Those who argue for Young Earth Creationism and claim that science supports this view are not actually doing science.
If you claim to be a scientist, you put forward theories that explain why the observations that point to an ancient earth really prove an earth only 6,000 years old. And you predict what new discoveries will show. You theorize; you don’t just criticize.
Technically, true science has to be falsifiable, that is, there must be experiments or observations that could be done that would disprove the science or theory. Thus, the theory of general relativity is good science, not just because it’s been validated by countless tests, but because, had the tests gone the other way, the theory would have been disproved.
But YEC makes no such predictions, and when their claims are disproved, their position remains unchanged because their position is not really a scientific hypothesis but a belief that Genesis 1 must be read as God creating the earth around 4004 BC — which is fine as a faith claim but it’s not science.
The Institute for Creation Research’s web site lists 10 reasons proving a 6,000-year old earth. Few even come close.
1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.
The discussion points out a well-recognized problem with spiral galaxies not having enough visible mass to spin in the shape they appear in. But the ICR discussion says nothing about recent theories regarding dark matter, which is presently considered the solution to the problem. In fact, spiral galaxies are seen as indirect proof of the presence of dark matter.
Dark matter and dark energy were theorized years ago. The accelerating expansion of the universe, recently discovered, cannot be explained without dark matter. Therefore, the theory has strong support in astronomical observations.
In short, orthodox physics has no problem with spiral galaxies. They are, in fact, a key element of one of the newest theories physicists are working on.
2. Too few supernova remnants.
The problem was solved by better telescopic technology in 2011. And yet, three years later, ICR continues to make the claim.
3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.
Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4 Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical “Oort cloud” well beyond the orbit of Pluto … .
Notice that the existence of only one comet more than 6,000 years old disproves a 6,000-year old universe. And what’s wrong with the Oort cloud theory? More importantly, in 2010, a spacecraft recovered comet material and brought it back to earth for study —
Though comets are thought to be some of the oldest, most primitive bodies in the solar system, new research on comet Wild 2 indicates that inner solar system material was transported to the comet-forming region at least 1.7 million years after the formation of the oldest solar system solids.
The research by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and colleagues provides the first constraint on the age of cometary material from a known comet.
The findings are published in the Feb. 25 edition of Science Express.
The NASA Stardust mission to comet Wild 2, which launched in 1999, was designed around the premise that comets preserve pristine remnants of materials that helped form the solar system. In 2006, Stardust returned with the first samples from a comet.
Though the mission was expected to provide a unique glimpse into the early solar system by returning a mix of solar system condensates, amorphous grains from the interstellar medium and true stardust (crystalline grains originating in distant stars), the initial results painted a different picture. Instead, the comet materials consisted of high-temperature materials including calcium-aluminum rich inclusions (CAIs), the oldest objects formed in the solar nebula. These objects form in the inner regions of the solar nebula and are common in meteorites.
4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.
Rivers and dust storms dump mud into the sea much faster than plate tectonic sub-duction can remove it.
Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7
ICR has taken one article, pointing out how much mud and dust flow into the oceans each year, and another article, discussing how much mud is subducted by plate tectonics, and they’ve done the math. There is too much mud! Run the numbers backwards, and the seas would be filled with mud if the earth were ancient.
But what they don’t mention is that river mud and dust in the wind have dramatically increased in recent years due to human activity — farming, cutting down forests, and similar activities dramatically increase the dirt flowing into the ocean and dust in the air, surely by a factor of at least 20.
So this may be an environmental issue, but since man has only been producing dust and mud at the current rate for less than 100 years, it’s not proof that the earth is young.
5. Not enough sodium in the sea.
Every year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today’s input and output rates.10 This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.10 Calculations11 for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.
Obviously, 62 million years is a far cry from 6,000 years! So this doesn’t remotely argue for a young earth consistent with the YE view.
Moreover, once again we see no recognition that human activity has increased the outflow of salt and other sodium-containing materials by much more than a thousand-fold. And, frustratingly, the citations are all to creationist literature not available on the Internet.
This site from 2007 offers a more detailed refutation of this claim.
