extra terrestrial life forms [Archive]

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 02:51 AM

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However other things like unicorns (well, maybe) and PI being 3 (definitely) we know aren't true.

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How can we know?

What is being described are animals that are no doubt extinct. How can we prove they never existed?

Without dinosaur fossils you would be laughed off stage if you said giant reptiles existed at one time.

The truth is we don't completely what these animals were.

We are going by the eye witness accounts.

First of all God is the one talking about Behemoth here.

I'm not about to call God a bad eye witness or liar!LOL

 1 Moreover the LORD answered Job, and said,

2 Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it.

3 Then Job answered the LORD, and said,

4 Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.

5 Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.

6 Then answered the LORD unto Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

7 Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.

8 Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?

9 Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?

10 Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

11 Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

12 Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

13 Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.

14 Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.

15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.

16 Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.

17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.

18 His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.

19 He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.

20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play.

21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens.

22 The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.

23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.

24 He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.


"chief of the ways of God". Literally that means the biggest animal God made!

The behemoth were not afraid of anything. They did not need to be; they were huge. Behemoth tails were so long and strong that God compared them to cedars--one of the largest and most spectacular trees of the ancient world.

http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/dino-behemoth.jpg

http://www.drdino.com/img/products/738.jpg

The "leviathan" the Bible talks about in Job 41 is described as the greatest creature in the sea. Unlike a crocodile or fish, it was useless to try to catch a leviathan with hooks, harpoons or anything else. "Nothing on earth is his equal--a creature without fear" (Job 41:33, NIV

http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/dino-leviathan.jpg

Psalm 194:"26 There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein."

 1 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

2 Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?

3 Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?

4 Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?

5 Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?

6 Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?

7 Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?

8 Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.

9 Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?

10 None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?

11 Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.

12 I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion.

13 Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him with his double bridle?

14 Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.

15 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.

16 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.

17 They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.

18 By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.

20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.

21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.

22 In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.

23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.

24 His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

25 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.

26 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.

27 He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

28 The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.

29 Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.

30 Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire.

31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.

32 He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.

33 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.

34 He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.


Before anyone tries to say that something in the bible isn't true first of all, let God be true and every man a liar!

 3 For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?

4 God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.



Let's look at all the evidence before we say that modern science shows errors in the bible.

I have probably heard of anything you will put in this post and feel confident I can show you the bible is true and God can be trusted before fauly science.

 20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:

realjones

05-06-2003, 03:04 AM

i take unicorn to mean unicorn a horse with a horn coming out of its head because that is what the Simpsons said showed it as in the garden of eden episode /forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif

I definitely see how a unicorn could represent other things, as it all comes down to what words the translators chose (like the four corners thing). The translators should have picked a better word to describe those extinct animals /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Venom

05-06-2003, 03:08 AM

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There's also something about a tree growing so high that everyone on earth could see it (i forget where that is though). The bible has all sort on scientific assumptions in it that we now know are not correct. In other words, it's a reflection of the scientific knowledge that was known at the time of its writing.

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What you aren't understanding is how to read the bible Real Jones. Here is a great link, can you take the bible literally? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1231.asp)

Point in case, your view on Daniel:

Daniel 4:4-18
4 I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in mine house, and flourishing in my palace: 5 I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head troubled me. 6 Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream. 7 Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers: and I told the dream before them; but they did not make known unto me the interpretation thereof. 8 But at the last Daniel came in before me, whose name was Belteshazzar, according to the name of my god, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods: and before him I told the dream, saying, 9 O Belteshazzar, master of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in thee, and no secret troubleth thee, tell me the visions of my dream that I have seen, and the interpretation thereof. 10 Thus were the visions of mine head in my bed; I saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great. 11 The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth: 12 The leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all: the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed of it. 13 I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven; 14 He cried aloud, and said thus, Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit: let the beasts get away from under it, and the fowls from his branches: 15 Nevertheless leave the stump of his roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth: 16 Let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart be given unto him; and let seven times pass over him. 17 This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men. 18 This dream I king Nebuchadnezzar have seen. Now thou, O Belteshazzar, declare the interpretation thereof, forasmuch as all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known unto me the interpretation: but thou art able; for the spirit of the holy gods is in thee.

This was a dream, and a parable as God gave to innumerable people and kings. Now lets move on to the interpretation of it:

Daniel 4:4-18
19 Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was astonied for one hour, and his thoughts troubled him. The king spake, and said, Belteshazzar, let not the dream, or the interpretation thereof, trouble thee. Belteshazzar answered and said, My lord, the dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpretation thereof to thine enemies. 20 The tree that thou sawest, which grew, and was strong, whose height reached unto the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth; 21 Whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the fowls of the heaven had their habitation: 22 It is thou, O king, that art grown and become strong: for thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth. 23 And whereas the king saw a watcher and an holy one coming down from heaven, and saying, Hew the tree down, and destroy it; yet leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him; 24 This is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the most High, which is come upon my lord the king: 25 That they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. 26 And whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the tree roots; thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule. 27 Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity.

See, it's not that hard bro. Lets look at the end.

Daniel 4:28-37
28 All this came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar. 29 At the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. 30 The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? 31 While the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; The kingdom is departed from thee. 32 And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. 33 The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.
34 And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: 35 And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? 36 At the same time my reason returned unto me; and for the glory of my kingdom, mine honour and brightness returned unto me; and my counsellors and my lords sought unto me; and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added unto me. 37 Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.

This goes back to the subject we discussed a couple of days back, the most high rules and does as he pleases. /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif This is what Nebuchadnezzar learned. Very important lesson.

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and PI being 3 (definitely) we know aren't true.

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What's PI being 3?

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I don't believe the bible ever mentioned the Aztecs, but that doesn't mean they never existed.

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We never said the bible discussed everything and every bit of science or geography. But when it does discuss such things, its accurate. /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif That's why this person asked.

realjones

05-06-2003, 03:25 AM

that's the thing about the Bible I don't like. If you don't take it literally you can have it mean basically whatever you want.

Like i said the thing with Daniel was just something I vaguely remembered anyway.

pi being 3 refers the to the biblical value of pi being 3 not 3.14. However i've heard the argument about the added brim before so you don't have to bother with that /forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif It's just another matter of how you interpret the scripture. Their methods of measuring are close enough for my satisfaction.

Venom

05-06-2003, 03:38 AM

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that's the thing about the Bible I don't like. If you don't take it literally you can have it mean basically whatever you want.

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Really RJ if you study it, you'll see it gives the answers within them. Scripture is not open to private interpretation, so that's not an option. But again, we do take it literally; just when it says, "this is a dream" we take it as a dream and wait for them to give us the "literal" interpretation. /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

If you rightly divide it, and interpret scripture with what scripture says you will see clearly its not that way and have no reason to be ashamed like the other Christians on this site are not. Again going back to Daniel, if you take one part of the verse and privately interpret it, it's confusing. But read the whole thing and it ends up answering its self. /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif Just try and take that approach and you will get much more out of it. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

John D.

05-06-2003, 06:02 AM

First, what I am going to say probably won't make any of the members that are Christians happy, but I'll try to say this with the up most respect.

I'll be upfront and say that I believe in evolution and that there are aliens. Anyone that doesn't believe in evolution only needs to look at the common cold and how it changes as it's enviroment changes. This can also be seen in many other organisms on this planet. Does that mean god doesn't exist? Not really, how do we know that God made this process to begin with. Afterall, the bible doesn't really go in strong detail on how God actually made planets, life, and other things.

As far as aliens, we have to realize that we have only been looking and listening to only 5% of sky. That's 95% we are missing or more! There could be a lot we are missing and that must be taken into account. At any rate, I think if these aliens were inteligent then they stay the hell away from Earth. Just look how we deal with people with a different skin color or religion, now imagine the reaction the world would give to an alien! Not very kind, I can tell you that.

I feel I also should point out that mathematically speaking there is a good chance there is another planet out there in one of a trilion galacies with the same potential for life as our Earth. At least for carbon based creatures. Who knows what a silicon based life form could develop in.

