a gene level are sort of random. Some areas of genes seem remarkably resilient to mutation while other genes mutate easily. Once we have an organism, we seem to understand evolution fairly well. Yet we don't seem to have much understanding about how the first genes came into existence. We don't even know how the nucleic acids first came into existence! Technically, these are abiogenesis issues but they seem to be key. Even if we ignore the nucleic acid genesis, we are left with trying to figure out hoe the acids started linking together into genes and those genes came to do something. We have to figure out hoe genes started coding for specific organs and the bones. My problem with accepting evolution as a totally natural random process is that developing order and higher complexity would require a lot of time, possible more time that has elapsed on this planet.

So what if the building blocks for life came from another area of the universe and were deposited here on Earth? That could solve the time problem but it does not deal with the issue of how life started, it simply removes the problem from our planet. It still remains to be solved.

 

[jsanford108]

1.)

Because the ancient Jews had no way of knowing much of anything about how the universe works, and if there is any such thing as being right, then Genesis is completely wrong, even treating it metaphorically.

So, you think that due to being an ancient group, we can immediately discount any theories, conclusions, or writings, due to less technology available? If that is the case, we can reject anything pre-industrial revolution.

No doubt, you can see the illogical nature of this approach. And your "cause" for dismissing the Jews is a simple lack of evidence equating into evidence; another fallacy.


2.) a.

You don't, there is nothing to explain. Light is produced by electromagnetic processes such as electrons falling from higher energy orbitals to lower.


Light comes out of stars as a result of electrons falling from higher energy orbitals to lower ones, and the electrons are promoted as a result of the radiation produced by the nuclear fusion within the star.

Light is created all the time, by falling electrons and other electromagnetic processes.

This point, while true in scientific explanation, is not an answer to "how" light was created. You are lacking an original cause.


You then insert a new point:

There are no gods of any kind.

Any evidence of this?



Continuing with 2.) b.

I don't think we have any evidence that it does, do we?

Now, you posed this question to a theist, expecting an answer outside of "God did it," or some other "miraculous explanation." Yet, when the question is posed to you, you then claim there is no evidence it even occurs? How did you expect an answer of evidence, when you yourself have no evidence to support an alternate theory?

This also brings into question your genuine approach to conversation; posing a question in the style which infers that the contents are factually evident, when they are not. (a loaded question, or complex question fallacy)

 

[Stripe]

I think bad ideas deserve to disappear.

That's nice.

How is it cowardice to challenge bad ideas?

That is done by looking at evidence.

Wake us up when you're ready to discuss that sensibly.

So, are you serious about that? What is your reaction when there is unambiguous evidence against what you claim? Your kneejerk response is dunno, or :mock:, which is unambiguous evidence that you are not serious about evidence.

You ranting doesn't count as evidence.

You'd be hard pressed to find a post in which I don't engage very seriously over questions where there is relevant empirical evidence. For example, you assert that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. So when I present you with the evidence that in both the fields of dendrochronology and ice cores, you can literally count back more years than that, then what reaction do I get? No analysis of those facts whatsoever, but just the hurt evident in your apparently throwing of the toys out of the cot, which you appear to do on a regular basis in regards to me in particular.

Oh. You want to talk about ice now.


Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

 

[Derf]

That's funny, because I don't see anything in the title, article, or original publication where any of the scientists say anything that resembles "therefore we should reject evolution" as you claimed.

As you said before. I don't think you have the ability to see any fault in evolution, especially since evolution is evolving. If evolution can evolve to account for any possible contradiction between what we know now and what we will learn, then it's non-falsifiable. It becomes a synonym for "learning", or gaining knowledge. It certainly shouldn't be used as a way to understand everything in biology if it keeps changing.

So they find that under adaptive radiation (a concept that's been in evolutionary biology for about a century), we get evolution and speciation proceeding in a specific manner that produces a more complex "shape".

Right....so they mapped out how those species evolved, and according to you that means we should reject evolution?

You tell me, since the authors of the new study say those mappings were incorrect. Again, if evolution is the premise and the method ends up with incorrect mapping (conclusion), don't you question your premise?

So they come up with a more detailed understanding of how these species evolved, therefore we should reject evolution?

Maybe they came up with a new explanation that fits the new data, better, but that means the old explanation was faulty, and it was based on a faulty premise. Yet if evolution is so plastic that it can handle any conceivable contradiction, it's hardly worth anything as a theory.

