How old do you believe the Earth is?

[Kulindahr]

Actually I think the "literalist" christian position (and I'll put the word in quotes because I'm sure you would debate their faculties of literalism if I didn't) is actually coherent on that point.

God does allow for deception, and very creative deception at that. He allows a world with the freedom to sin, and the means to do it prodigiously. The devil put those bones there. AND blocked the rain gutter at the back of my house with ice.

As far as the old testament, god is ultimately put in charge of all the things that get fubarred by our errancy, and presumably this happens for his own benevolent purpose, which, in grace, may be revealed to us.

But where in the Bible is the devil ascribed such power --especially the power to interfere in God's very making of the Earth? or the power to create?

The devil definitely didn't block the rain gutter at the back of your house with ice; that's the province of God's weather, and nowhere is there any suggestion that the devil can interfere with it, or for that matter any other natural processes. Indeed, the only power ascribed to the devil at all in the Bible is the power to talk, to state propositions for us, to whisper sweet lies. Sure, he could blast Job with disaster, but he had to petition God to do that, and it didn't involve any deception at all, or any creation of anything: all he was allowed to do was manipulate things God had put there.

So if the devil put the bones there, he had bones to use because God made them. That means either that God is con-conspirator in lying to us, or that they came from things that actually lived. If they actually lived... where all all the bones the devil didn't bury in weird places to deceive us?


BTW, if the devil put those bones there to deceive us, where did the layers come from? Did the devil get to manipulate the whole planet? If he did, that again means God is in cahoots with him... or can't keep him from interfering. And if he put the layers there, what about the deformed crystals in upthrust mountain ranges -- did he sneak in and deform those? How about the magnetic reversal patterns? or for that matter, the ice layers in Antarctica? Just how far does the devil's power go, anyway?

The trouble is that if they ascribe the bones to the devil, they have to ascribe everything from uplift mountain ranges to ancient glaciers to radiocarbon decay to plate subduction to seafloor spreading... in fact just about everything in, on, and above the planetary crust becomes the devil's work.


Claiming that the devil can do more than simply talk, or manipulate what God made, is ascribing him power, and in fact glory. By the Bible's measure, that's worship.

 

[bankside]

But where in the Bible is the devil ascribed such power --especially the power to interfere in God's very making of the Earth? or the power to create?

The devil definitely didn't block the rain gutter at the back of your house with ice; that's the province of God's weather, and nowhere is there any suggestion that the devil can interfere with it, or for that matter any other natural processes. Indeed, the only power ascribed to the devil at all in the Bible is the power to talk, to state propositions for us, to whisper sweet lies. Sure, he could blast Job with disaster, but he had to petition God to do that, and it didn't involve any deception at all, or any creation of anything: all he was allowed to do was manipulate things God had put there.

So if the devil put the bones there, he had bones to use because God made them. That means either that God is con-conspirator in lying to us, or that they came from things that actually lived. If they actually lived... where all all the bones the devil didn't bury in weird places to deceive us?


BTW, if the devil put those bones there to deceive us, where did the layers come from? Did the devil get to manipulate the whole planet? If he did, that again means God is in cahoots with him... or can't keep him from interfering. And if he put the layers there, what about the deformed crystals in upthrust mountain ranges -- did he sneak in and deform those? How about the magnetic reversal patterns? or for that matter, the ice layers in Antarctica? Just how far does the devil's power go, anyway?

The trouble is that if they ascribe the bones to the devil, they have to ascribe everything from uplift mountain ranges to ancient glaciers to radiocarbon decay to plate subduction to seafloor spreading... in fact just about everything in, on, and above the planetary crust becomes the devil's work.


Claiming that the devil can do more than simply talk, or manipulate what God made, is ascribing him power, and in fact glory. By the Bible's measure, that's worship.

No no no. Just the "bones." Clever carvings made to resemble bones, I'll wager. Of course if there were a devil he could do more than simply talk, he could interact with the world physically like any other ordinary being of heavenly origin. While he was busy tempting Jesus, he'd leave footprints in the desert. And if he could do that, he could slip a few fake bones in to strategic locations without needing any glory or worship or divine cahootery beyond the basic divine mandate to continue to exist.

 

[Kulindahr]

No no no. Just the "bones." Clever carvings made to resemble bones, I'll wager. Of course if there were a devil he could do more than simply talk, he could interact with the world physically like any other ordinary being of heavenly origin. While he was busy tempting Jesus, he'd leave footprints in the desert. And if he could do that, he could slip a few fake bones in to strategic locations without needing any glory or worship or divine cahootery beyond the basic divine mandate to continue to exist.

