Old earth vs. Young earth

I think many of us on memverse would hold to the belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old. However, I would be interested in hearing exactly how you would defend your beliefs if questioned by an evolutionist. Also, I would be interested in seeing how you would respond if someone told you "I don't believe the Bible is true. Show me how creationism is true without using the Bible." How would you answer this statement?

Discuss!

Show me how evolution is true without using Darwin and all the other evolutionists that have complied books on the subject. Yup, that'd be my answer.
They are trying to come at an issue of origin science from the perspective of observable science. You can't do that. In the area of origin science, you must have a record or resource that you trust and believe to be true.
In the case of a creationist, that source is the Bible (God's Word). In the case of an evolutionist, that source is Darwin (man's word).

Another answer would be: "In order for anything physical to exist, there must be a being greater than the physical universe, who has created it." Life does not come from non-life. The fact that we are here at all proves the existence of a creator. This creator must be greater than the physical, because he (He) called into existence the physical. He must be beyond time (eternal), because he (He) created time.
That sounds a lot like the God of Scripture.

Well said, Octavius! Now I would like to ask the question: How would you prove to an evolutionist that his worldview is incorrect and yours is the correct one? What methods would you use to convince him to change his beliefs?

I would start by pointing out to them that the basis of their thinking uses circular reasoning. They believe that the basis of knowledge should be reason and logic. And they would make a statement such as "I won't believe it until you can prove it to me." However, they cannot justify their basis for knowledge (reason and logic) without appealing to reason and logic.

Also, I would ask them where they believe reason and logic originate from. Ultimately, they cannot explain where a universal, invariant, uniform standard of reason and logic comes from. Whereas the Christian knows that any standard of reason and logic comes from the character and thinking of God revealed generally in creation and its laws and specially in the logic we see in Scripture.

It's always amusing to see an evolutionist try to explain how anything got here. It all traces back to the Big Bang, but where did the matter compressed just before the Big Bang come from? Their best argument so far, and yet, still not a good one, is that at the very beginning, nothing was unstable, since it was a balance of matter and non-matter. Then it exploded, and here we are. But really, nothing cannot be unstable. Nothing is NOTHING. It can have no matter in it, because matter is SOMETHING. This is one of the arguments that has evolutionists stumped, and yet they still hold fervently to their view.

Exactly, SBG!
But even if the "Big Bang" really did happen, we are no closer to getting where we are now. I mean, just because there was a big explosion or whatever, there aren't any life-forms yet. So by RANDOM CHANCE, some amino acids and whatever else you need to make a cell get together and BOOM, there's a cell! Right? And then the amino acids inside the newly formed cell got together in a sequence by RANDOM CHANCE and formed DNA! Right? And then that cell duplicated itself, and then we got some slime on some rock that came from who-knows-where, in an ocean that no-one has seen, by some smokers that created the right environment by some pre-determined instinct (maybe we should worship them!), more commonly called RANDOM CHANCE.
That makes perfect sense.

The chances of all the human bones in the skeleton being arranged in proper order is mathematically impossible.
This does not include the impossibility of the bones being formed in the first place. This is with the assumption that all the bones are already there. And THAT'S mathematically impossible. Yet some say that CHANCE made the things that made the bones, and the flesh and skin and everything else you need to get a human body together, all at the same time, and each one of those processes mathematically impossible (let alone making a cell in the first place!). That's just the human body. ONE human body. (Well, to be more evolutionarily precise, first those first cells made some slime, then some goo, then some bacteria, then some soup for the bacteria to swim in, then some… and then Lucy, then Piltdown Man, then the…… and finally the modern human bean. And all that adds up to IMPOSSIBLE.)
And yet some say that in addition to the impossible feat of making living organisms, CHANCE went even further and created the whole universe. The chance of that happening is about one over infinity-squared.
CHANCE is their god. It takes FAITH to believe such an absurdity.
And they still haven't shown how all the stuff for the Big Bang got there in the first place.

P.S. Yes, I wrote 'human bean' on purpose.
P.P.S. I'm using LOGIC and REASON to destroy their god CHANCE.

