Age

[theophilus]

A physician who has made a complete examination of a person without having been told his age could probably make an accurate estimate of it because of his knowledge of how the aging process works. But what would happen if he were to travel back in time and examine Adam and Eve immediately after they were created and was then asked to estimate their age? If he didn’t know they had been created directly he would assume they had been born as babies and base his estimate on how long it would take for them to reach their present state if they had undergone the normal aging process. The result would be that his estimate would be much higher than their actual age.

Scientists who try to discover the age of the earth usually begin by assuming that the natural processes which are occurring now have been going on since the formation of the world and that there has never been any kind of divine intervention. They have come to the conclusion that the earth is billions of years old because that is how long it would take for these processes to bring about the conditions we see existing today.

But what if the Biblical account of creation is true? Then scientists who try to measure the earth’s age are in the same position as the doctor who tried to estimate the age of Adam and Eve. Their age estimates are off because they have a false idea of how the earth came into existence.

If the doctor who examined Adam and Eve were observant enough he would notice that they didn’t have navels. This would show that they hadn’t begun their existence inside their mothers’ wombs and so weren’t born the way other people are. Since they didn’t come into existence the way other people did then the usual methods of estimating age wouldn’t apply to them.

There is also evidence that the earth isn’t as old as most people believe. One example is finding soft tissue in the bones of dinosaurs that supposedly lived millions of years ago. This is from an article titled “Soft Tissue in Fossils” in the October 2012 issue of Answers magazine.

Ask the average layperson how he or she knows that the earth is millions or billions of years old, and that person will probably mention the dinosaurs, which nearly everybody “knows” died off 65 million years ago. A recent discovery by Dr. Mary Schweitzer, however, has given reason for all but committed evolutionists to question this assumption.

Bone slices from the fossilized thigh bone (femur) of a Tyrannosaurus rex found in the Hell Creek formation of Montana were studied under the microscope by Schweitzer. To her amazement, the bone showed what appeared to be blood vessels of the type seen in bone and marrow, and these contained what appeared to be red blood cells with nuclei, typical of reptiles and birds (but not mammals). The vessels even appeared to be lined with specialized endothelial cells found in all blood vessels.

Amazingly, the bone marrow contained what appeared to be flexible tissue. Initially, some skeptical scientists s***ested that bacterial biofilms (dead bacteria aggregated in a slime) formed what only appear to be blood vessels and bone cells. Recently Schweitzer and coworkers found biochemical evidence for intact fragments of the protein collagen, which is the building block of connective tissue. This is important because collagen is a highly distinctive protein not made by bacteria. (See Schweitzer’s review article in Scientific American [December 2010, pp. 62–69] titled “Blood from Stone.”)

Soft tissue couldn’t have survived for such a long time so this is evidence that previous age estimates of the world must be wrong. Much more evidence of this kind can be found on answersingenesis.org and scienceagainstevolution.info.

The fact that Adam and Eve lacked navels would indicate that they had been created directly by God but what would happen if the doctor who examined them was an atheist? Would the evidence convince him that God existed or would he try to find some explanation for their existence that didn’t force him to abandon his beliefs? A look at how scientists have reacted to the discovery of soft dinosaur tissue shows that the second response is the most likely one. Here is more of the article quoted above.

Some evolutionists have strongly criticized Schweitzer’s conclusions because they are understandably reluctant to concede the existence of blood vessels, cells with nuclei, tissue elasticity, and intact protein fragments in a dinosaur bone dated at 68 million years old. Other evolutionists, who find Schweitzer’s evidence too compelling to ignore, simply conclude that there is some previously unrecognized form of fossilization that preserves cells and protein fragments over tens of millions of years. Needless to say, no evolutionist has publically considered the possibility that dinosaur fossils are not millions of years old.

If there is evidence that the earth is much younger than most people believe, why do most people believe it is much older? The answer is found in the article “The 10 Best Evidences from Science that Confirm a Young Earth” in the same issue of Answers.

In the rush to examine all these amazing scientific “evidences,” it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. Such a mountain of scientific evidence, accumulated by researchers, seems to obviously contradict the supposed billions of years, so why don’t more people rush to accept the truth of a young earth based on the Bible?

The problem is, as we consider the topic of origins, all so-called “evidences” must be interpreted. Facts don’t speak for themselves. Interpreting the facts of the present becomes especially difficult when reconstructing the historical events that produced those present-day facts, because no humans have always been present to observe all the evidence and to record how all the evidence was produced.