Finally, there is a group of people that do strongly believe in alien and even believe they are coming soon (hmm sounds familure). Here is there website, but I strongly caution those that strong belieave in their religion to not go here. You'll either fall out of your chair from laughter or put your fist though the screen. We don't need broken arms when we are trying to reach our max bench press.

www.zetatalk.com (http://www.zetatalk.com)

sickbikes

05-06-2003, 08:52 AM

First of all, the Bible does say how God created the planets,animals, and mankind.Let me suggest a link for you to check out: www.Answersradio.org (http://www.Answersradio.org)
The answers to all our creation or evolution questions are found in the book of Genesis. Again, it all comes down to faith in God's word.

MMouse

05-06-2003, 11:51 AM

I just wanted to throw a thought in here. The classic argument against the existence of God is that of evolution. There is undoubtably evidence of organsisms changing, such as viruses etc. However, why is it always assumed that this means God did not create it. Could God not create an ever changing and developing earth, where the creatures adapt to their needs and surroundings?

sickbikes

05-06-2003, 01:13 PM

Absolutely _ and He did!But the only things that evolved from single cell organisms is other single cell organisms.

President Wilson

05-06-2003, 02:04 PM

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This can also be seen in many other organisms on this planet.

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What evidence do you have of any animal turning into another kind of animal?

There are three meanings to evolution( actually more but we will stick here ). The first is religous, and faith based. This is called organic evolution, and states that all life has descended from a rock( spontaneous generation ). This of course is a bankrupt concept. And experiment upon experiment have proven it wrong.

The second is information gaining macroevolution. Because there is no evidence for any kind of animal turning into another kind of animal. This is also faith based.

The third is scriptual, and says that animals will bring forth after their own kind. A dog, will always bring forth a dog and a rabbit, will always bring forth a rabbit. There is no evidence to the contrary. After the fall, all we see is degeneration, in the form of microevolution. This is scriptual. But, it is based on already existing
" information. " There is no evidence for anything that has ever increased genetic information.

http://www.drdino.com/images/micromacro.gif

k2fender

05-06-2003, 02:19 PM

The Bible does not say anything about extra terrestrials. Though it does talk about "aliens," but in the Bible it means foreigners.
No, i do not believe that there are extra terrestrial life forms. There is no possible way something could live on another planet. I believe that God would have told us through the Bible if their were. He told us about everything else He created. Why not extra terrestrials?

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 02:34 PM

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i take unicorn to mean unicorn a horse with a horn coming out of its head because that is what the Simpsons said showed it as in the garden of eden episode

I definitely see how a unicorn could represent other things, as it all comes down to what words the translators chose (like the four corners thing). The translators should have picked a better word to describe those extinct animals

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Herein lies the problem. That is modern man's rendition of a unicorn. As I said unicorn means, "one horn". A modern example could easily be a rhinocerous.

The Simpsons attempt at mockery shows the writers ignorance of scripture.

For example, the bible calls whales, fish. The bible called anything living in the sea, a fish. By today's classification we call whales mammals. Does that mean the bible was wrong? No it just means they classified things differently then. Same with unicorn. We have popularized a horse galloping on a rainbow, with a magic horn. THe writers interperted it exactly how the book of numbers described it , "an fast animal with one horn". Nothing more or less.

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First, what I am going to say probably won't make any of the members that are Christians happy, but I'll try to say this with the up most respect.

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No offense taken. Anyone can express their opinion on these boards. We are all willing to hear others impressions.

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Anyone that doesn't believe in evolution only needs to look at the common cold and how it changes as it's enviroment changes. This can also be seen in many other organisms on this planet.

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I think we need to clarify something though. The word evolution is a bit decitful because that word has many different meaning.

#1 COSMIC: From the theorized Big Bang of (estimated) 14-20 billion years ago to the (evolution or) generation of hydrogen gas into existence.

#2 CHEMICAL: Gases (beyond hydrogen) and other higher elements evolving into existence. In other words, increasing molecular & chemical order and complexity over time happening by itself.

#3 STAR & PLANETS: Gravity, angular momentum, magnetism, radiation, and other "accidentally existing" forces coalesce (or evolve) the molecules (from above) that evolved into existence all by themselves into subsequent proto-stars, then later (over lots and lots of theorized time; billions of years) into stars and planetary bodies.

#4 ORGANIC EVOLUTION: Life emerging from sterile non-life by believed automatic advanced chemical processes. This has also been called spontaneous generation or more recently abiogenesis. Life from non-life; again, all by itself; increasing complexity and at some point in time - generating successive replication all by itself. Scientists today are using tax dollars to employ advanced, state-of-the-art equipment under expensive, carefully controlled high-technology laboratory conditions but this still hasn't succeeded in any way yet ... trying so hard ... all to show that life could happen accidentally, without much intelligence. (That being the case indeed.)

Which is the main contention with us as Christians. Evolutionists can much more easily believe in aliens than we as Christians. For the simple fact that evolutionists believe life came from non-life. A contention I will never adhere too. Which is why I said, if there is other life, God would have had to create it. But he makes no mention of it, and made it clear the earth is the focus of his intention. And that the stars were made for determining the signs of the seasons. No mention is made of alien life anywhere else.

It all comes down to your world view. Did the complex life forms we all see, come from non-life? If you believe so, then extraterrestrial life is much more plausible.

Now, we'll get to your example.

#5 MACRO-EVOLUTION: Kinds of life diverging and occasionally increasing in complexity through random processes down through time. The theory is that single-celled creatures gave rise to (possibly) multi-cellular marine organisms. Later fish evolved into amphibians, and then into reptiles which (possibly diverged and) evolved into the birds and mammals. Over the theorized millions of years the divergent complexity of life in nature has (apparently) increased in order, numbers and magnitude. Many of today's textbooks show lots of artistic illustrations of such beliefs.

For example, Darwin stated that all life forms, plant and animal can all be traced back to a common ancestor. In other words, bannanas and people are related.

You are no more valuable than a sea slug. Just a little higher on the chain.

#6 MICRO-EVOLUTION: Structured changes within pre-existing kinds of life. Heredity & Variation. This one is scientific and is observable in nature.

An example would be, natural selection(which by the way creation scientists came up with first /forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif ), which I totally agree happens, and we can both site thousands if not millions of examples of.

God made natural selection so that animals could survive in any given environment. Commonly called micro evolution, which should really just be called variation.

For example, northern rabbits can breed with Minnesota rabbits. And Minnesota rabbits can breed with Florida rabbits. But the extremes on both ends can not breed with one another. We see they have vaired so much that they can no longer interbreed. But they're still rabbits! They are both in the shallow end of the gene pool!

However what do we have here....

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Anyone that doesn't believe in evolution only needs to look at the common cold and how it changes as it's enviroment changes

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is a virus, changing in it's environment. My problem is that it is still a virus. It hasn't changed into anything else! And it hasn't gained any new information, it's adapted to its environment. That's natural selection, not the gaining of new genetic information(evolution).

For example let's say I work on an assembly line that produces skate boards. Now my crew and I have super vision. We catch 100% of all mistakes that come down the line. How long will it take that skateboard to turn into a helicopter? It will never happen. The information to build a helicopter does not come about from catching mistakes. Natural selection is not a mechanism for evolution.

What evolutionist do here is called "bait and switch". In other words they show thousands of examples of micro evolution and attempt to get people to take a huge leap of faith in logic to assume that somehow proves macro evolution!

Micro evolution is ALL that has been observed. No one has ever observed one type of animal changing into another type of animal! Which is exactly what the bible says!

 19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.

20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.


 38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.



We've seen information loss in the genetic code(which is the opposite of evolution), but we've never seen new information added. For example, dinosaurs evolving wings. This would require vast amounts of new information in the genetic structure. Something that is totally faith based. Which in my view takes more faith than believing in God.

Palmetto State Dude

05-06-2003, 02:36 PM

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Venom said:
Scripture is not open to private interpretation, so that's not an option. But again, we do take it literally...

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I would argue that the people who first translated the bible from Hebrew privately interpreted scripture...

The bible also said that all the stars revolve around the earth. I recall a great thinker, uh Galileo, who spent the final years of his life in solitary confinement for providing evidence against that... and who put him there? The Catholic church, that's who. So, does the literal interpretation of the bible always, always, always fit reality? Obviously not.

As far as aliens, I think it's highly arrogant of us human beings to actually profess that we KNOW there are no other life forms. I'd say that it's highly unlikely that there AREN'T extraterrestrials.