The formation of life is nearly mathematically impossible due to all of the amino acids having to be arranged a certain way just to create a building block; and then those building blocks all have to be arranged a certain way to constitute the next building block, which then has to be arranged with other similarly-constructed building blocks that are made up of similar building blocks made up of similar amino acids.

On top of all of this, it all has to have occurred at the same time.

We're talking either trillions of years needed for this process to somehow luckily and successfully occur or ………….. God.

@COS I approve wholeheartedly of your approach of logic-first. Well written!

In a book I have been reading, The Ultimate Proof of Creation, the author stresses the importance of focusing on the ultimate standard of evolutionists, not just their beliefs. As Christians, our ultimate standard is God's Word. It is entirely infallible; indeed, it is the basis of all truth. Therefore, this book brings out the point that evolutionists attempt to use logic (a thing that God created) to argue against the creation of the world. I find this to be fascinating, since, in effect, the enemies of God's word are using its principles in their efforts to destroy it!

Evolutionist's are not athiests. Any thing or person that can do the impossible is a god.
Chance is their god.
WM, you put it much more concisely than I did.

True, there are those who claim to be theistic evolutionists. What I should have said is evolutionists do not accept the full authority of God's Word. Instead, they accept what they want (if they want any at all), and use their own reasoning to explain away the parts they disagree with. In effect, their ultimate standard is their intellect.

I would start by pointing out to them that the basis of their thinking uses circular reasoning. They believe that the basis of knowledge should be reason and logic. And they would make a statement such as "I won't believe it until you can prove it to me." However, they cannot justify their basis for knowledge (reason and logic) without appealing to reason and logic.

Good point, Chief of Sinners. You know what makes it particularly ironic? Evolutionists put their trust in the human brain, which they themsleves claim originated by random chance. This is a point that can't be missed! Why trust your brain, eyes, or anything about yourself? You're just a random accident…trusting your reasoning would be crazy, right?

Good argument! This is fantastic!

I love this question…

Which came first in the human body, evolutionist, theistic or not: the teeth, the tongue, the saliva, the esophagus, the stomach, the digestive juices, the small intestine, the large intestine, or the desire to eat? If you are missing any one of these components, you cannot successfully eat. So they must have all come into existence at the same time, right? Considering the incredible complexity of each of these things, even one of them forming by random chance is, again, a mathematical impossibility. But all of them forming at the same time? Just use pure logic! It's impossible!

As Octo so nicely put it, "The chance of that happening is about one over infinity-squared." I would multiply that by another infinity or so, and you almost get how impossible evolution is. No matter how much time is involved. Actually, the more time is involved, the LESS likely evolution is to occur! So maybe our mindblowingly big number isn't nearly enough…

Howdy y'all from Florence Kentucky! Just got back to the hotel from the Creation Museum, and Homeschool Science Conference was great! Okay, with the whole old earth thing, when saying that the earth is old, Evolutionists look at the rock layers and deduce that they took millions of years to from, since they can't take into account a worldwide flood( I mean come on, what a radical idea right? A WORLDWIDE FLOOD?!?! {{ sarcasm alert}}) But there are problems with that. Like how the fossils are mixed up. If the earth is millions of years old, fossils should appear in the layer they evolved in. But such isn't the case. They've found fossils of shellfish that supposedly evolved in the( Tetriary? Triassic? Man, evolutionary dates get confusing somtimes!) rock layers in the supposedly Cambrian layers. For all of you who aren't familiar with evolutionary dates, the Cambrian is close to the beginning of time, while the Triassic is closer to the middle, with the first dinosaurs. Supposedly. But a worldwide Flood explains how the fossils could be mixed up, as organisms would be swept along together and buried.

And another thing is the fossils themselves. If evolution happened, and the world is millions of years old, we should find lots of intermediary fossils, showing the evolution of dinosaurs into birds( which couldn't happen by the way, because the dinos with hip bones closest to birds are Stegosaurs, you know, the ones with the leaf-shaped spikes on their backs, not even the ones that walked upright!) or the evolution of an ape-like ancestor into apes and humans, but we don't. But we DO find a lot of fossils of fully formed animals.