Forensic scientists must make multiple assumptions about things they cannot observe. How was the original setting different? Were different processes in play? Was the scene later contaminated? Just one wrong assumption or one tiny piece of missing evidence could totally change how they reconstruct the past events that led to the present-day evidence.

That’s why, when discussing the age of the earth, Christians must be ready to explain the importance of starting points and assumptions. Reaching the correct conclusions requires the right starting point.

All of us have a desire to live our lives as we want without having to account to any higher authority for our actions. If we believe that the earth was created only a few thousand years ago we will be forced to believe that there is a God who intervenes in the affairs of the universe and who therefore cares about how we live. This is the reason most people, including scientists, subconsciously ignore evidence of God’s work and try to find alternate explanations for why we exist.

The belief that earth is billions of years old has become such an integral part of our culture that even some Christians who believe the Bible is true accept the prevailing beliefs and interpret the creation account in Genesis to make it conform to those beliefs.

The issue of Answers containing the articles I quoted from has much more scientific evidence that shows that the earth is younger than most people believe. You can read it online here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v7/n4

[pladecalvo]

Originally Posted by theophilus

Soft tissue couldn’t have survived for such a long time ......

Says who....creationists???

Now read THE TRUTH from the Smithonian Institute rather than the 'Liars for Jesus' . Please note the quotes from Dr Schweitzer (herself a committed Christian) where, on page 3 of the article, she accuses the 'Liars for Jesus' of ...'twisting her words and manipulating her data.'

"Young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.

This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scienc...#ixzz2HmwOtTcc

....so this is evidence that previous age estimates of the world must be wrong.

No it isn't. It's evidence that you 'Liars for Jesus' have DELIBERATELY AND BLATANTLY MANIPULATED HER DATA AND WHAT SHE SAID.

Hang your heads in shame you liars. We can only wonder WHY, if Christianity is true, do Christians tell so many lies.

Much more evidence of this kind can be found on answersingenesis.org and scienceagainstevolution.info.

There is no 'evidence' on those sites...only lies, quote mining and misinformation from liars

The fact that Adam and Eve lacked navels would indicate that they had been created directly by God but what would happen if the doctor who examined them was an atheist?

It is not "FACT". It is a story.

Would the evidence convince him that God existed or would he try to find some explanation for their existence that didn’t force him to abandon his beliefs?

Does the verifiable evidence of science convince you that your god does not exist or do you try to find some explanation that doesn't force you to abandon your beliefs?

If there is evidence that the earth is much younger than most people believe, why do most people believe it is much older?

Because there is NO evidence to show that the Earth is young whilst there is a mountain of verifiable evidence for those of us with more than half a brain cell to conclude that it is billions of years old. Simple huh?

The answer is found in the article “The 10 Best Evidences from Science that Confirm a Young Earth” in the same issue of Answers.

Do you really think that ANYONE other than scientifically illiterate morons like you and Sapphire are going to believe what the liars for Jesus on your apologists sites are saying? Their lies and deceit have been exposed in this very post by the scientist in question, herself a "a committed Christian", who has confirmed how they lied about and distorted her data.
You should be ashamed that you are here, propagating their lies,deceit and misinformation. Shame on you!

Facts don’t speak for themselves.

You wouldn't recognise a fact if it bit you on your arse.

The issue of Answers containing the articles I quoted from has much more scientific evidence that shows that the earth is younger than most people believe.

'Answersingenesis thrives on pseudo-science not REAL science.

[evileye]

theophilus and pladecalvo, neither of you know. You both beleive base on what sources you choose to listen to. Plad you choose to listen to science with evidence that is gathered by observation, theo you choose to believe in the bible with evidence provided by faith. No verifiable records exist from the begining of the universe, so I personally will continue to look to observations based on physical evidence for answers to how things work and how they came to be.

No person currently on this Earth has proven that "God" does or does not exist. If you have faith good for you keep it, if you do not good for you keep those things you hold dear.

People of faith will not change people of logic, and people of logic will not change people of faith.

[pladecalvo]

Originally Posted by evileye

theophilus and pladecalvo, neither of you know. You both beleive base on what sources you choose to listen to. Plad you choose to listen to science with evidence that is gathered by observation, theo you choose to believe in the bible with evidence provided by faith.