Apparently Mr. Humphreys figured this up this up without properly estimating the amount of sodium lost in the alteration of basalt. They omit sodium lost in the formation of diatomaceous earth, and they omit numerous others mechanisms which are minor individually but collectively account for a significant fraction of salt. He was contacted about this, yet he has not corrected it.
This is what happens when you don’t publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
6. The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast.
As summarized in the Wikipedia,
At present, the overall geomagnetic field is becoming weaker; the present strong deterioration corresponds to a 10–15% decline over the last 150 years and has accelerated in the past several years; geomagnetic intensity has declined almost continuously from a maximum 35% above the modern value achieved approximately 2,000 years ago. The rate of decrease and the current strength are within the normal range of variation, as shown by the record of past magnetic fields recorded in rocks (figure on right).
The nature of Earth’s magnetic field is one of heteroscedastic fluctuation. An instantaneous measurement of it, or several measurements of it across the span of decades or centuries, are not sufficient to extrapolate an overall trend in the field strength. It has gone up and down in the past for no apparent reason. Also, noting the local intensity of the dipole field (or its fluctuation) is insufficient to characterize Earth’s magnetic field as a whole, as it is not strictly a dipole field. The dipole component of Earth’s field can diminish even while the total magnetic field remains the same or increases.
In short, iron-bearing rocks indicate the direction and strength of the magnetic field going back for as far as we have rocks — and the magnetic field varies in strength. The current decline is typical.
This has been known for decades. I know because I read about this in college — if not high school — and I’m 60 years old. The claim by ICR is misleading at best.
7. – 10. This site offers a refutation of the remaining four claims. I does get tedious going through these claims one by one to demonstrate their errors.
Some conclusions about Young Earth Creationism
Notice the ICR does not update its information when repudiated. I found an article reporting a discovery that there are plenty of supernova remnants in our part of the of galaxy in less than 10 seconds.
Real scientists not only look for evidence that supports their claims, but also, when their hypotheses are destroyed by new evidence, they stop making their disproven claims.
You see, in reality, creation “scientists” don’t do experiments or original research. They read real scientific journals and look for research done by others that might support their claims. And when that research is later revised, they ignore the revision. And when the research contradicts their position, they ignore it.
Frankly, these claims come across as a bit desperate. And I’m more than a little outraged at claims being made that have been disproved for years — in the name of Christianity. This is not science, nor is it Christian.
Conclusion
The church needs to give up the Young Earth Creation “Science” argument. It is really, really bad science. It makes us look bad to unbelievers with a science background or even a layman’s knowledge of science gleaned from popular science literature.
More importantly, there are better arguments that are truer to the scriptures. The Intelligent Design position is very serious science. And John Walton’s interpretation of Genesis 1 as a dedication of the cosmos as God’s temple is based on real expertise in the literature of the Ancient Near East — and it only makes sense to read an ANE document as an ANE document.
We need to start paying attention to the marvels of God’s creation that are being discovered by scientists nearly every day. We are blessed to live in an age when so much excellent science is being done, revealing God’s glory in new and exciting ways.
Obviously, I don’t agree with all scientists about everything, but I find no threat to my belief in God and his scriptures in the Big Bang, evolution, or an ancient earth. In fact, the more I study these questions, the more I find myself in awe of the Creator.
Six days from whose perspective? Jay I think you and your readers might find this slide show from a University of Texas astrophysicist interesting food for thought http://sixdayscience.com/six-days-2/
Jay said, “I find no threat to my belief in God and his scriptures in the Big Bang, evolution, or an ancient earth.”
Jay, which kind of evolution are you referring to? Are you speaking of “molecules to man” evolution or are you referring to changes within a species? If the former, why do you not feel this to be a threat?
Molecules to man is what happened. The evidence is overwhelming for that. But there is a lot more to this amazing story we have yet to learn. When I was young, the sum total of hominid fossils excepting Neanderthals could fit on a table. Since then many more of our ancestors and their relatives have been discovered and are giving a better glimpse at our history. And DNA in parallel with the fossil record corroborates and supplements this account. We now know that many of us have as much as 4% Neanderthal DNA. We share much with our Chimpanzee cousins and the DNA change rate matches and helps to refine the archaeological and paleontological dating. We could go on and on. That is the way it happened, so God must want us to know that and to learn from it.