Even in the way fossils are formed we can find proof for a young earth. Fossils are formed when an organisms bones are rapidly covered in mud and dirt, and the minerals in the dirt take place of the cells in the bone, making a rock-solid copy of the original. For this to happen, the organism MUST be covered completely, and can't have been moved around by other organisms. Which is why at EVERY fossil site, the evolutionists say it was a local flood, or an ancient lake, river, or sea. But that's funny, 'cuz the Bible can explain all of that in one event: the Flood. And with the Flood, we can explain why we find, as Ken Ham says: "Billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth."

I'll be back later with more!

-Depraved Teen

By the way, ChiefOfSinners, why'd you change your profile pic? You little bro is really cute!

I wasn't saying you were wrong or anything, Thomas. I just hit the nearest reply button so I could get another little tid-bit out there.

Because I don't think he is cute anymore. >:<

No, I really just did it to get back to the picture I use everywhere else on the Internet. I was getting tired of having my name associated with my baby brother's face, I guess.

You can see him in person when you come back to church on Sunday. :)

@COS:

You have a new baby brother?

Please don't hesitate to correct me if I am wrong about anything, Octavius. My whole intention in starting this discussion was to see how fellow Christians would defend their viewpoint of origins, and to help each other defend our viewpoint better.

So, if light travels at a predetermined speed and most stars are billions and trillions of miles away, how can we say that we have a young earth if the starlight itself took billions of years to reach earth? How can we even see any stars if our earth is only 6,000 or so years old?!?

There are many good reasons as far as distant starlight goes. The one I think is the best is that God can do miracles. Don't you think he could make the light from the stars be reaching earth the moment he made them?
My reply for people who are Old-Earth Creationists is this: so you're a Christian. (yes) And you believe Jesus died for you. (yes) All of this is in chapters contained in the second half of the Bible. You believe those things are literally true and reliable, right? (yes) Well, look at the very first chapter of the Bible. It says that God created the earth in six 24-hour days. It even specifies this by saying evening and morning, with every single day. You don't believe this? (no) So you don't believe the first chapter of the Bible is literal? (no) So you're only trusting one half of the Bible? (yes) Since you think the first half of it is not literal and reliable, who says the second half is?
And besides, if there was death before sin, the Bible says (in the New Testement even) that the wages of sin is death. So, if there was death before sin (the Garden of Eden), then death was NOT the wages of sin; therefore there was no reason for Jesus to die for us.
Sorry this is a little long; it's kind of a hot topic for me.

Very good reasoning, Abi! I like that argument of death before sin.

WM - God created starlight already hitting the earth. I mean, doesn't it say that on the first day, God created LIGHT? What does that mean? Does that mean the sun? No. It means that before God said those words, there was no light.
Later, He made the emanaters of light (things that make light) vis. the stars (sun included). So the very order of creation precludes any possibility of light not shining on the earth for the billions of years it takes to get here from the stars. The text says that God created light. Then he created stars. So the light from the stars was already there. So it was already hitting the earth, right?
The light was here first. Then the stars came along.

Ah, the classic! First, this assumption is based on uniformitarianism: the belief that we can use the past to explain the present and the future. Although this is true in some cases, it is not absolutely true. We cannot say for sure that light has always traveled at 186,000 miles per second. Perhaps God allowed it to travel faster at one time than it does today. Perhaps there are conditions where light can actually travel faster than 186,000 miles per second. Also, if the earth were billions of years, we should see evidence of a large number of supernovas. However, there are very few supernova remains, and there are very few documented supernovas. Besides, in an evolutionary worldview, there is no reason to assume that light has always traveled at the same speed. After all, things are constantly changing. Why should we assume that things we see today are exactly like they were in the past? If the world is constantly changing over millions of years, why should we assume that gravity has always been here? It seems a bit inconsistent to believe that it would take billions of years for light to travel from the stars to here and yet assume that light has always traveled at a constant speed. Indeed, regularity should not even be present in an evolutionary world. Since things are always changing, why should some things remain the way they always have?

What's funny with this issue is that evolutionists are in the same boat! Some stars are farther away in light years than even evolution will give time for! So if they put us in this boat, we've got to pull them in with us. :D

Right! Also, there are some things we need to accept in faith. None of us were around when the earth was created! We simply have to prove that our viewpoint is more credible than that of the evolutionists.