...and which of the two are more reliable? Those that are based on verifiable scientific data, proven and tested and retested over and over again in thousands of tests and experiments collated by thousands of accredited scientists with modern day high-tec equipment in all parts of the world - and all of them coming up with the same answers....

-or-

....a book describing magic and monsters written over 2000 years ago, in which the stories have not changed (apart from attempts to deceive the reader) despite science and history showing that much of it is absolutely not true and nothing more that fable, fiction and fraud and which has spawned 30,000 different denominations of 'followers' with each denomination claiming that they, and only they, have the correct answers.

Take your pick pal. I know which one I'll go for.

BTW. There is no evidence with faith, that's why it's called 'faith'. If there was 'evidence' then faith would not be required. Faith in the face of evidence is redundant.

No verifiable records exist from the begining of the universe,....

They don't have to exist. We use the verifiable evidence of that which DOES exist to lead us to a conclusion as opposed to religion, which works backwards in that it starts with a conclusion and then looks for and in so many cases (as demonstrated in the OP) lies about and invents evidence that will fit the a priori conclusion.

..so I personally will continue to look to observations based on physical evidence for answers to how things work and how they came to be.

Which is what science does!

No person currently on this Earth has proven that "God" does or does not exist.

One cannot prove a negative, but one can prove that the likelihood of gods existing is extremely 'unlikely'.

People of faith will not change people of logic, and people of logic will not change people of faith.

I disagree strongly that people of logic will not change. If the 'logic' or the evidence presented is verifiable, undeniable and sound, people of logic WILL change. On the other hand no matter how much sound, undeniable, verifiable evidence is presented to a person of faith, they will not accept it. They will continue to believe what they have been told is true...come hell or high water! That is the difference.

[Wallis]

Yes, we "know" that the dinosaurs are not millions of years old. Not all of them, anyway. In fact, a few of them are still around.

And, we finally are coming around to agreeing that many of the extinct "terrible lizards" were, in fact, warm or cool-blooded.

But that does not mean we have to go running off to the Bible and accept creation as the "real deal." Which creation story? There are three: two in Genesis and one in Psalms.

Why should we limit ourselves to the Bible? There are much older accounts of creation than the Bible. Why not accept them instead or alongside the Bible?

Oh, I know. Because your God wrote the Bible and not the other books, huh? Which must mean that your God must be a Johnny-come-lately and has tried so convincingly to hoodwink the people of Earth into believing that ony his word is true.

Well, we have heard it all before, including fairly recent events. I'm not in for drinking cool-aid or shooting it out with the ATF or even having my head chopped off so I can join God's alien missionaries in Haley's comet.

[UnknownNobody]

Originally Posted by Wallis

...Well, we have heard it all before, including fairly recent events. I'm not in for drinking cool-aid or shooting it out with the ATF or even having my head chopped off so I can join God's alien missionaries in Haley's comet.

Witch!
Burn the witch!
You Naughty Boy, don't you know logic has no place here?
LOL...

[Wallis]

Just for laughs, you know, I decided to google pre-Adamic proof according to the Bible. I thought I had seen it all. But nope! You can still teach this old dog new tricks and even surprise him.

It amazes me that such "Biblical" teaching is still supported after 500 years. I can understand--maybe even forgive--the uniformed back in the 17th century for coming up with a fantasy world that allegedly predated the fantasy world of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. But in the 21st century? Come on!

What is it about people who have to believe so ardently in fairy tales to give their lives meaning? A fairy tale here and there shouldn't hurt so much. In fact, Bruno Bettelheim (The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales) states that growing up with fairy tales is beneficially to a child's psychological development. But there has to be a point in time when the child cuts the umbilical cord to the fairy tale and starts living in a real world.

The Adam and Eve story is a really good fairy tale, and in many levels can be used for teaching some of life's lessons. But when people insist that there was an actual, air-breathing human named Adam, and that this single Adam caused the terrific explosion of the human race--in all of its different hues and DNA-based peculiarities--that is bordering on several psychological disorders.

But, if you insist, that we give a hint of credence to the myth of Adam and Eve as being the remotest connection with reality and history, then we are all in for a big shock.

Excuse any racial slurs for they are not intended. It is just easier to make distinctions and underscore the absurdity of it all.