As far as evolution, I suggest anti-evolutionists take a paleobiology class (as I have), and you'll find overwhelming proof that it is a viable theory. Now, the mechanism, to me, is a bit harder to define. As I've said before, to me, evolution is God's way of being creative, he's got all of eternity, why not have fun with it. So, that way, the theory of evolution and God don't contradict each other.:)

Also, there's just too much natural beauty in the world for there not to be an Intelligent Designer.

Just my $0.02

President Wilson

05-06-2003, 02:40 PM

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For example let's say I work on an assembly line that produces skate boards. Now my crew and I have super vision. We catch 100% of all mistakes that come down the line. How long will it take that skateboard to turn into a helicopter? It will never happen. The information to build a helicopter does not come about from catching mistakes. Natural selection is not a mechanism for evolution.

What evolutionist do here is called "bait and switch". In other words they show thousands of examples of micro evolution and attempt to get people to take a huge leap of faith in logic to assume that somehow proves macro evolution!

Micro evolution is ALL that has been observed. No one has ever observed one type of animal changing into another type of animal! Which is exactly what the bible says!

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This is an excellent point. Especially on the skate board.

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 02:56 PM

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I would argue that the people who first translated the bible from Hebrew privately interpreted scripture...

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And you will find that even today the most accredited Rabbis will acknowldege the insane accuracy of the King James Vesion's translation.

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The bible also said that all the stars revolve around the earth.

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Please elaborate...

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I recall a great thinker, uh Galileo, who spent the final years of his life in solitary confinement for providing evidence against that... and who put him there? The Catholic church, that's who. So, does the literal interpretation of the bible always, always, always fit reality? Obviously not.

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Creationists are often accused (by Christians opposed to their view) of making the same mistake as the Roman Catholic Church did at the time of Galileo. Then, the institutional Church insisted that the Bible taught that the sun went around the Earth. After it was shown by Galileo that the opposite was true, believers found that they could comfortably accommodate this new fact, without any problem to their belief in the Bible. However, the historical events surrounding Galileo should be a warning to theistic evolutionists and long-agers, not to the Genesis creation movement.

They church picked out a few verses from the Bible which they thought said that the sun moved around the Earth, but they failed to realize that Bible texts must be understood in terms of what the author intended to convey. Thus, when Moses wrote of the "risen" sun (Genesis 19:23) and sun "set"(Genesis 28:4), his purpose was not to formulate an astronomical dictum. Rather he, by God's spirit, was using the language of appearance so that his readers would easily understand what time of day he was talking about. And it is perfectly valid in physics to describe motion relative to the most convenient reference frame, which in this case is the earth.

This plain meaning (the time of day) is perfectly satisfied by the language of appearance and does not demand the secondary deduction that it is the sun itself which moves. Indeed, this is exactly the same thing that scientists do today in weather reports when they give the times of "sunrise" and "sunset". They are using the language of appearance, and using the earth as the reference frame. A convenient figure of speech does not invalidate science; nor does it invalidate the Bible.

Likewise verses such as Psalm 19:6 and 93:1, which the writer(s) clearly meant to be poetic expressions, were given a literal meaning.

This is an interesting "twist" on the Galileo situation. Back then, the Church leaders said that Bible verses which were written in poetic format and meant to be poetry should be taken literally; today they are saying that Bible passages which were written as prose and meant to be literal history should be taken as poetry!

No, creationists are not making the same mistake as the the Church did in the 17th century, i.e. claiming that the Bible says something which is contrary to fact. But the Church, by and large, still is! The Church has not learnt the lesson of history and still insists on taking a popular world view as its authority, instead of upholding the Bible and allowing it to be its own interpreter.

Thus the lesson from Galileo is not that the Church should not oppose the theory of evolution, but rather that it should, because science has not proven evolution; rather evolution is contrary to proven science and opposes the plain Word of God.

[ QUOTE ]
As far as evolution, I suggest anti-evolutionists take a paleobiology class (as I have),

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Prehistoric biology begins with the assumption of long ages. Which we have opposing views on. This would compelety alter the way I observe nature. Taking a class like that would assume your ideology of long ages.

This is the first assumption it is based on. And one I would consider faulty from the get go.

President Wilson

05-06-2003, 03:06 PM

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and you'll find overwhelming proof that it is a viable theory.

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What is your absolute best evidence for macroevolution, or organic evolution. If it is overwelming, I would be obligued to see such proofs

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 03:10 PM

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So, that way, the theory of evolution and God don't contradict each other.:)

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 'In six days, the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is' (Exodus 20:11). 

The Bible says there was no sin or death until man brought them into the world.

Evolution is fueled by death.

 12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:


Man brought sin into the world.There was no death before sin.

Palmetto State Dude

05-06-2003, 03:17 PM

Whhhaaassssaaahhh, Old School!! I knew I would elicit a response from you /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Yes, as we've discussed at length, our views on evolution, as well as the age of the earth are opposing, I still respect incredibly your tenacity in your beliefs. And I followed your points on Galileo, and agree to an extent. But it appears to me that you basically said that people over many, many years have continously interpreted and reinterpreted the bible and twisted the words to fit the beliefs of that era and what science has revealed over time.

I'm confused, is there poetry in the bible, or are we to take every word at face value? If so, which parts are poetry and which are literal? And who decided that, since there's no authors around anymore to tell us? And how do you get all the millions of Christians to know which is which, without adding their interpretaion/perception of what is written? I hope I'm making sense /forum/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Palmetto State Dude

05-06-2003, 03:30 PM

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OldSchool said:

The Bible says there was no sin or death until man brought them into the world.

Evolution is fueled by death.

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OldSchool said:Man brought sin into the world.There was no death before sin.

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Excellent point. But you know my stance on the literality of Genesis. I can only say that I interpret that verse as the author's emphasis of the effects of the sins of man on earth. By saying that the sins of man caused death, (which is about the worst thing that can happen to a person), the author creates a detterent to sinning, doesn't he?

Palmetto State Dude

05-06-2003, 03:56 PM

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President Wilson said:
What is your absolute best evidence for macroevolution, or organic evolution. If it is overwelming, I would be obligued to see such proofs

[/ QUOTE ]

Now, you know that I know that you know that I know that any evidence I could possibly provide would be viewed by you as completely circumstantial, and technically it is, since we have not physically seen with our own eyeballs that macroevolution happens. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif However, though there is no proverbial "proof in the pudding", there's more evidence supporting macroevolution than not. There's no other better explanation, in my opinion. I just can't accept that all the birds, mammals, insects (even the ones in the Amazon that haven't even been discovered yet?), fish, etc. were created in one 24-hour day only a few thousand years ago. And then they ALL got on the ark? And you accept that as devoutly as some accept evolution, natural selection, allopatric speciation, etc., with no proof except what a book written 2000 years ago says (no offense).

Venom

05-06-2003, 04:14 PM

[ QUOTE ]
. But it appears to me that you basically said that people over many, many years have continously interpreted and reinterpreted the bible and twisted the words to fit the beliefs of that era and what science has revealed over time.

[/ QUOTE ]

People have misinterpreted, and mocked scripture for centuries. That doesn't change what it says though. It tells us very clearly when God created the earth, the only way to change this is taking an outward approach, and reading the bible through the eyes of science "falsely" so called and privately interpreting it. It does not change the truth of the scriptures though.

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The only constant is change.

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This is from your signature, might want to update it:

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Hebrews 13:8
8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

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I'm confused, is there poetry in the bible, or are we to take every word at face value? If so, which parts are poetry and which are literal?

[/ QUOTE ]
It will be very clear. Look at the above example from Daniel. Its not one bit confusing. If you cant understand it:
1. Leave an outside bias behind and say this, "let God be true and every man a liar."
2. Pray that God gives you wisdom and understanding.
3. Ask for his spirit to guide you.
4. If you still don't understand, than post it on the boards and we'll clear it up. /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ QUOTE ]
since there's no authors around anymore to tell us? And how do you get all the millions of Christians to know which is which, without adding their interpretaion/perception of what is written?

[/ QUOTE ]

First, the "author" not "authors" is still around and with us to this day:

2 Timothy 3:10-17
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God
2 Peter 1:19-21
20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. 21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost gave us scripture, and used man to write it. This is why it's called the Word of God. /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Second, as peter said scripture is not open to private interpretation. This means that scripture answers scripture. Take the answer scripture gives, if you don't understand a portion, keep studying and you'll find it. And again if you still cant, post it and we will.