If “molecules to man” happened, why do we seem alone in the universe? There are between 100 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy and 100-400 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Opinions vary as to the number of “sun-like” stars, but the low-end estimate seems to be around 5%. Lowballing the number of sun-like stars with the low-end estimate for the total number of stars suggests that there are 500 billion billion sun-like stars in the observable universe. A recent study suggests that 22% of these stars could have an Earth-sized planet, so we’ve narrowed it down to 100 billion billion planets in the universe on which life like us could form. (Bear in mind that Evolution does not strive to achieve a specific goal, so “like us” is more of a generalization than anything Captain Kirk might want to sleep with…)
Running the same numbers on our local neighborhood, so to speak, suggests that there could be 1 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, and 100,000 of those could have intelligent life! And again, we’re talking about billions of years here, so if one of those civilizations was both more ancient and more industrious, they could have colonized the entire galaxy before we started banging rocks together.
So where is everybody?
If God created the natural processes and set them loose, the universe should be practically teeming with life. If He created the natural processes by which life could form and restricts them to only happening on Earth, then that’s as big a lie as creating things that merely LOOK old.
Stewart asked,
Unbelieving scientists who specialize in the origin of life and the Intelligent Design school of thought among Christians have both pointed out the absurdly high odds against the spontaneous formation of life even once in this universe. Assuming a trillion stars (10^9), all orbited by a habitable planet (obviously, an absurdly generous assumption), the odds of life at one point in the universe are worse than 1 in 10^144. Hence if there is life on other planets, it would be a literal miracle.
I consider the creation of life an act of special creation by God. See also http://idscience.hubpages.com/hub/Why-Darwinian-Evolution-Is-Impossible
Al,
Thanks for the link to http://www.sixdayscreation.com. V E R R R Y interesting read!
I forgot to “subscribe” to comments.
Eddie asked,
The argument against macro evolution is not a strong one. The Intelligent Design school of thought within Christianity concedes the reality of macro-evolution. They just don’t believe that macro-evolution is sufficient to explain everything, such as the creation of life or certain irreducibly complex structures in the cells. And that sounds pretty much right to me.
So why is macro-evolution a threat? The supposed contradiction with Genesis 1 is the age of the earth and the age of the universe, which are not based on evolution at all.
And since I’m not a Deistic evolutionist, I have no problem with Adam and Eve being specially created.
Al Cibiades,
I couldn’t agree more, and so I’ve already posted Schroeder’s argument: /2014/05/apologetics-the-bible-and-science-part-7-quark-confinement-and-six-days/.
Readers, the slideshow Al links to is well worth your taking the time to go through.
Jay,
This seems like a case of picking and choosing which facts to believe to support a preexisting opinion… Researchers at the University of Auckland suggested last year that there could be 100 billion (10^11) habitable, Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone (they’ve taken a couple of liberties that I’m sure you would object to, but there’s a larger point there about using data and statistics to support whatever theory one chooses to follow). Throw out 99% of those. Dismiss them out of hand if you want — that still gives us 10^9 stars with potential Earths in our galaxy alone. If there are 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, each with around 10^9 habitable, Earth-like planets, then we’re looking at around 10^20 habitable, Earth-like planets in the observable universe.
http://evolutionfaq.com/articles/probability-life — The gist of this page is that the chances for the simplest self-replicating peptide to form randomly in sequential trials is 1 in 10^40. But the suggested conditions of early Earth would allow for billions of trials taking place simultaneously. And it could have been happening billions of times in this galaxy alone, not to mention the universe at large.
In other words, there is a scientifically accepted set of numbers that suggests that intelligent life is an inevitability, if not common.