Before the White Man "got out of bed" and realized there was more than indiscriminate sex, eating without regard to health, killing others because it was fun, the Yellow Man had already created a highly technological world. Now some will presuppose, and I might have to agree, that it was the Brown Man who really kicked off civilization. After all, it was in Sumer four-to-six thousand years ago that "magically" appeared on the face of the Earth with a full-blown, highly advanced civilization. But, we'll get back to them at a later date.

Now, when the Yellow Man started exploring his "world," he came across an amazing discovery: a little Black Man. In fact, the whole of Asia was poplulated by these little Black People, and no one could figure out where they came from. These little Black People were kind of like the Black People of Africa, but at the same time they were different.

There are still little Black People living in the Philippines today. And when the Korean Yellow People migrated over to the Japans, they intermarried with the little Black People and became Japanese. [That's going to piss off somebody, but then do some research.]

There were little Black People when the European White Man started sticking his nose into the Orient. Where did these people come from? they wondered.

Such has been a mystery, because any thing written before the Bible was accepted as the only writing that had any truth to it was either destroyed or rejected as a silly collection of myths and legends. How surprised people were when one of the myths actually had a ring of truth to it in the discovery of the ruins of Troy.

A few years ago, enterprising guys decided to see if they could back-engineer the human race to a definite point on the Earth where the first explosion of humanity began. Expecting to find origins in Mesopotamia--where the Brown Man had blossomed into a great civilization--surprise! surprise when all the DNA evidence led to Africa.

And so, the first Man, if you will, was the Black Man.

Adam and Eve were Black. [I know that will stir up a whole typhoon of controversy from folks who insist that Adam and Eve were White. That is even made more hilarious when the Garden of Eden, if it were located in the Middle East, would have produced Brown People. Still not White.]

And now we come to extra-Biblical sources, stumbling blocks to those who are so closed-minded to anything outside the Bible. [They would be in good company with those close-minded Muslims who insist the whole world revolves around the Quran, except that they would soon be at each other's throats as to which is God's Word. Hmmm. Might not be a bad idea. Get rid of two bad apples at the same time.]

The Sumerians have the only creation story that is not only scientific but makes a hell of a lot more sense than any other creation story around. Secondly, they reaffirm that the first homonid was manufactured in Africa. Third, they even describe this first homonid as a little Black Man with black hair.

And the funny thing is: the Sumerians didn't seem to have any prejudice against these little Black People, realizing that they were a later, more perfected batch manufactured by their gods.

So, we have a real problem in just accepting an Adam and a Eve as being the grandparents of all mankind.

Mankind has been around in one form or another for at least 200,000 years. Some folks like to push that back to a million years. But I have a bias against the word "million" as being part and parcel of the New Mythmakers' arsenal of obfuscation of the truth.

Since that time of mankind's first inception, the gods have made a lot of adaptations and so-called improvements. When the world was eventually divided up into twelve districts, it became necessary to identify certain groups of homonids as belonging to a particular god. Thus, mankind was not only divided up into five colors but other physical differences that marked them as belonging to a particualr god.

Well, the gods left. At least that is what we are led to believe. Even Alexander the Great was determined to meet with the great god Marduk in Babylon, only to be supremely disappointed to learn that this god had died a long time ago.

And when the gods left, humanity degenerated into wars, exclusion, and unbottled emotionally and spiritually. Even in this modern day, while people claim to seek spiritual enlightenment, it is in the form of sect-forming, exclusive grouping, and an inexplainable madness to erradicate all other thought unlike their own.

Biblical Adam and Eve did not exist. Their place in the Bible is NOT to verify or underscore either their existence or any creation history. Leave it there.

Mankind has been developing for more that 200,000 years, and despite the wilds of the plains and jungles having been replaced by concrete, steel, and "mountains" of skyscrapers, people have not progressed much from the animals they are, replete with desires to consume and conquer.

The only saving grace has come in philosophy and religion. Not organized religion, which is little more than putting a 600-pound gorilla in charge of making everyone else's lives miserable. But a philosophy and a religion that tries to give meaning to an existance that has no meaning. None whatsoever.

And I were God, the fact that life has no meaning--and that is clearly expounded upon in the Bible--while mankind wastes entire lifetimes trying to find meaning to life--woudl keep me in stitches for eternity.

[evileye]

Originally Posted by pladecalvo

Which is what science does!

I know what science is.

[pladecalvo]

Originally Posted by evileye

I know what science is.

Well you could have fooled me...what with coming up with gems like ...

"No verifiable records exist from the begining of the universe,.... "