Chemical tests show they're real bones, and they sure look like bones under a microscope.

In order to stick the bones in, in a manner on par with leaving footprints in the desert, he'd have to have hung around as all those layers built up and stuck them in by hand. Since he's nowhere near omnipresent nor omnipotent, how'd he manage that, all over the planet?

And that still leaves the actual geology -- if the devil did just the bones, then we're back to God lying to us.

 

[bankside]

Chemical tests show they're real bones, and they sure look like bones under a microscope.

In order to stick the bones in, in a manner on par with leaving footprints in the desert, he'd have to have hung around as all those layers built up and stuck them in by hand. Since he's nowhere near omnipresent nor omnipotent, how'd he manage that, all over the planet?

And that still leaves the actual geology -- if the devil did just the bones, then we're back to God lying to us.

Right. Devil stuck with mundane, human-like limitations, or ascribed quite blasphemously and erroneously with omnipotence. No middle ground.

Why didn't the devil just die then, at the end of his ordinary lifespan? How is he still here, albeit, by your leave, restricted to whispering temptations and leaving footprints in the desert after all of these years?

I love how you can alternate between imbuing these biblical characters with superhuman properties, like existing well beyond an ordinary lifespan as documented by biblical chronology, but dismissing out of hand the idea that, even though a being could have lived long enough to carve all those fake dinosaur bones in microscopically accurate detail, he could never have discretely slipped them into a solidifying layer of limestone.

 

[Kulindahr]

Right. Devil stuck with mundane, human-like limitations, or ascribed quite blasphemously and erroneously with omnipotence. No middle ground.

Cute -- you jump on me for making an argument from the things you assigned to the devil, i.e. the ability to physically interact with the world in ways such as leaving footprints.

And BTW, not having omnipotence is not one end of a spectrum from the mundane limitations you set out, so "no middle ground" is a comment that makes no sense.

Why didn't the devil just die then, at the end of his ordinary lifespan? How is he still here, albeit, by your leave, restricted to whispering temptations and leaving footprints in the desert after all of these years?

What "ordinary lifespan"? Or are you deducing somehow from your point that the devil would leave footprints in the sand that he must be mortal?

I love how you can alternate between imbuing these biblical characters with superhuman properties, like existing well beyond an ordinary lifespan as documented by biblical chronology, but dismissing out of hand the idea that, even though a being could have lived long enough to carve all those fake dinosaur bones in microscopically accurate detail, he could never have discretely slipped them into a solidifying layer of limestone.

"Lived long enough to carve all those fake dinosaur bones" -- given that there are billions of bones, just how long would that have taken him? Oops, there goes their young earth notion... again!

"Slipped them into a solidifying layer of limestone" -- again, just what are you ascribing to him? The data (i.e. the Bible) shows the devil as being limited to one location at a time, so to place all those billions and billions of fossils in limestone and other formations, he's going to have to be awfully busy -- and again, their young earth notion falls apart, because the time it will take him to insert and arrange those fossils as they've been found is going to take more than just the few years he'd have by young-earth schemes.

Therein lies the problem, BTW: by the young earth Creationist scenario, the only time for the devil to have done this would be after God said it was all very good and before the moment he showed up in the Garden to start on the project of getting the first parents of humanity kicked out. Under that scheme, that's a very brief period of time -- even if you're talking with one of the variants where they believe that it took the devil thousands up on thousands of years to wear down their resistance and get the chick to pick the fruit, because during that time he's tied up with the tempting gig. He doesn't have gobs of years for slipping those bones into place; by some 'timelines' he doesn't even have a week.

 

[AsianDream]

Right. Devil stuck with mundane, human-like limitations, or ascribed quite blasphemously and erroneously with omnipotence. No middle ground.

Why didn't the devil just die then, at the end of his ordinary lifespan? How is he still here, albeit, by your leave, restricted to whispering temptations and leaving footprints in the desert after all of these years?

I love how you can alternate between imbuing these biblical characters with superhuman properties, like existing well beyond an ordinary lifespan as documented by biblical chronology, but dismissing out of hand the idea that, even though a being could have lived long enough to carve all those fake dinosaur bones in microscopically accurate detail, he could never have discretely slipped them into a solidifying layer of limestone.

There is a simpler explanation - that doesn't need a long debate about the nature and powers of the Devil.

This is the obvious answer that dinosaur bones are the remains of real creatures that once lived (but became extinct 65 million years ago).