(NOTE: For what it’s worth, I don’t buy it… So much of what is “scientifically accepted” seems to be picking the data that fits an opinion. There are a lot of numbers floating around out there. It’s not hard to find data to support almost any hypothesis. Personally, I’m not convinced that Genesis speaks to the origins of the universe. I’m not convinced that it would have been relevant to early society and I don’t think it is to modern Christians, either…)
Either oxygen, solar radiation, or cosmic rays would inhibit organic molecules from combining into complex molecules(i.e. proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, or nucleotides). Never mind forming into the very first archaio-bacterial cell. This is clever science fiction. It’s like saying the rubbish from a nuclear disaster will gradually combine and evolve to become beautiful airplanes a billion years from now. Quite a leap of faith.
Stewart,
One site figure 10^24 stars in the universe.
What are the odds of life spontaneously forming? Fred Hoyle, a non-Christian scientist, estimates 10^40,000. Won’t happen once by chance, much less twice or three times. Here’s an article offering a much more conservative calculation and taking into account the fact that more than one RNA pattern would likely work: http://www.benotconformed.org/odds-of-abiogenesis.htm
The flaw in the article is to fail to note that there might be several opportunities for life to form on a given planet — even though the conditions would be quite rare. So divide by 1 trillion tries per planet.
Result is 1 out of 10^279 — still ridiculously high — per planet. If we assume on inhabitable planet per star, the result is 10^255. I give this round to the Intelligent Design crowd.
RJ wrote,
True. You have to assume a reducing (rather than oxidizing environment), which may have never existed on this planet, but if did, the time between the earth cooling sufficiently to have liquid water and having free oxygen is quite brief in geological terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth#Oceans_and_atmosphere
Oceans formed at 4.4 billion years ago, whereas the oxygen atmosphere was formed at 2.8 billion years. The evidence is that the earliest bacteria can be dated to 3.5 billion years ago. hence, Life had to randomly form in 0.9 billion years — which is a very long time, but not nearly long enough given the long odds.
Moreover, it’s not as though the amino acids and other constituents of the first life showed up in concentrated form on day 1. It would have taken quite a while for these constituents to form, all the while the earth is filled with radiation. The ozone layer was not formed until after the earth has an oxygen atmosphere. UV light is deadly to bacteria — thereby forcing these reactions away from the shore and the surface of the oceans — greatly limiting the opportunities for life to develop spontaneously.
Odds are too long.
Or the conditions might have been quite common… We don’t know. Nobody was around to observe, and we’ve just spent several articles learning about how the one account we DO have can’t be taken literally… 😉
Atheistic evolutionists have a completely different explanation and they use math, too. It’s all a matter of faith any way you look at it.
Stewart,
The evolutionist error is easily seen by analogy. How likely is it that a monkey with a keyboard types Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? But there could be other plays, books, etc. of the same length with very different combinations of letters, meaning you have to reduce the long odds by the number of possible positive outcomes. Indeed, the number of comprehensible, grammatically correct writings the same length as R&J is nearly infinite. It greatly reduces the odds.
And yet if you were to receive a manuscript of that length that is grammatically correct and comprehensible, you would know that it was produced by a intelligence and not by random processes. The odds are still way too long because there are vastly more negative possibilities than positive ones.
This analysis works by far best regarding the creation of life, because there was no evolution before life was created. Evolution has the rare ability to “create” information because random processes are filtered by survival and reproduction. But before life, there was no such mechanism.
I’ve read many arguments by atheists to get around this problem, and not a one addresses the problem honestly. It’s not an essential argument for faith in God, but I’m persuaded that it’s true.
Stewart,
This is just a point of interest. In the Middle Ages, theologians used “literal meaning” of a text to refer to the intended meaning of the author. And by that definition, I think Genesis 1 can and should be read literally.
But you are, of course, right that the modern meaning of “literal” is “not figurative” — and in that sense, it cannot be taken literally.
As I read from the blog, I hear of bones that man has identified as being over 100,000 years old.
An earth that is identified as Billions of years old. All of these estimates of time are assumptions of men, using their analysis of either chemical or life changes over time upon the environment or mathematical equations.
