Re: YEC refutation

Burgy,

I like the idea. My experience with people and your conclusion #7 below is that people are more likely to believe God made the world look old than they are to believe that the earth is old. The dilemma is that people like Ham are presenting a black and white problem: you either believe the Bible, that the earth is young, or you don't. When you don't, you are not a Christian or you are horribly deceived.
 
The best option, therefore, would be to prove Biblically that the earth is old.
 
Sheila
 

Carol or John Burgeson <burgytwo@juno.com> wrote:
I've been thinking (a painful process) more about the YEC claims in my
last post.

The problem is -- the typical person has no way to evaluate them. To him
(or her) it comes down to two opposing "scientific" viewpoints. One has
the appearance of being biblically supported. No contest.

Is there ONE argument that can be used to show clearly and convincingly
to a nonscientific person that the earth really really is much older than
a few thousand years?

Something that can be looked up -- verified?

One such argument goes something like this:

1. Almanacs give data on coal and oil production over the past -- say --
100 years.

2. This is business data. It is verifiable. Factual. No arguments
possible.

3. All coal and oil deposits ever found and analyzed show that they
originate with organic (pre-living) plants and animals. No exceptions.

4. There is a way to measure the biomass that produced these deposits.

5. There is too much biomass to have been produced in only a few thousand
years.

6. Therefore (1) either God produced the deposits and made them look like
biomass had produced them, or (2) many more years than a few thousand
took place to produce them.

7. Since (1) is sort of flaky (like the Gosse theory), (2) must be true.

8. Therefore the earth is much more than a few thousand years old.

Comments? I tried once to quantify the above argument; it seemed
reasonable at the time.

Burgy

2.9979 x 10**8 m/s, is not just a good idea, it's the law.

Sheila McGinty Wilson
sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net
Received on Tue Jun 14 12:11:09 2005