Yeah, that's how science works. As more data becomes available, you update your models accordingly. As [MENTION=20697]Vulcan Logician[/MENTION] noted, that's a good thing. But for some reason, you creationists keep trying to cast it as a knock against science.

Yeah! Let's fall back to the old "evolution is true if it's true, and evolution is true if it's false" charade.

Again, more complete data gets incorporated into their model and leads to a better understanding of how these species evolved. And to you that means "therefore we should reject evolution"?

They were the ones that said the model wasn't able to explain the complexity. I don't know that the "tree of life" model should be considered foundational to evolution, but most evolutionists seem to think it is. It certainly is an accurate depiction of what Darwin was trying to sell.

Um, no. You've completely misunderstood that. It's specifically because the retrotransposed elements are non-functional that they were able to be used for this analysis. From the original paper...

Homoplasy via independent RE insertion requires the retrotransposition of the same RE subtype into precisely the same genomic location, in the same orientation, and featuring an identical target site duplication. In addition to these factors that make independent insertions very rare, the LTR retrotransposons studied here have a low copy number (e.g., 3,138 copies in the zebra finch genome), were active only for a short time period around the neoavian radiation [10], and show no target site preference among thousands of reconstructed ancestral target sequences of inserted elements (S2 Fig). We therefore propose that the probability of homoplasy caused by independent insertions among our RE markers is extremely low.​

If those REs were functional, the above wouldn't make any sense at all.

I appreciate the better explanation. Yet, nonfunctional code in an evolutionary system would be unlikely to be conserved, right? Different topic, though.

So again, more complete data produces a more complex picture of bird evolution.

Or bird creation, as the case may be.

Again, you have this completely wrong. "Retrotransposons" are genetic parasites that exploit their host's genome by getting it to "copy and paste" the parasite's genome in various places in the host's genome. The "retro" prefix refers to it replicating via the copy-n-paste method, rather than the "cut-n-paste" method of transposons.

again, I appreciate the correction. I'm not a biologist.

As noted above, adaptive radiation has been a part of evolutionary theory for a very long time. This research shows that adaptive radiation events can produce evolutionary patterns that differ from non-radiation patterns.

Might that then mean that
1. our "adaptive radiation" patterns are wrong, or
2. these aren't "evolutionary patterns" in the sense that evolution was expected to produce?

Either way, it shows a missed prediction. Missed predictions, as they pile up, are indicative of faulty preconceptions and ineffective theories.

And as [MENTION=20697]Vulcan Logician[/MENTION] pondered, one has to wonder why creationists seem to think that modifying a model to account for new data is somehow a knock against science. The only thing I can figure is it's because in the world of creationism, things never change and deviating from scripture is viewed as heresy.

Which is only on topic in this conversation of ours if you equate evolution with science (which tarnishes science, in my opinion). And that WOULD be calling evolution "learning"/"gaining knowledge", since that is what science is.

And thus, just like you can't say "science" is a theory that explains everything thing in biology, you shouldn't be able to say "evolution" is "science". Yet you do.

Again, that's why conversing with you is tedious.

 

[6days]

Get back to us when your prostate gland is swelling and urination is difficult....

You continue to use poorly designed arguments. If you claim the prostate ( or any other organ) is a shoddy design and evidence against an Intelligent Designer then your argument is also that things which appear to have a good design is evidence for a Creator.

By the way, do you actually have an explanation for the outrageous recurrent laryngeal nerve in the giraffe?

Stuu... seriously you are using goofy "outrageous" arguments. Are you unaware of the MANY similar arguments evolutionists made in the past...now proven false by science. They didn't understand the function or design of various organs, so they simply said "Evolution did it... a Creator would never do that".


Likewise with the RLN, Evolutionists claimed it was poorly designed in humans and an intelligent designer would never do it that way. Now science has started to realize there is purpose to the design. So then evolutionists HOPED that it was poor design in giraffes. But again... science crushes the evolutionists hopes.

ndeed, hints of important functions for the RLN nerve can be seen in the old authority, Gray's Anatomy, which states regarding the normal human design:As the recurrent nerve hooks around the subclavian artery or aorta, it gives off several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives off branches, more numerous on the left than on the right side, to the mucous membrane and muscular coat of the esophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibers of the trachea; and some pharyngeal filaments to the Constrictor pharyngis inferior.So it seems that the RLN is innervating a lot more than just the larynx. Pro-ID biologist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, in his article "The Laryngeal Nerve of the Giraffe: Does it Prove Evolution?," quotes a passage from a much more recent 1980 edition of Gray's Anatomy stating much the same thing:As the recurrent laryngeal nerve curves around the subclavian artery or the arch of aorta, it gives several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives off branches, more numerous on the left than on the right side, to the mucous membrane and muscular coat of the oesophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibers of the trachea and some filaments to the inferior constrictor [Constrictor pharyngis inferior].