I don’t have an idea as to when in history man began to believe that he could identify the age of such things. I cannot read a single statement in any of the writings called scriptures that identifies that man would begin to have enough intelligence to be able to use the material that God created to verify that God did not tell the truth about creation. You see there was no man there as God created to document how it was accomplished. We have only a few options available, either we believe the creation story as reveled by these writings which were written by men that were identified through out history as having a direct communication with God, or we believe in man’s ability to look at an object and analyze it, drawing our own conclusions as to its identity and age.
The only individual I can remember in scriptures that had a very in depth communication with God about the creation was Job. Can science analyze the information in God’s communication with Job and explain where they can prove errors in the communications?
I also hear that men believe that God would never have created an earth that just looked old to confuse those men who chose not to believe his story. We’ll that does sound like a deception that we do not believe is in God’s nature. Wait a minute, did not he communicate in scripture that he would do that very thing? You can easily find that text, in fact it has been quoted many times even on this blog. Who is there out there that has not read of places in scripture where God allowed men to be approached by someone delivering a message that was in direct opposition to the instructions that he had told them to believe or obey.
I have some major questions that I have never heard addressed on this blog or anywhere? One of which would involve why would not men attempt to identify the age of bones from known events in the Bible account, to verify that the event actually happened? Allow me to draw a mind picture for you to understand. We cannot identify remains from the flood as to any time and location, so as to be sure that the bone was exactly a certain age. But, there should be many locations on earth that we could find specimens of bones which are identified by a location and time that would testify to their age and the message about their death. Have you heard of documentation of any of the masses of of people identified as dying in scripture in a certain location? Well it may be a great problem finding the bones of the Egyptians that were drowned in the sea, but wouldn’t you believe that there would be remains left there? Well, let us look at Israelite Nation as they traveled to Canaan, wasn’t their wanderings in a location near to Canaan. Can you understand the volume of remains that were buried during the wanderings? I believe the text states that not only the men over the age of 20 years old died but (all) which would include women, the numbers would be estimated many over a million. I have found information on the internet that states that there is no evidence to verify of the wanderings in the wilderness. Where could over a million cascaras of these inhabitants be stored or hidden? I understand there are many cities and the suchlike found, why not burial grounds or bodies which did not get covered well?
Who cleaned up buried or disposed of the bodies of the tribe of Benjamin that were killed in the battles within approximately four days over 107,000, cannot those be found in the described locations? On and on we may go but, it appears to me that science only wants to be a testifier to what no man can prove.
Did God remove the evidence of events that I have described so that his Word could not be proven through man’s wisdom, so that belief in Him and his Word would have to be of faith? You know the evidence of things not seen. If this evidence cannot be found, would we consider He has also created an earth that can by man’s wisdom be considered to be very old?
Stewart,
Just for fun, I figured the odds of monkey’s typing a 10,000-word essay consisting of nothing but Standard English words — with no restrictions regarding making sentences or sense.
I assume an average word length of 5 letters, which is confirmed by several web sites.
Thus, the possible outcomes, good and bad, would be 26^5 * 1/27. (have to have a space at the end each word — and we’ll ignore punctuation). Hence, 1 in 321 million is the odds of randomly typing a single 5 character word that’s a real word, followed by a space. The odds of a positive outcomes are 500,000 over 321 million, since there are about 500,000 words in English. This produces 1.55 x 10^-3, or about 0.1%. Unlikely but far from impossible.
To get the odds of doing this 10,000 times in a row (about 7 of my essays, much shorter than most books), we take the 10,000th root, which you have to do in steps in Excel or else it returns a zero. But cleverly finessing the problem produces 1 in 5×10^113 — there are only 10 ^81 atoms in the universe.
That’s impossible.
DNA math has to be similar in logic, except DNA molecules are vastly larger than 10,000 words, and the number of words is far more important than the likelihood of producing a functional combination of DNA “letter” in figuring the odds. The number has to be REALLY impossible.
The evolutionists who want to question the odds by noting that there are many possible positive outcomes slept through stats class.
This math does not require that the monkeys type any particular book — just words in the dictionary.