This all just proves Romans 1:18-19 correct–

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them."

The evidence has been proven against them time and again, and yet they still hold to their incorrect beliefs. This shows how desperate natural man is to "disprove" God or replace Him so that they can fulfill their sinful lusts. That is why it is so amazing that God has provided a way for us to be saved! Glory be to Him!

Amen! And yet our thinking would be just as illogical were it not for the wisdom of Christ. Indeed, glory be to Him!

Amen, Thomas! :)

But what about the word "day" in Genesis 1? Don't you know that the word in Hebrew is yom and can mean undetermined, long periods of time? Couldn't each "day" of Creation be millions of years of time, giving the earth time to settle from all the catastrophic upheaval of Day 2, as well as the stars on Day 4 time to have their light hit the earth? Doesn't that just as easily make sense?

Dawg, what in the world do "morning" and "evening" mean if they don't mean "morning" and "evening"?

THAT'S prophecy! So, it's figurative and poetic and allegorical, but not literal, silly!

Please know the rules of prophetical interpretation before you comment again, @Octosauras.

Why does the Bible say a day, if it doesn't really mean a literal day?

God could have created the earth in a split second; He is all-powerful (Omnipotent). Why would He have taken that long to do it?
He took six (literal) days to create everything, because He knew that later on, a week would be seven days long; and the seventh day would be a day of rest. Just like God rested on the seventh day.

Hey, uh, why in the world does Exodus 20:11 say, "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" if God took, like, seven million years? Does that mean that we work for six million years, and then rest for one million years?? Why is it that we only argue over what "day" means in this section of the Bible? Is it maybe because we are super desperate to fit evolution into the Bible?

@WM I suggest you listen to Ken Ham on this subject. I think he says that this is the only place where evolutionists can insert their claims that the earth is actually millions of years old, because it wouild not spoil any genealogies or anything like that.

Personally, I had not done research on the subject, so I looked up the greek root for the word "day" used in Genesis 1. In the lexicon it said, "day (24 hour period) as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1." I looked up this word elsewhere in the Bible and, although I did not look at every single passage, the ones I looked at in Genesis seemed to indicate a 24-hour period. I think this word can also be translated as a period of time, but why should we believe that that period should be "millions of years" instead of just twenty-four hours? Unless there is true reason to doubt the Bible as the ultimate authority, this kind of reasoning would be arbitrary.

I heard a really good lecture once that people have done a grammatical analytic test of narrative, poetry, and prophecy and they found that Genesis 1-3 is narrative. There are certain patterns and certain number of different words in different forms of literature, and Genesis 1-3 is narrative.
No chance that it's prophecy, Mr. Framework Hypothesis!

Not bad. Not bad, @Everyone!

I like what Ken Ham says in response to those who work so hard to say that yom in Genesis 1 MUST be interpreted by its lesser used definition and rendering, but they never use that technique anywhere else in the Bible.

Why is that? Is it because the other 3,000 times the word yom is used, its context dictates its meaning? Is it because EVERY time (except OBVIOUSLY in Genesis 1) the word yom is coupled with a numerative descriptor (i.e., that's a number used as an adjective, @Octo, just in case you got lost there.), it means a literal period of time dictated by the number used?

In other words, why do we struggle with believing in 6 literal days, but we never argue that Jonah was in the "big fish" for 3 thousand or 3 million years? Did Jacob serve Laban for 7 days, 7 years, or 7 millennia?

It couldn't happen to be that pressure from atheistic or agnostic man and his godless take on earthly origins is influencing professing Christians' wildly inconsistent interpretation of Genesis 1, could it?

jacob served laban for a week, I believe thats what the KJV says-just because you brought it up. WM

Those that study the body are able to determine things about the persons life because of: bone, hair, and teeth. What would have been found on Adam? Is that like the light which we see from distant stars, as mentioned by WM?

Well said, WM. Really, if a worldview is credible, it will justify itself.