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with no proof except what a book written 2000 years ago says (no offense).

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is some information from JW, about the accuracy of the bible.

In fact, Iv'e address this, and I will be certainly glad to show you the response.

1. They are composed of eye witness accounts to Jesus Christ. By several eye witnesses to Christ.

2. When were these 25 books of eye witness accounts composed?

The Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke were each written within 20 years after Christs death. Dr. John A. T. Robinson states that the Gospel of Matthew was written as early as A.D. 40, within eight years of Christ.

Dr. Hiebert, Dr. Harrison, and Dr. Harnak, Dr. T.W. Manson all date Pauls letters, Peters Epistles, and to 50-66 A.D.

In regards to Paul Dr. Kevan writes

" There is unimpeachable evidence of the contemporary letters of Paul the Apostle. These epistles constitute historical evidence of the highest kind. The letters addressed to the Galations, the Corinthians, and the Romans, about the authenticity and date of which there is very little dispute, belong to the time of Paul's missionary journeys, and may be dated in the period of 55-58. This brings the evidence of the resurrection of Christ still nearer to the event: the interval is the short span of twenty years. "

John, was an apostle of Jesus, and ate with him, lived with him, and studies under him. Johns disciple Clement of Alexandria which we have several extra biblical documents of attested to the Biblical account of Johns banishment to the Island of Patmos, where in A.D. 95-100 he wrote his eye witness account of Jesus, and The revelation. He was banished to Patmos under The Emperor Domitian, this is also confirmed by Eusibus, a great historian.

We have several points to make.

1. The 25 books, containing several eye witness accounts, all written at an early date after Christs Death. This is vital to their testimony. What I want to do, is affirm, to you, their accuracy, in a comparison mode. Here are the top books of antiquity, and here are the statistics that back their authenticity:

1. Caesar written 100-44 BC, earliest copy 900 AD, that is 1, 000 years after it was written!!!! and the number of copies we have are 10

2. Livy written 59 BC-AD 17 ealiest copy 900 AD, 1100 years after is was written! copies = 7

3. Aristotle, now everyone uses Aristotles work! writted 384 BC, the earliest copy is 1100 AD Thats 1400 years after it was written!!!!!!!! Their are 49 copies of it

4. Plato, come on, who questions platos work!? His was written 427 BC and the earliest copy was 900 AD 1300 years after it was written man! Thats insane and there are only 7 copies!!!!!! Yet no one questions his writtings!!!!!!!

5. Sophocles 496 BC it was written and the earliest copy was 1000 AD thats 1400 years! 193 copies. Thats allot of copies! I mean that has allot of backing, but still 1400 years, allot of time eh!?

6. Catullus 54 bc it was written and the earliest copy is 1500 AD thats 1600 years after! And this guy gets tought in schools ! there are 3 copies.

I can go on and on. But these are the absolute top writtings of antiquity, the absolute highest ( next to the bible ) is Homer's Illiad. You read that right!? Everyone has. It blows all the other works of antiquity away. Look at these stats man!

written 900 BC, the earliest copy is 400 BC. Only 500 years. Thats pretty close compared to other works of antiquity dont you think!? And its authentic, look it has 643 copies! Thats got allot of backing!!!!!! Very authentic. Again aside from the new testiment this is the most backed work of antiquity!

Get ready ! Now you will see why the new testiment has more backing then any other book of antiquity! guess what? It was written from 40 A.D. to 100 AD( John on Patmos ), Guess when our earliest copy is!?? Ill let you think about it....

The earliest manuscript, get ready! Is 125 AD! Only 25 years after the new testiment was finished! Now how many copies. I mean homer has 643 copies! And its the most backed book of antiquity aside from the new testiment? It is more than 643, and its more than 1, 000 and its more than 2, 000 and its more than 10, 000! In fact, hold your breath! Its a total of over 24, 000 copies!!!!!!!!!!!!
You heard right, 24, 000 copies! All matching eachother from the first!

Did you know, that if we threw away every single new testiment bible in the world. That we could reconstruct the whole new testiment down to 11 verses!? Over the first 2 centuries the early church fathers would send letters, in which they would quote books of the new testiment. They did this so frequently, and there are so many of these preserved over the first 2 centuries that the whole new testiment can be recontructed! We have over 86, 000 quotations of the new testiment writtings. Thats over 110, 000 documents which affirm the accuracy of the text.,

To discredit the new testiment would be to throw out every work of antiquity in existance! There is no past writting with more backing, and here are a few quotes Im going to copy for you!

 Therefore the first two factors have been covered. Which are, and early date, and the uncannily, essentially miraculous backing that the words of the eye witness accounts to Jesus Christ, have been preserved.

The next aspect is to discuss the Historicity of the Bible.
Old School covered this excellently. One of the most incredible aspect of the New Testiment, is that it is actually very testible in this manner. Luke made this statement in his book of Acts:

 1 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, 2 Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: 3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs , being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God 

It is vital, that many of these proofs can be historically tested. I can, and in the future will discuss, an amazing, huge and extensive list of the Historical confirmation of every testible event in the new testiment. Luke for example, has been credided, as one of the greatest historians of all time. Simply because he meticulously recorded facts. Including Goverment officials, peoples, customs, dates, times, and places.

As far as some of the Archaology, Old School has discussed this in the past, I'll paste his response, which only touches on the subject

Some of the Archeological evidence for Scripture's accuracy:
a. Hittite civilization (Genesis 15:20) discovered in 1906
b. Quirinius Governor of Syria (Luke 2:1-3) confirmed as a double duty by coin
c. Correct titles of government praetor, proconsul, first man, politarchs (Lukes writings)
d. John alone mentions The Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15), it was found as described
e. The walls of Jericho (Joshua 6) with the exception of part of the Northern wall - Rahabs
house??? (Heb. 11:30-31) - found in 1950. They were burned and fallen from the inside out.
f. Census taking in first century (Gospels) method of family counting used is accurate
g. Pilate the Governors (John 19) existence confirmed by inscription found in 1961
h. Jesus; direction of travel (Mark 7:31) probable route through mountains makes sense
i. Daniel accurately recorded Belshazzars position (5:16) as co-regent
j. Nazareths existence (John 1:46) confirmed by family lists and tombs in vicinity 1962
k. Method of crucifixion confirmed in 1968
l. The method and fact of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) verified
m. Lysanius the Tetrarch (Luke 3:1) confirmed as correct name for that time period
n. John alone mentions the Pool of Siloam (John 9:7) found as described
o. Jacobs Well (John 4:12) found as described
p. Cities of Lycaonia included Iconium (Acts 14:6) confirmed as correct
q. Erastus the city treasurer (Romans 16:23) inscription found in Corinth in 1929
r. Ecclessia meeting in theater (Acts 19:23) found
s. The proper title meris; used of Philippi of Macedonia
t. Jesus probable home unearthed in Capernaum (Mark 1:29-34)
u. Millstones (Luke 17:2) unearthed in Capernaum
v. First century Galilean boat found to hold crew of 13 1986
w. John (3:23) correctly identifies John the Baptist as being in Aeno
x. John (2:1) distinguishes the two Canas, and the two Bethanys (1:28; 11:18)
y. John (4:5-6) specifies the city of Sychar in Samaria where Jacobs well is found.
z. Evidence has also been found for the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages

a. The method and destruction of the city of Tyre is 100% accurate (Ezekial 26)
b. Christ was tried by Pilate in the "Gabbatha" (or pavement) found (John 19:13)
c. Personal and place names in the Patriarchal accounts are genuine "Canaan" "tehom"(Ebla)
d. In 1977 an inscription mentioning Dan was found near the high place (1 Kings 12:28-29)
e. The Mesha Inscription found in Jordan mentions the tribe of Gad (Joshua 13:24-28)
f. The Babylonians recorded the fall of the "city of JUDAH" to Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC
g. The palace at Jericho where Eglon, king of Moab, was assassinated by Ehud .
h. The east gate of Shechem where the forces of Abimelech approached the city found
i. The Temple of Baal/El-Berith in Shechem,
j. The pool of Gibeon where the forces of David and Ishbosheth fought found
k. The royal palace at Samaria where the kings of Israel lived
l. The Pool of Samaria where King Ahab's chariot was washed after his death found
m. The water tunnel beneath Jerusalem dug by King Hezekiah during the Assyrian siege found
n. The royal palace in Babylon where King Belshazzar held the feast
o. The royal palace in Susa where Esther was queen of the Persian king Xerxes found
p. The royal gate at Susa where Mordecai, Esther's cousin, sat found
q. The Square in front of the royal gate at Susa where Mordecai met with Halthach found
r. The foundation of the synagogue at Capernaum where Jesus cured a man with an unclean spirit
and delivered the sermon on the bread of life .
s. The house of Peter where Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law and others found
t. The tribunal at Corinth where Paul was tried found
u. The theater at Ephesus where the riot of silversmiths occurred found
v. Herod's palace at Caesarea where Paul was kept under guard found
w. Graves of Caiaphas the High Priest (John 18:13), Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1-7), Cyrus the
Great (Isaiah 45), Darius-I the Great (Ezra 6) known
x. The cave of the Patriarchs (Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah and Jacob) known
y. Grave of David and Solomon known
z. Grave of Uzziah (an inscription was found on the Mount of Olives in 1931 which reads, "Here
were brought the bones of Uzziah, King of Judah - do not open."...evidently because of leprosy)

And to add some details...

Joshuas conquest of the Promised Land
Critics of the Bible have claimed for decades that the Bible's statements in Joshua about the conquest of the Promised Land in the centuries before the monarchy of King David were pure fiction. In light of this new archeological evidence critics will be forced to relinquish their rejection of the Bible's record of Israel's conquest as stated by Joshua. In the book of Joshua (6:5), God told Joshua, When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in." Even this miracle is confirmed by archaeology. Professor John Garstang found and recorded his amazing finding, ;there remains no doubt: the walls fell outwards so completely that the attackers would be able to clamber up and over the ruins into the city.; The evidence from all other archaeological digs around ancient cities in the Middle East reveal that the walls of cities always fall inwards as invading armies push their way into the city.

(To read more, refer to John Garstang and J.B.E. Garstang, The Story of Jericho, London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1940 page 172.)

Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
(Gen 19:24-29 NIV) Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah--from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities--and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the most memorable stories in the Bible. According to the Bible, the inhabitants of these two cities were so wicked (Gen 18:20, 19:1-13) that God supernaturally destroyed them. For many years, historians regard this as a fairy tale.

We know from the Bible that Sodom and Gomorrah were located in the Valley of Siddim (Gen 14:3), a known name for the Dead Sea. In 1973 Walter Rast and Thomas Schaub began to excavate a site known as Bab edh-Dhra, which it located in this area (on the eastern shore of Transjordan across from the Lisan peninsular). They found remains of a heavily fortified and large community. Another thing caught the attention of excavators: the evidence of extensive destruction by fire. The townsite was covered by a layer of ash many feet in thickness. Many dead bodies were found inside buildings. The archeologists also found that the fire did not start from inside the building (as would be the case of an earthquake) but in every case started on the roof of the building, then the roof burned through, collapsed into the interior and then the fire spread inside the building. Archeologists have no explanation for this but the Bible does. The Bible talks about Gods destruction of these cities because of their sin and speaks of God raining fire and brimstone down on these cities from heaven.

(For a published report of these excavations, see W.E. Rast and R.T. Schaub, Survey of the Southeastern Plain of the Dead Sea,Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 19:5-54, 175-85.)

Historicity of numerous kings mentioned in the Bible
Only fifty years ago many disbelieving scholars totally rejected the historical accuracy of the Bible because they claimed that the Scriptures talked about numerous kings and individuals that could not be confirmed from any other historical or archeological records. Recent discoveries have proven these critics wrong. Discoveries have been found referring to King David, Solomon, Uzziah, Hezekiah and many others.

Recent archeological investigations have demolished the position of those who rejected the biblical account of Israel's kings such as King David. In 1993, archeologists digging at Tel Dan in the Galilee in northern Israel found a fragment of a stone inscription that clearly refers to the "house of David" and identifies David as the "king of Israel." This is the first inscription outside the Bible that confirms the Bible's statement that David was the king of Israel in the ninth century before Christ.

A stone inscription from Egypt confirms that Israel was established as a nation in Canaan centuries before the reign of King David, just as the Bible claims. The Merneptah Stela is a seven-and-a-half-foot-high stone inscription discovered in the temple of Pharaoh Merneptah at Thebes in Egypt. Scholars determined that Pharaoh Merneptah ruled Egypt from 1213 to 1203 B.C. and confirmed that he launched an invasion into the area of the modern-day West Bank in Canaan, defeating the Jewish inhabitants of the land. The second line from the bottom of this inscriptions boasts, "Israel is laid waste; his seed is not."

In addition to the archeological evidence for King David, we now have confirmation of other kings of Israel. The name of Omri, king of Israel, is recorded on an inscription known as the Stela of King Mesha of Moab. In addition, Omri's name appears on the rock inscriptions of three kings of Assyria, the annals of both Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II, and the Black Obelisk of King Shalmaneser III, who wrote, "I conquered . . . all of the Land of Omri (Israel)." Other Assyrian inscriptions found in Nineveh confirm the Bible's records about these kings of Israel: Ahab, Jehu, Joash, Menehem, Pekah, and Hoshea. In addition, the names of many of the kings of the southern kingdom of Judah are also recorded on inscriptions of the nations that fought against the Jews. The inscriptions found by archeologists also confirm the names of these kings of Judah: Ahaziah, Uzziah, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Jehoiachin. Scholars found ration records of the army of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (606 to 562 B.C.) that state, "ten sila of oil to Jehoiachin, king of Judah. . . ." Obviously, the fact that these foreign nations listed the kings of Israel and Judah provides the strongest evidence confirming the accuracy of the Word of God.

Historicity of other Biblical Personalities
One of the most interesting discoveries in recent years was the finding of two bull', or clay seals, that bear the impression of the actual seal used by Baruch, the scribe of Jeremiah the prophet who transcribed the Book of Jeremiah. Both bull' bear the inscription, "Belonging to Berekhyahu, son of Neriyahu, the Scribe." One of these clay seals is on view in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. However, the second bull' was found in Jerusalem earlier in this century and purchased by collector Shlomo Moussaieff of London who owns the greatest private collection of ancient Jewish inscriptions in the world. This second clay seal, bearing the same inscription, also reveals a fingerprint that probably belonged to Baruch.

At the beginning of this century a fascinating seal was discovered in Israel that bore an inscription of a beautiful lion and the words, "Belonging to Shema servant of Jeroboam." This amazing find indicates that it belonged to an official of King Jeroboam of Israel. Other seals have been discovered confirming the biblical records about King Uzziah (777 to 736 B.C.) and King Hezekiah (726 to 697 B.C.).

Another important seal found in Jerusalem dates from the seventh century before Christ and is inscribed as follows: "Belonging to Abdi Servant of Hoshea." This seal made of orange chalcedony, used to authenticate royal documents for security, belonged to Abdi, a high official of King Hosea, the last king of the northern kingdom of Israel before it was conquered by the Assyrian Empire in 721 B.C. Another large seal on red limestone was found bearing the inscription "Belonging to Asayahu, servant of the king"ÿtogether with a galloping horse. The name "Asaiah" is a short form of the name "Asayahu."ÿThis name occurs twice in the Old Testament in connection with the title "servant of the king." In 2 Chronicles 34:20 we find the name, "Asaiah a servant of the king's" and again in 2 Kings 22:12, "Asahiah a servant of the king's." It is possible that this seal was owned by "Asaiah, the servant of the king" a high court official who was sent by King Josiah to carefully examine the scroll of the lost Book of Deuteronomy that was found in the Temple by the High Priest Hilkiah in approximately 622 B.C.

Explorers in Iraq in the last century found the ancient inscribed clay cylinder bearing the actual decree of King Cyrus of Persia allowing the various captured natives of many different nations to return freely to their ancient homelands. It was the government policy of the preceding Babylonian Empire of King Nebuchadnezzar to displace whole peoples such as the Jews and resettle them in the far reaches of their empire. However, King Cyrus of Persia, a moderate and God-fearing monarch, reversed the cruel Babylonian policy. Immediately after conquering the Babylonian Empire, King Cyrus issued a decree allowing the Jews to freely return to their homeland in Israel ending the seventy-year-long captivity. The decree of King Cyrus began with these words, "I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king." After describing his conquests and deeds, the cylinder inscription reads, "I gathered all their former inhabitants and returned to them their habitations." In this incredible discovery we find the confirmation of one of the most astonishing events in the pages of Scripture. "Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel, he is the God, which is in Jerusalem" (Ezra 1:1-3).

