Re: YEC refutation

On 6/14/05, Sheila Wilson <sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> 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.
>

I don't know if you can prove Biblically that the earth is old, but by
consideration of bits of the New Testament, one can see that it warns
clearly against the dangers of excessive literalism.

When Nicodemus asks whether a man can re-enter his mother's womb and be
"born again" (John 3:4) it is clear that he is getting the wrong end of the
stick by making an excessively literal interpretation of Jesus' words. And I
think this is relevant to the YEC position - the being reborn from a state
of spiritual death is surely the reversal of the effects of the Fall.
Likewise, when Jesus says in John 3:16 "shall not perish", he doesn't mean
physically die because plainly we all still physically die. It is made more
explicit still in Ephesians 2:4-5 "God ... made us alive in Christ when we
were dead in transgressions".

I think the above verses seriously undermine the YEC notion that there was
no physical death before the fall (which must logically lead to a young
earth position). To hold to such a position, it seems to me, is to fall as
wide of the mark as Nicodemus did.

I would like to add that for a while in my life (during a difficult time
when I was excessively worried about my PhD studies), I was tempted towards
the YEC position, and even would have hotly proclaimed myself as a YEC. But
it was during a long evening walk that the Nicodemus passage came to me,and
this began to be the turning point. So it was the New Testament (and a
pretty well-known bit from it) that was my turning point, not science.

Iain

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

-- 
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There are 3 types of people in the world.
Those who can count and those who can't.
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