Not bad. Not bad, @Everyone! I like what Ken Ham says in response to those who work so hard to say that yom in Genesis 1 MUST be interpreted by its lesser used definition and rendering, but they never use that technique anywhere else in the Bible. Why is that? Is it because the other 3,000 times the word yom is used, its context dictates its meaning? Is it because EVERY time (except OBVIOUSLY in Genesis 1) the word yom is coupled with a numerative descriptor (i.e., that's a number used as an adjective, @Octo, just in case you got lost there.), it means a literal period of time dictated by the number used? In other words, why do we struggle with believing in 6 literal days, but we never argue that Jonah was in the "big fish" for 3 thousand or 3 million years? Did Jacob serve Laban for 7 days, 7 years, or 7 millennia? It couldn't happen to be that pressure from atheistic or agnostic man and his godless take on earthly origins is influencing professing Christians' wildly inconsistent interpretation of Genesis 1, could it?

Well said, Wretched :)

Some people think that the argument that God created the starlight already visible to people on earth is no good because that would be dishonest for god to have created this appearence of somthing that wasnt.
These people then must go and look into alternate theories about time gravitational dilation…. I however think this is no different than God creating Adam fully formed and mature even though he wasnt even a day old.

I think that argument, which you described, is also no good. God didn't have to be dishonest by making it look like it was there–He could have easily made it to actually be there! He is God! So, for anyone who does believe that God allowing us to see distant starlight would be dishonest, it doesn't have to be–and it isn't!

To see, through a telescope a star 20,000 light years away explode; says that 20,000 years in the past the star exploded and we now can see it. So the history on that star says it was created before God created it, and all other things.

But isn't the universe expanding? So even though that star is 20,000 light-years away NOW, it wasn't always 20,000 light-years away. So it could have exploded when it was 4,000 light-years away, but now, when we see the explosion, it has moved so that it is 20,000 light-years away.
Make sense?

P.S. I shouldn't be on here anymore. Just thought I'd give my two cents and leave. Please don't respond (to me), because I shouldn't be on here to keep any comments going. Remind me if I come on again. :-)
[I was spending WAY too much time commenting, not memorizing.]

No

Wow, that was enthusiastic. :D

What do you think of Genesis 2:16-17:

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

This verse has given me cause to wonder if "day" (yom) in the narrative of creation is figurative or a longer period. Some have said that the days are long periods and that we are in the 7th day right now. There is also the argument that "die" just means they started to die but if you go with that interpretation I think you can just as easily go with "day" not meaning 24-hour day.

Thoughts?

Concerning the distant starlight problem - Jason Lisle has developed a theory that I believe very well gives us an answer to the distant starlight problem. I don't know much about it, but there was an article in Answers magazine a year or so ago concerning it. Something to do with the fact that under certain conditions, light can travel instantaneously.

Yeah, there's certainly that. But then there's also the verses in the Bible which say that God "stretched out the heavens," implying that maybe He created the stars closer and then pulled them billions of light years away.

And then what about the mature creation argument? God didn't create Adam and Eve as babies and wait for them to grow. He created them mature and fully grown. So why couldn't He have created the stars billions of light years away with light that we could already see–especially since we were supposed to be able to use them for numbering days and years.

Also, some creation scientists would argue that the methods used for measuring the distances of stars are quite faulty and unreliable. So the stars may not be nearly as far away as we think.

Point one: God asked Job, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?"
Point two: Been there, done that. Well, not me in particular, but it has been done. The question is: will they listen?

@Lisa–That point has been brought up time and again, but it is easy to show how it cannot conclude that "day" in Genesis 1 does not mean a 24-hour period.

Yes, the Hebrew word "yom" can be used to mean a period of time, such as "in the day of Joshua," or something like that. But there are other very important factors in Genesis 1 that keep it separate from such phrases. Two examples:

1) In every instance where it says "day" in Genesis 1, the words "evening" and "morning" are also included, which lead us to the conclusion that it is referring to a 24-hour day.

2) If that is not enough, whenever the word "yom" is beside any number, that number is referring to a number of 24-hour days. Let's look at Genesis 1: "the first day," "the second day," "the third day," "the fourth day," "the fifth day," "the sixth day." Seems that it's talking about six days to me, not six periods of time. :)

It is quite clear from the text that six days are involved, not six periods of time, as some trying to squeeze evolution into the Bible would say.