One point is that limestone layers don't solidfy quickly like volcanic rock - in fact the time needed for sedimetary rocks to form is also measured in millions of years,

Personally - I think the Devil would have been so busy faking all the other overwhelming evidence for the age of the earth - he'd have had no time to spare on making fake bones.

Plus why did the Devil make so few of these bones that they were only discovered in the last couple of hundred years.

 

[Kulindahr]

There is a simpler explanation - that doesn't need a long debate about the nature and powers of the Devil.

This is the obvious answer that dinosaur bones are the remains of real creatures that once lived (but became extinct 65 million years ago).

One point is that limestone layers don't solidfy quickly like volcanic rock - in fact the time needed for sedimetary rocks to form is also measured in millions of years,

Personally - I think the Devil would have been so busy faking all the other overwhelming evidence for the age of the earth - he'd have had no time to spare on making fake bones.

Plus why did the Devil make so few of these bones that they were only discovered in the last couple of hundred years.

The context here was the view that the bones were put there by the devil. We of course know there's a more intelligent explanation, but the idea was to look at internal inconsistencies with the "The Devil did it!" silliness.

I almost pointed that out about limestone before, can't remember why I didn't. Though with most of the "limestone" formations it isn't true/pure limestone, more a calcaceous slurry that solidified. Still, the crystallization involved in that solidification isn't exactly overnight.

I made the reverse of your point: with billions (and billions) of bones to fake, how did the devil have time to play with crystal deformation, etc. etc. etc.? It just keeps requiring more power ascribed to the devil.

Actually, Aristotle commented on the existence of fossils (I don't remember at all what he had to say). A number of colonial-era explorers did so as well. But they didn't have any overarching paradigm to put them into; they just figured they were the bones of some monster or common animal and didn't worry about it. Only when the theory of evolution hit the scene was there any serious motive for paying attention to them; before, they were mere curiosities.

 

[bankside]

There is a simpler explanation - that doesn't need a long debate about the nature and powers of the Devil.

Of course there is a simpler explanation, however I do not think we should be above applying a little scrutiny to alternative theories.

Kulindahr, I am taking on too much by conflating your positions with the positions of other more fundamentalist strains - not conflating them so much in my own mind as arguing against both versions simultaneously... and the result isn't very satisfactory. I'm sorry for being unclear.

However I will, if you'll pardon the expression, play the Devil's Advocate for a moment and try my best to make the facts fit the literalist version.

My client clearly has a lot of time on his hands. He may not be omnipotent nor omnipresent (though surely he can show up anywhere anytime someone Falls Away, and by analogy to the way Heisenberg can get electrons to apparate in the most peculiar places, he can cover vast distances in ways that to the outsider certainly appear NASCAResque, if not actually divine.)

Anyway, either he doesn't leave footprints and therefore can in some limited way violate the laws of physics, or he does leave footprints and therefore we can be assured that he can interact with the physical world, including exhibit A, the Limestone Slurry.

And while my client is riding around in a mash-up of

• Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,
• these things my learnèd friends at the Bob Jones University Department of Particle Metaphysics call "Sin Quarks,"
• and something that looks like a diabolical version of Santa's Sleigh,

let us not forget the other trick he stole from the Jolly Old Elf: Slave Labour.

And when I say stole, I mean "was inspired by" and not in any other actionable or patentable sense.

Yes, my client, hosting as he is a bunch of tortured souls at his facility, offers a reparative justice program, whereby those on good behaviour are permitted to work in my client's Bone Simulation Workshop. There they endlessly toil their way toward privileges for good behaviour, such as credits at Danté's Canteen, or the right to watch one half hour of Fox News.

My client can clearly either interact physically with the material world over a protracted (but not exceeding 6000 year) timeframe, or he can violate at least some laws of physics. He has the human resources to deliver a high volume of [STRIKE]fake[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]knock-off[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]reproduction[/STRIKE] authentic simulated dinosaur bones. And he has the motive.

I urge this court to find him guilty as charged. In fact my client insists on being guilty. If you ask me he should see a therapist, but I'm merely a court-appointed attorney and I don't want to open that particular can of wurms.

So to sum up, the Literalists, as crazy as it may seem, have made an internally coherent case which doesn't really contradict the Bible inasmuch as these details are one of the many great number of things the Bible just doesn't comment on.

 

[Kulindahr]

Of course there is a simpler explanation, however I do not think we should be above applying a little scrutiny to alternative theories.

Kulindahr, I am taking on too much by conflating your positions with the positions of other more fundamentalist strains - not conflating them so much in my own mind as arguing against both versions simultaneously... and the result isn't very satisfactory. I'm sorry for being unclear.

However I will, if you'll pardon the expression, play the Devil's Advocate for a moment and try my best to make the facts fit the literalist version.