Larry wrote,
There is evidence of several massive floods in areas populated by humans. To my knowledge, there are no human remains, but evidence of their cities and such do survive. For example, Turkey has always been subject to devastating earthquakes, and entire coastal cities have been submerged, leaving underwater cities for viewing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kekova. Pompeii is partly underwater now. Venice will likely be underwater within a few hundreds years, maybe sooner. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
Cain built a city, and so there should be evidence of human habitations destroyed by a global Flood, if one happened. There have been some huge floods that destroyed large areas for which evidence has been found. Nothing suggesting a global Flood.
Larry asked,
It’s unusual when a Flood produces fossils. The bones last longer than the flesh, but they eventually dissolve. The water is home to all sorts of bacteria. However, if the bones are covered with sediment, which deprives the carcass of oxygen, then it may well fossilize.
Hence, no Egyptian bones — and if they exist, they’d surely be found deep in the Indian Ocean by now.
Larry asked,
Well, there is no certainty as to the path followed by Israel. There’s some significant evidence that they cross the Red Sea much further south and traveled through Arabia rather than Sinai.
Many commentators believe the “thousand” figures in Numbers are a translation error, with several different alternatives being offered. A good discussion of the problem is at http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/39_exodus.html
Larry asked,
Who sais they were buried? Jews customarily buried the dead, but this was a massacre of passion. I think they were left in the sun to rot.
Larry asked,
There is ample evidence that the earth is ancient. And God has allowed quite a lot of evidence supporting the Bible. It would be remarkable indeed if every event could be confirmed through archaeology.
For example, the fact that Augustus Caesar took censuses as described in the Gospels has been confirmed. An ancient writing mentioning David, king of the Jews, has been found. God has no policy of making his actions recorded in the Bible invisible. Every year, someone finds another piece of evidence to support the scriptures — but there are countless events recorded only in scripture.
The problem with Genesis 1 isn’t a lack of evidence but overwhelming evidence of the age of the earth.
Jay,
I followed your link in the post above and am amazed that you would consider the teaching there. Did you really read the message they are promoting? This attempt to re define the Hebrew word that is translated “thousand” into the term “chiefs” to identify a smaller number than 1000 is totally out of place. The term “chiefs” was never used in any language that I am aware of to identify multiples of a smaller number. This Hebrew word “eleph:H505” was used many multiple times in scripture indicating a next higher value than the value one hundred. In the text the authors attempt to use the word “chiefs” as a value of (one), which will not fit in any fashion in context as describing a number greater than one hundred.
If there were extraterrestrial life, it’s really not at all unreasonable to answer the question, ” Where is everybody?” as follows:
1. A given world with the proper conditions for the development of life did in fact bring about life, which never evolved to a sufficient level of intelligence to leave its home world or signal life elsewhere in the universe. This could be for any number of reasons, including extinctions, natural (meteoritic impact, volcanic winter) or artificial (runaway greenhouse effect as on earth, nuclear winter).
2. They may not have developed sufficiently to contact us YET, or have made an attempt at contact which we have not yet received. For that matter, off the top of my head, I’m not sure what star systems that could theoretically support life are in range of any of our transmissions that have yet been sent out into the black.
3. If there is life elsewhere in the universe, it may not be anything we would recognize, at least immediately, as sapient; it may in turn have no way of recognizing that we are sapient.
4. If there is life which is sufficiently advanced to cross the cosmos at will, there is no reason to assume it wants anything to do with us. If it does, there is no reason to assume we would be able to recognize them, any more than members of less intelligent species on earth can distinguish between a member of its own kind and a plastic decoy.
There are interesting theological questions that are raised by hypothetical alien life. Does the existence of nonhuman sapience open up the possibility for discussion as to which aspects we share with God that could be considered his “image and likeness”, for example, if a nonhuman sapient life form with a religion bearing remarkable similarities to ours makes the same claim? I can see bitter and vitriolic discussions happening about that very thing, and perhaps it would be better if we never encountered life anywhere else in the cosmos because the differences between cultures may prove insurmountable; but who knows? Until we get a signal from somewhere else, this is all just an amusing pass time. I do, however, think that even given the math, this is an awfully big place for just one intelligent species; On the one hand, it’s poetic, but on the other, I always thought of God as being more creative than that.