The Archeological Evidence of the New Testament
The English scholar, William Ramsay, traveled as a young man to Asia Minor over a century ago for the sole purpose of disproving the Bible's history as described by Luke in his Gospel and in the Book of Acts. Ramsay and his professors were convinced that the New Testament record must be terribly inaccurate. He believed that Luke could not be correct in his history of Christ or in his account about the growth of the Church during the first decades following Christ. Dr. Ramsay began to dig in the ancient ruins of sites throughout Greece and Asia Minor, searching for ancient names, boundary markers, and other archeological finds that would conclusively prove that Luke had invented his history of Christ and His Church. To his amazement and dismay, William Ramsay discovered that the statements of the New Testament Scriptures were accurate in the smallest detail. Finally, Dr. Ramsay was convinced by the overwhelming evidence proving the Bible's accuracy. As a result, he accepted Jesus Christ as His personal Savior. He became both a Christian and a great biblical scholar. As a result of his conversion to belief in Jesus Christ, Sir William Ramsay's books became classics in the study of the history of the New Testament. Another great scholar, A. N. Sherwin-White, was a great classical historical scholar at Oxford University who studied the extensive evidence for and against the historical accuracy of the Book of Acts. Sherwin-White wrote his conclusion after studying the evidence, "For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming . . . any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd" (Quoted by Rubel Shelley, Prepare To Answer [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1990]).

Dr. William F. Albright was unquestionably one of the world's most brilliant biblical archeologists. In 1955 he wrote: "We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after circa A.D. 80." However, additional discoveries over the next decade convinced him that all the books in the New Testament were written "probably sometime between circa A.D. 50 and 75." Significantly, Albright concluded that the writing of the New Testament within a few years of the events it described made it almost impossible that errors or exaggeration could have entered the text. He wrote that the duration between the events of Christ's life and the writing was "too slight to permit any appreciable corruption of the essential center and even of the specific wording of the sayings of Jesus." In other words, Professor Albright, one of the greatest minds in the field of archeology and ancient texts, concluded that the New Testament records the truth about Jesus Christ and his statements.

Dr. John A. T. Robinson was a distinguished lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge and developed a reputation as a great scholar. Naturally, he accepted the academic consensus universally held since 1900, that denied the disciples and Paul wrote the New Testament and concluded that it was written up to a hundred years after Christ. However, an article in Time magazine, March 21, 1977, reported that Robinson decided to personally investigate for himself the arguments behind this scholarly consensus against the New Testament's reliability because he realized that very little original research had been completed in this field in this century. He was shocked to discover that much of past scholarship against the New Testament was untenable because it was based on a "tyranny of unexamined assumptions" and what he felt must have been an "almost willful blindness." To the amazement of his university colleagues, Robinson concluded that the apostles must have been the genuine writers of the New Testament books in the years prior to A.D. 64. He challenged other scholars to complete original research necessary to truly examine the question fairly. As a result of such a new analysis Robinson believed that it would necessitate "the rewriting of many introductions to-and ultimately, theologies of-the New Testament." Robinson's book, Redating the New Testament, published in 1976, suggests that Matthew's Gospel was written as early as A.D. 40, within eight years of Christ.

Archeology has been continually proving the New Testament to be a reliable source of history. Many people, places and customs spoken of in the New Testament has now been confirmed to be true.

For example, the pool of Bethesda described in John 5:2 has been located in the north*east quarter of the old city of Jerusalem called Betheza.

The fact that Gallio was proconsul of Archaia as stated in Acts 18:12 has been proven correct through inscriptions found.

In 1968 the first physical evidence of crucifixion as a form of punishment was found when archeologist discovered heel bones still tranfixed by an iron nail.

That is just a start. But we'll be glad to get more into it latter

As you see, this "book" is the most accurate one in the history of the world by far.

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 04:25 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Whhhaaassssaaahhh, Old School!! I knew I would elicit a response from you

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL! Yes, you knew it was coming! /forum/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[ QUOTE ]
But it appears to me that you basically said that people over many, many years have continously interpreted and reinterpreted the bible and twisted the words to fit the beliefs of that era and what science has revealed over time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. Instead of taking it as literal truth. Man has twisted it to fit his ego through what the bible calls "science so falsly called". If they quit "interperting" and started "accepting" this problem would have never come about!

[ QUOTE ]
twisted the words to fit the beliefs of that era and what science has revealed over time.

[/ QUOTE ]

But I would contend the word "science" here. The bible clearly states the world is round. Science means "to know" and has to be oberervable or experimental. Evolution above the micro level is neither, and actually defies almost every law of science. Starting with the law of Biogenesis.

But you are right, in a frantic effort people have performed all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to cram billions of years in the bible. And "goo to you" abiogenesis scenario. But both are contrary to scripture. But that's another post.

Also, I'm not saying those in the past haven't made mistakes, and everyone agrees. Early Creationists believed that the earth was destroyed many times. They were obviously wrong.

The point is that wasn't scriptural. That was bad interpertaion. The thing about interpertation is verses can not be taken out of context. Which is exactly what the early church did in this scenario. They plainly used poetic verses to fulfill their dogmatic view of a geocentric earth. They were plainly wrong. And unsupported by scirputre.

What they did was interpert scripture according to their minds and not with other scripture! A violation of rule number one.

Heck, Creationists argue over the mechanism for the Flood waters on a continual basis. But that doesn't mean the Flood never happened. The same with evolution. There are many types of evolution,(gradual/puncuated equillibrium) but you don't throw out the whole theory because you don't understand all of it yet.

We have the basic foundation. There was a flood. The mechanim(s) for the water is still contraversial, but we do not abandon the idea altoghther.

The early church simply erred in there understanding of scripture. But that doesn't authorize them to threaten to execute someone whom disagrees.

Also realize that not everyone agreed with that statement. Galileo was the first to announce he had proof.

It was like Saadam. Not everyone agreed. But no one opened their mouth.

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, as we've discussed at length, our views on evolution, as well as the age of the earth are opposing, I still respect incredibly your tenacity in your beliefs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ditto here too. I also want to say that this doesn't affect salvation.

But I just can't accept any form of evolution other than the at the "micro" level(which again, I would rather call variation). And from everything I have studied I haven't seen any scientific reason to accept them either.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm confused, is there poetry in the bible, or are we to take every word at face value? If so, which parts are poetry and which are literal? And who decided that, since there's no authors around anymore to tell us?

[/ QUOTE ]

Those are excellent points.

I'll answer to the best of my ability. First of all though I assume you're basically talking about Genesis and how do we know it is to be taken literally and not as poetry. I will be glad to show you. But before we get into Hebrew poetry schisms let's look at a few other things.

[ QUOTE ]
And how do you get all the millions of Christians to know which is which, without adding their interpretaion/perception of what is written? I hope I'm making sense

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why God made salvation easy. That's my first point.

Secondly, there wouldn't be any need for all the interpertations of Genesis if people would just take it as God wrote it.

Psalm 119:160 Thy word is true from the beginning 

Instead of trying to put God in a box, and fit our limited perceptions around God.

God made it clear, His word is true.

Jesus took Genesis literally. I can cite several examples here:

Matthew 19:
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, &#8216;Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?
4 "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator `made them male and female,"
5 and said, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh"?
6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

The Lord accepted the creation account literally-

He cited from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24--showing that He did not regard Genesis 1 and 2 as separate contradictory creation accounts, but as one.

Verse five is not the only place where the New Testament cites an Old Testament passage as "God said"; compare the following pairs:
Ps. 2:1 and Acts 4:24-25
Ps. 2:7 and Heb. 1:5
Ps. 16:10 and Acts 13:35,
Ps. 95:7 and Heb. 3:7
Ps. 97:7 and Heb. 1:6
Ps. 104:4 + Heb. 1:7
Is. 55:3 + Acts 13:34.