My client clearly has a lot of time on his hands. He may not be omnipotent nor omnipresent (though surely he can show up anywhere anytime someone Falls Away, and by analogy to the way Heisenberg can get electrons to apparate in the most peculiar places, he can cover vast distances in ways that to the outsider certainly appear NASCAResque, if not actually divine.)

Anyway, either he doesn't leave footprints and therefore can in some limited way violate the laws of physics, or he does leave footprints and therefore we can be assured that he can interact with the physical world, including exhibit A, the Limestone Slurry.

And while my client is riding around in a mash-up of

• Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,
• these things my learnèd friends at the Bob Jones University Department of Particle Metaphysics call "Sin Quarks,"
• and something that looks like a diabolical version of Santa's Sleigh,

let us not forget the other trick he stole from the Jolly Old Elf: Slave Labour.

And when I say stole, I mean "was inspired by" and not in any other actionable or patentable sense.

Yes, my client, hosting as he is a bunch of tortured souls at his facility, offers a reparative justice program, whereby those on good behaviour are permitted to work in my client's Bone Simulation Workshop. There they endlessly toil their way toward privileges for good behaviour, such as credits at Danté's Canteen, or the right to watch one half hour of Fox News.

My client can clearly either interact physically with the material world over a protracted (but not exceeding 6000 year) timeframe, or he can violate at least some laws of physics. He has the human resources to deliver a high volume of [STRIKE]fake[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]knock-off[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]reproduction[/STRIKE] authentic simulated dinosaur bones. And he has the motive.

I urge this court to find him guilty as charged. In fact my client insists on being guilty. If you ask me he should see a therapist, but I'm merely a court-appointed attorney and I don't want to open that particular can of wurms.

So to sum up, the Literalists, as crazy as it may seem, have made an internally coherent case which doesn't really contradict the Bible inasmuch as these details are one of the many great number of things the Bible just doesn't comment on.

If we're going to posit demon factories turning out bones, I suppose he could manufacture enough. Since there were only a handful of humans around at the time, he wouldn't have needed to use them as tempters, so I'll grant the labor force.

I'll even grant the power of translocation to him, since I can construct a mathematical explanation for it, given his non-earthly origin. That makes the "bone hypothesis" (as opposed to "bone-headed") stand. But he's still got the problem of putting those bones into formations that by all modern science are millions of years old. Are we now going to posit that he can locally affect the flow of time, or change the magnetic orientation of molecules in solid rock, or almost any number of other things?

I see the real problem here as being one of God's faithfulness, of which the Bible makes a big point: if God allowed the devil to run amok on his earth fabricating evidence for lies no one would recognize until milennia later, how can He be considered faithful, when the result is that His very (remodeled) creation lies to us?

If it weren't for the age of the layers in which the bones are found, the rest wouldn't be a problem, because the grammar of the first few verses of Genesis don't indicate how much time passed between the various steps. If they're sticking to a 6k-year old earth, though, they have to posit that the devil wasn't just sticking bones in, but manipulating the whole bloody planet on the molecular level.

 

[bankside]

Not even one comment on the Sin Quarks? I thought that was pretty entertaining.

So god's faithfulness entails allowing evil to be unleashed writ large (presumably it was he who invented both the serpent and the concept of temptation itself), but not a specific deception like permitting a motivated evil spirit to confound archæologists with false evidence... hmmm....

 

[Kulindahr]

Not even one comment on the Sin Quarks? I thought that was pretty entertaining.

I thought it too bizarre to grab hold on.
But they're in serious error there; if sin has a manifestation which interacts with physical reality, it has to be more subtle than quarks, the behavior of which can be statistically described. If I were to play that game, I'd say that the presence of sin has introduced an element of instability in the wave equation for the universe.

So god's faithfulness entails allowing evil to be unleashed writ large (presumably it was he who invented both the serpent and the concept of temptation itself), but not a specific deception like permitting a motivated evil spirit to confound archæologists with false evidence... hmmm....

With the serpent, it was one particular actor doing one particular thing, in a personal manner. Permitting billions, even trillions of interventions of a non-personal nature in a way that totally misrepresents the nature of Creation doesn't fit -- especially in light of the declarations of the Psalmist, prophets, and a certain Apostle that Creation tells us about God.

Of course for me the basic problem is that they're bastardizing the Genesis 1 account to begin with, because it was not written to be taken as a literal play-by-play type account -- it's a royal chronicle, which is a sort of literature pretty much alien to us; while it has literal elements, it is not meant to be literal as a whole; while it has poetic aspects, it isn't merely symbolic; while it has apparent temporal elements, it is not meant to convey a chronological schedule.