We know for sure there is life out there somewhere.
Angels descend from there and God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are there too and not of this earth. Who knows who or what else is out there we have not been told about?
Those spoken of in the bible, even those that had died came BACK from somewhere else.
To think we are alone is pretty silly to me. Moving from place to place far off and going there is seemingly impossible today is easy in other dimensions that we do not understand yet.
I agree with Nominus, God hasn’t been resting this long after creating this earth in six days.
I really have a problem understanding how Jay could believe that a bone from an animal could be 65,000,000 years old.
Jay said, in reference to my asking about the volume of dead bodies left from some of the battles of the Israelites, “Who says they were buried? Jews customarily buried the dead, but this was a massacre of passion. I think they were left in the sun to rot.” A portion of my point was directed to the action of were they buried or just left to the elements. I really did not believe that they (The Israelites) had buried those whom they had massacred. I assumed that just as Jay suggested were left to the elements. Jay also implies that to be a reason that no evidence could be found. If the bones from all those massacred rotted as suggested within the time from the battle till now approx. 4500 years, how would it be possible for bones from over 100,000 years to survive? If the answer would come back indicating that the old bone was buried therefore the elements were sealed in the burying which was a preservative to the bone. Then I would have to ask if bones that are buried are preserved, then why would anyone believe that the Israelites that died and were buried in the forty years wandering not be locate able? What would you consider that the Israelites did with the bodies of the Canaanites whom they killed, would they have been buried in a mass grave, in individual plots scattered allover, or would they have been just piled up in a pile a distance from the city to rot? Was the old bone buried? How could that happen, one of its living relatives covered it as a burial, there was no man to perform that action.
I had mentioned about the Egyptian Army that was drowned in the sea, and Jay mentioned that they would probably be scattered into the Indian Ocean. As I remember the story the two walls of water collapsed upon the Army, this would lead me to believe that after the water stabilized it would resume flowing at the same rate that it was flowing prior to the event, bodies of men and horses may have floated to a down stream location, but remember those 600 chariots and all of the weapons, I doubt that they were carried a great distance by the current, they probably would have been moved downstream below the dried ground which the Israelites walked upon to the normal bead of the sea. The wood and steel of these objects should have been preserved in the same manner that ships which have sunk have been preserved.
Jay,
I’m glad that you brought up Hoyle in this particular thread, because one of his questions about the universe has been very hard for me to scientifically answer with any satisfaction.
Basically, the question has to do with the sheer abundance of hydrogen in a universe that consumes hydrogen at unimaginable, barely calculable rates. Our sun consumes 6×10^8 tons of hydrogen every second. There are no natural processes in the universe that I’ve been able to learn about with my considerable Google-Fu that produce hydrogen at anything like that rate.
So why is there still so much hydrogen in a universe that has been consuming it at literally astronomical rates for billions of years?
Nick asked,
“So why is there still so much hydrogen in a universe that has been consuming it at literally astronomical rates for billions of years?”
Well, hydrogen is just a proton with an electron (with 0. 1 or 2 neutrons). Quarks don’t exist long independently and so formed protons and neutrons as soon as the universe was cool enough to allow them to do so. Hence, the overwhelming majority of matter is hydrogen. The real question is either: why is there anything but hydrogen? and: Why is there so much matter?
The amount of matter is due to hyperinflation early in the history of the universe, with the rapid increase in the size of the universe creating mass by increasing the negative energy of gravity (really).
“Curiously, the energy in a gravitational field is negative, while the energy locked up in matter is positive. If the Universe is exactly flat , then as Tryon pointed out the two numbers cancel out, and the overall energy of the Universe is precisely zero. In that case, the quantum rules allow it to last forever.”
http://aether.lbl.gov/www/science/inflation-beginners.html
And the reason there’s other stuff beside hydrogen is the fusion reaction of stars — meaning we really all are made of stardust — thank you Joni Mitchell.
Oh, all of which is to say, as shown by the incredible fine tuning required for this to happen, that it’s the way it is because God wanted it to be.