The converse of this is true in the following pairs of verses : Gen. 12:3 + Gal. 3:8, Ex. 9:16 & Rom. 9:17; where a direct statement by God in the OT is cited as "Scripture said".

Luke 17

 26 "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man.
27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
28 It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building.
29 But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.
30 It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed.
31On that day no one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything.
32 Remember Lot's wife!"


Jesus took the accounts of Noah's flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the doom of Lot's wife literally.

Matthew 12 shows that Christ took the account of Jonah and the whale literally, and even used it as a reflection of His resurrection.

John 5:46-47:
 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?

Another citation...


23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question.
24 "Teacher," they said, "Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him.
25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother.
26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh.
27 Finally, the woman died.
28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?&#8221;
29 Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
31 But about the resurrection of the dead &#8212; have you not read what God said to you,
32 I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ,He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.


Here Jesus shows the Sauducees there errors in understanding the books of Law,including Genesis.

 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.


The "jot" was the smallest Hebrew letter, and the "tittle" was a small part of the letter. Here we see Jesus supporting divine inspiration even down to the individual letters.

To quote Paul:

15 and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The Greek word for Scriptures in verse 15 is grammata, and must refer to the OT alone, as these are the only Scriptures Timothy would have known from his childhood.

In 16, the word translated "Scripture" is graphe, which would include the OT plus all the NT written by then (AD 63). Which would include all the NT except 2 Peter, Hebrews, Jude, and John's writings. We know Paul's writings were divinely inspired, so this statement would apply even to the later books.

"God-breathed" is a correct translation by the NIV of the Greek word theopneustos. If Scripture is "God-breathed" and God cannot err, it logically follows that Scripture cannot err.

These are just some of numerous examples. But my main point is that Jesus accepted Genesis as literal fact, and 2 Tim. shows us that Scriptures can not error.

So this comes to your next question. How do we know by the writings that Genesis is to be taken literally?

First we need a little lesson in biblical concepts:

This is not as difficult as it may seem, as the bible contains seven types of formats:

Poetry -as in the Psalms, where the repetition or parallelism of ideas is in accordance with Hebrew ideas of poetry, without the rhyme (parallelism of sound) and metre (parallelism of time) that are important parts of traditional English poetry.

This, by the way, is the reason why the Psalms can be translated into other languages and still retain most of their literary appeal and poetic piquancy.

Parables -as in many of the sayings of Jesus, such as the parable of the sower (Matthew 13), which Jesus Himself clearly states to be a parable and about which He gives meanings for the various items, such as the seed and the soil.

Prophecy -as in the books of the last section of the Old Testament (Isaiah to Malachi).

Letters -as in the New Testament epistles written by Paul, Peter, John, and others.

Biography -as in the Gospels.

Autobiography/Testimony -as in the book of Acts where the author, Luke, after narrating the Apostle Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus as a historical fact (Acts 9:1-19), then describes two further occasions when Paul included this conversion experience as part of his own personal testimony (Acts 22).

Authentic historical facts -as in the books of 1 and 2 Kings, etc.

The author's intention with respect to any book of the Bible is usually quite clear from the style and the content.

So by taking these seven we can go through the process of elimination and determine what type of book Genesis is.

I'll focus around poetry since this seems to be the basic attack of most who do not take it as historically accurate.

Genesis does not contain information or invocation in any of the forms of Hebrew poetry, in either overt or covert form, and because Hebrew scholars of substance are agreed that this is so.

To answer this question we need to examine in a little more depth just what is involved in the parallelism of ideas that constitutes Hebrew poetry.

Let us consider Psalm 1:1, which reads as follows: 'Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.' Here we see triple parallelism in the nouns and verbs used.

As well as this overt parallelism, there is also a covert or subtle progression of meaning.

In the first column,"walketh" suggests short-term acquaintance, "standeth" implies readiness to discuss, and "sitteth" speaks of long-term involvement. In the second column, 'counsel' betokens general advice, "way" indicates a chosen course of action, and "seat" signifies a set condition of mind. In the third column, "ungodly" describes the negatively wicked, "sinner" characterizes the positively wicked, and "scornful" portrays the contemptuously wicked.

Other types of Hebrew poetry include contrastive parallelism, as in Proverbs 27:6, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful", and completive parallelism, as in Psalm 46:1, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of need."

And so we return to our question. Are any of the first 11 chapters of Genesis poetry?

NO

We could go through the other five, and show easily that Genesis does not fit into any of the criteria.

Unless the first 11 chapters of Genesis are authentic historical events, the rest of the Bible is incomplete and incomprehensible as to its full meaning. The theme of the Bible is Redemption, and may be outlined thus:

-God's redeeming purpose is revealed in Genesis 1-11,
-God's redeeming purpose progresses from Genesis 12 to Jude 25, and
-God's redeeming purpose is consummated in Revelation 1-22.

I'll leave with a quote from Hebrew scholar, Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford:

[ QUOTE ]
"Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:
(a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience
(b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story
(c) Noah's flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.
Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days"; of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
If we apply the normal principles of biblical exegesis (ignoring pressure to make the text conform to the evolutionary prejudices of our age), it is overwhelmingly obvious that Genesis was meant to be taken in a straightforward, obvious sense as an authentic, literal, historical record of what actually happened.

[/ QUOTE ]

I quoted this earlier, but Romans states:

"Let God be true and every man a liar". In other words, let's see what God has to say, before faulty man places his preconcieved notions onto others.

Baron

05-06-2003, 04:37 PM

First off I would like to thank everyone who has posted here. It has been very entertaining.

As far as the skateboard theory I will have to disagree. Mechanical devices do evolve. The roots of the modern jet can be traced to the first plane. Which was built by a couple of bike repairmen in a bike shop. Or, how one can trace the size of the SRB's (solid rocket booster) on the shuttle was determined by the size of a horses *** over 100 years ago.

There was also the comment that genetic code is only lost not added. There are conditions were an individual has more chromosomes (such as XXY)then normal.

Science and religion have deviated over the past several hundred years. The problem is that there is no way to prove with physical evidence that there is a god more or less only one and at the same time it can't be proved that there isn't one either.

If you know much about physics you've probably heard about both particle theory and wave theory. They both have there problems and it is now more common for physicists to belive both are true and that particles and waves are the same thing.

I think all theories (and religions) are true until solidly proven otherwise.

If a god created the universe in 7 day I think there has been plenty of time for the same god to create life else where. (or maybe the devil did it?)

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 04:37 PM

[ QUOTE ]
By saying that the sins of man caused death, (which is about the worst thing that can happen to a person), the author creates a detterent to sinning, doesn't he?

[/ QUOTE ]

Here you have not interperted scripture with scriputure. Scripture always validates and interperts itself with other scripture.

First, we are all sinners by birth, through Adam.(that is why Jesus had to be born of a virgin birth!0

Romans 19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.


 10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:

14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:

15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:

16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:

17 And the way of peace have they not known:

18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.


There is only one without sin. Jesus Christ. Which is why we must come to him for salvation!


15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.


Here we see, that the wages of sin, death, is going to be smashed by Jesus.

Hebrews:
 8 Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.


We see death is not conquered completely yet! But here it is conquered at the rapture:

 51Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 04:41 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Mechanical devices do evolve. The roots of the modern jet can be traced to the first plane. Which was built by a couple of bike repairmen in a bike shop. Or, how one can trace the size of the SRB's (solid rocket booster) on the shuttle was determined by the size of a horses *** over 100 years

[/ QUOTE ]

The reference was to natural selection and it's inability to add new genetic information.

[ QUOTE ]
The roots of the modern jet can be traced to the first plane.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's still a plane. And I might add intelligent manipulation was a large contributing factor. What you've done(not very well either)is show an example of micro evolution. Not macro.

Let's shoot a rocket(big bang) into a junkyard and see a Boeing 747 form.

[ QUOTE ]
There was also the comment that genetic code is only lost not added. There are conditions were an individual has more chromosomes (such as XXY)then normal.

[/ QUOTE ]

The information to pass that gene along was already present in the gene pool. It wasn't new information. It was duplicating what was already there. Nothing new.

[ QUOTE ]
I think all theories (and religions) are true until solidly proven otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then perhaps the idea of panspermia will appeal to you.