This is what happens when people base doctrine on a translation without ever bothering to study the original languages, culture, etc. It's why there are so many denominations and sects in the U.S. And it's why my Hebrew professor told us to regard the front of the Biblia Hebraica as having this warning on the cover: Abandon all preconceptions, ye who enter herein.

 

[miatajim]

4.5 billion give or take. Was lucky to get enough brain cells to get past my RC up bringing (not that it was the stick or any thing).

 

[AsianDream]

it's a royal chronicle, which is a sort of literature pretty much alien to us; while it has literal elements, it is not meant to be literal as a whole; while it has poetic aspects, it isn't merely symbolic; while it has apparent temporal elements, it is not meant to convey a chronological schedule.

In terms of the age of the Earth - The content of ancient writings can have no relevance - at the time these were written people simply did not have the knowledge to make any realistic evaluation of the age of the earth.

One scientific idea which (at the time) raised serious doubts about Darwin's theory of evolution was that the Sun could not possibly burn for more than a few million years - while Evolution required at least hundreds of millions of years to work.

The 19th century "scientific" limit to the life of the Sum was based on the assumtion that this was made of burning Coal (or similar chemical reactions) - which calculations showed - simply wouldn't produce enough enery for the sun to last for very long.

It was only during the 20th Century that the energy source (nuclear fusion) of the Sun was discovered - and peole realised it had been burning for around 5 billion years so far and would burn for about another 5 billion years.

 

[Kulindahr]

In terms of the age of the Earth - The content of ancient writings can have no relevance - at the time these were written people simply did not have the knowledge to make any realistic evaluation of the age of the earth.

But the point is that people are making such claims for them. Refuting that by science is irrelevant, due to the nature of the documents. The answer to these idiots is that if you understand what kind of literature the documents are, they're not making any claims about the age of the earth, solar system, or universe, whatsoever.

When you get right down to it, young-earth creationism is, in proper Christian terms, a heresy.

One scientific idea which (at the time) raised serious doubts about Darwin's theory of evolution was that the Sun could not possibly burn for more than a few million years - while Evolution required at least hundreds of millions of years to work.

The 19th century "scientific" limit to the life of the Sum was based on the assumtion that this was made of burning Coal (or similar chemical reactions) - which calculations showed - simply wouldn't produce enough enery for the sun to last for very long.

It was only during the 20th Century that the energy source (nuclear fusion) of the Sun was discovered - and peole realised it had been burning for around 5 billion years so far and would burn for about another 5 billion years.

You're assuming that the current model is correct, of course. Aren't they still trying to figure out if the neutrino count is right?

 

[AsianDream]

You're assuming that the current model is correct, of course. Aren't they still trying to figure out if the neutrino count is right?

I'm not assuming that the current model is correct - just that the margin for error in this is now quite small.

Just as Newton's theory of gravity was not the whole picture - but is accurate enough if you're not moving near the speed of light - or don;t need to calculate the motion of planets to within a few meters.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

4.6 bn years. Until they PROVE anything else and religious convictions alone are no PROOF of anything.

 

[Slaveboy]

First, stars being able to shine their light from millions of light years away, means it took millions of years for people to see those shines. It's clearly not 6,000 years old as believed by people that don't understand how to date things. If we didn't understand that stars weren't just little lighting balls stuck in the sky, we'd still believe it's 6,000 years old.

 

[Kulindahr]

First, stars being able to shine their light from millions of light years away, means it took millions of years for people to see those shines. It's clearly not 6,000 years old as believed by people that don't understand how to date things. If we didn't understand that stars weren't just little lighting balls stuck in the sky, we'd still believe it's 6,000 years old.

I wouldn't. Basic rock data such as crystal deformation alone pushed the date back a hundred times that and more.

 

[bulge]

I don't know. I only know it wasn't ejaculated by a god, which is quite unfortunate, but since god doesn't exist it is not possible he wanked some time of his eternity and then all of a sudden ejaculated the earth. But I like that god existence story as in that case he must have wanked and ejacted. Great story. Since they told me that god existence story, each time I see a guy wanking, I see him as god creating universe.

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't know. I only know it wasn't ejaculated by a god, which is quite unfortunate, but since god doesn't exist it is not possible he wanked some time of his eternity and then all of a sudden ejaculated the earth. But I like that god existence story as in that case he must have wanked and ejacted. Great story. Since they told me that god existence story, each time I see a guy wanking, I see him as god creating universe.

Where the heck did you hear that one?!