(Gray's Anatomy, 1980, p. 1081, similarly also in the 40th edition of 2008, pp. 459, 588/589)

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/150

It's not an argument against a designer, it's only an argument against an omniscient and omnipotent designer with genuine intent.

Oh... come now... fess up. It's very easy to find statements from evolutionists on the giraffe laryngeal nerve such as "The purpose of doing this exercise is to show that there is no so-called “intelligent designer” because the pathway of this nerve is completely illogical" http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2010/06/22/the-laryngeal-nerve-of-the-gir/

Fortunartly we have science... You shouldn't confuse your beliefs about the past with science.


AGAIN.... when you claim poor design, or no function is evidence against a Creator, then be willing to accept good design, and functionality as evidence for our Creator.


Or... are you unwilling to follow evidence that leads to the Creator God of the Bible?

Do you have a photograph? (Of the Creator)

No photo... but we do have His eye witness testimony and the supporting evidence.

 

[6days]

6days said an ancient earth "destroys the purpose of Calvery". Is he wrong?

The follow-up question... 'If physical death existed before first Adam sinned, (and was part of a very good creation) then why did Last Adam have to defeat physical death?'.

 

[KingdomRose]

I got into a discussion about young Earth creationism recently. My position was that YECism is completely debunked because it is obvious that there are objects in the night sky that are much older than 6,000 years. For instance, the galaxy Andromeda is roughly 2.5 million light years away. That means that when we look at Andromeda, we don't see it as it is today. We see what it looked like two-and-a-half million years ago. (It takes the light from that galaxy that long to reach us.)

My friend, who is a Christian (but not a YEC) agreed with me, but introduced me to a bit of apologetics that says this: just as God made Adam in a mature state, so too he made the cosmos appear mature. I guess this works, but it sounds a little bit like squaring the circle. After all, in doing this, God has given anyone with a telescope very good reason to doubt the literal accounts in Genesis. My friend even added a nice counter argument along this same vein: we can see stars that are much farther than 6,000 light years years away enter their dying phase. By creationist logic, when we see this, we are in fact seeing stars die that were never born in the first place. That makes no sense!

Unless you are going to see God as a cosmic practical joker, the "mature universe" apologetics are not very plausible. But my reason for starting this thread wasn't just to push that point. My question is for YECs: Isn't it reasonable for a person to conclude that the universe is older than 6,000 years? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that it is. Can you really fault anyone for coming to that very sensible conclusion? After all, even if the accounts in Genesis ARE literally true, God went through a lot of trouble to make it look otherwise. Whether it turns out to be true or not, isn't it reasonable to doubt young earth creationism?

Yes it is reasonable to doubt "young earth" creationism! It doesn't stand up to true science, and it doesn't stand up to what the Bible actually says! Nowhere does the Bible say that the earth was created in 6 literal days, or even 6,000 years! Nowhere!

Genesis 1:1 says that God created the heavens and the earth. It doesn't say how long that took. It does not conflict with what science says about the earth being created 5 billion years ago. The whole account in Genesis about the creation of the earth doesn't conflict with science. The "days" in Genesis are not 24-hour days. They are merely an undetermined period of time. There is no reason to think that they are 24-hours in length, no matter how fundamentalists twist the scriptures.

The "days" in Genesis are no more 24 hours in length than the "day" at Genesis 2:4, which says: "This is the history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the DAY that Jehovah God made earth and heaven."

That shows us right there that "day" does not necessarily mean 24 hours in length.

 

[Greg Jennings]

And Jesus used the Old Testament as a source of absolute truth, and true history. Jesus life, death and resurrection were all a result of the history recorded in the first chapters of Genesis.

Sure. Has nothing to do with what I said

 

[KingdomRose]

Also, that verse shows us that the Bible does not say that the earth was created 6,000 years ago, or that it took 6,000 years to create. No scripture tells us how long it took God to create the earth. It would be better if the YEC-ists would stop making the Bible look foolish by insisting on their ridiculous hard-headed position that the earth was created in 6,000 years or (as some say) six 24-hour days.