Since abiogenesis defies all oberservable and emperical tests, scientists now propose that aliens shuttles the first living cells to earth.(Yes leading scientists really believe this! /forum/images/graemlins/shocked.gif)

But really all they've done is transfer the problems of defying the Law of Biogenesis somewhere else.

And they say believing in God is far fetched?

Palmetto State Dude

05-06-2003, 05:35 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Venom said:
[ QUOTE ]
.Here is some information from JW, about the accuracy of the bible.
The next aspect is to discuss the Historicity of the Bible.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm really not disputing the accuracy or historicity of the entire bible or even the existence of Jesus Christ (I have accepted that he he died for my sins), just the account of the beginning of the earth as relayed literally in Genesis.

I meant that there is no PHYSICAL proof that God created the earth in only Six days, on the contrary the physical evidence AGAINST that, to me, is more available and credible. Why would God create the geologic record that basically reveals a very old earth? To test our faith? It doesn't make sense to me. And I've seen no evidence to support a world-wide flood. No ark. Nothing physical.

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 05:54 PM

Again, I'm not questioning your salvation, just your consitency in accordance with scripture.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm really not disputing the accuracy or historicity of the entire bible or even the existence of Jesus Christ (I have accepted that he he died for my sins), just the account of the beginning of the earth as relayed literally in Genesis.

[/ QUOTE ]

Where does the bible start becoming truth and begin becoming fairy tale?

For example, you have stated you believe in God and the fact he created the earth. So you believe Genesis 1:1

 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.


Then you stop believeing.

Then you believe in Jesus who is prophecied here:

 14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.


in Genesis 3.

Where does the line get drawn? What seperates the text between 1:1 and Gen 3? Or any other text in Genesis?

Or do you believe the entire book is a fairy tale. Just a neat book that gives morals?

[ QUOTE ]
I meant that there is no PHYSICAL proof that God created the earth in only Six days, on the contrary the physical evidence AGAINST that, to me, is more available and credible

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed there is. Radio halos for one. Not enough Helium in the atmosphere. Decay of the sun. Slowing rate of the earth's rotation. We could go on here. But age debates bore me.

But again, I want to show you that that is your preconcieved idea. Not a way for God to test you. God made the answer clear.

"11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

It is man who tests God.

 3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

4 By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.

5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.

6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.

9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:

10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

11 Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.

12 Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.

13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.

15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.

16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,

18 Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called:

19 Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.

21 By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.

22 By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.

23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.

24 By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter;

25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;

26 Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.

27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.

28 Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them.

29 By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned.

30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days.

31 By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.

32 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets:

33 Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions.

34 Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

35 Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:

36 And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:

37 They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;

38 (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.

39 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:

40 God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.


What divides fact from fantasy here? Paul claims Noah had faith in God to deliver him from the flood. Was Paul lying about Noah? He mentioned him as though he was a real man whom had real faith concerning the flood. How does he differ from Abraham, Abel, David or Joshua in this context?

Let's look at your sig for a second.

First I cor. 15


21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.



He also made it indirectly clear:

21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

The bible says all of creation is under the curse via Adam's sin.

According to your sig, dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

This implies death before sin. Where is the biblical reference for that?

The bible says man brought death into the world and all of creation is under this curse of bondage.

Venom

05-06-2003, 07:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Again, I'm not questioning your salvation, just your consitency in accordance with scripture.

[/ QUOTE ]
As fellow believers, the goal is to edify one another. We just want to help you in your walk. /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif Its statements like this that will inhibit it though:

[ QUOTE ]
And you accept that as devoutly as some accept evolution, natural selection, allopatric speciation, etc., with no proof except what a book written 2000 years ago says (no offense).

[/ QUOTE ]
Its evident you don't take Gods word seriously. If so, your missing out on a huge spiritual weapon, and an awesome gift God gave to us. I would strongly recommend you let outside biases, and other distractions go, and take the bible as truth. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

http://www.thelightanddarkseries.com/jpgs/theswordofthespirit.jpg

Ephesians 6:17
Take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

2 Timothy 3:10-17
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

2 Timothy 2:14-18
14 Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers. 15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. 17 And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; 18 Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.

Palmetto State Dude

05-06-2003, 07:10 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Where does the bible start becoming truth and begin becoming fairy tale?

Or do you believe the entire book is a fairy tale. Just a neat book that gives morals?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm saying that the book of Genesis is inconsistent with the geologic and fossil record. And if I must choose between believing the entire bible literally, or if it's just a "code of ethics and morals", I'd have to choose the latter (though I know that's not true just based on Venom's earlier comments concerning the historic veracity of the bible). I think it was Aquinas that said something to the effect that science tells how the heavens go, the bible how one goes to heaven (I don't think that's the exact quote, but close). So, I'd have to take that stance.

You're right, I'm am being inconsitent and contradictory. But the physical proof that I've seen shows me that the bible is inconsistent and contradictory also, especially Genesis.

[ QUOTE ]

The bible says all of creation is under the curse via Adam's sin.

Let's look at your sig for a second.

According to your sig, dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

This implies death before sin. Where is the biblical reference for that?

[/ QUOTE ]

There is none! And again, there's the inconsitency. But i'll wager that you'd say I'm the one being inconsistent. I can't even begin to speculate (well I can speculate, but I've seen no evidence) how or what happened that would correlate Genesis with the fossil and geologic record. But I'm open to all plausible explanations, which is why I'm discussing this with you now /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I can't, however, accept notions that man walked with dinosaurs and that current dating techniques are invalid. Not with the evidence that creation scientists have provided as yet.

Palmetto State Dude

05-06-2003, 07:25 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Venom said:
I would strongly recommend you let outside biases, and other distractions go, and take the bible as truth. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

As far as outside biases (and I'm assuming you mean my education in geology and evolution), I'd much rather believe what God has shown me (not directly, I'm not saying I been revealed anything, or I'm some kind of messiah, just through life experiences) in life than to be asked to accept on faith alone the words of Genesis.

I see God in nature, it/He is all around us! I see Him in my beautiful wife and children. I see that He has blessed me with a wonderful life and am grateful to Him for that. And I'm comfortable with my relationship with Him. He's not asking me to believe in the bible, only in Him, and I know that He's behind the creation of the entire universe. Just not as Genesis states it /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I'm sincerely not trying to offend anyone, and I apologize if I have...

Baron

05-06-2003, 07:35 PM

[ QUOTE ]
OldSchool said:

Let's shoot a rocket(big bang) into a junkyard and see a Boeing 747 form.

And I might add intelligent manipulation was a large contributing factor.

The information to pass that gene along was already present in the gene pool. It wasn't new information. It was duplicating what was already there. Nothing new.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ever here of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory?
There they have proven the existence of the top quark. The way it was done was like ramming two VW Bugs together and having a couple of semis pop out. Hard to belive but it happens.

Also, intelligent intervention is considered part of natural selection. For a long time now man has been a major cause. This is due to the fact that if we don't like something we create the hostile environment required to eliminate it or if we do man will change the environment to be beneficial. (ie smallpox or most farm animals)

In an XXY case the two X's are not the same, and my point was that the quantity of genetic information can be increased. There are several mutations that can happen to the genetic code and produce new code. One of my favorites is the line shift deletion.

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 07:51 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I'm saying that the book of Genesis is inconsistent with the geologic and fossil record.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would totally disagree. I see vast amounts of evidence for a world-wide catastophe.

[ QUOTE ]
. I can't even begin to speculate (well I can speculate, but I've seen no evidence) how or what happened that would correlate Genesis with the fossil and geologic record.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would say a world-wide flood is the explanation for a vast number of the so called geologic eras and the hydrological sorting of the animals in your sig.

The geologic column is based on circular reasoning based on pre-assumptions. They use index fossils to date the rock, and the geologic ages to date the fossils.

We could get into the technicalities of this if you want. It's up to you.

But my main contention is that there is no reason to disregard certain parts of the bible. It's all true. From cover to cover.

True knowledge begins with the Bible (Proverbs 1:7, Psalms 119:160; 138:2), and that is where we need to start. God was there when He created the world. He knows everything, does not tell lies, and does not make mistakes.

Earlier I believe you said two things about the flood I wanted to address.

1. No physical proof- "we don't have the ark".

My contention is we don't need it. The physical evidence of a world-wide flood demonstrates the ark existed.

2. All animals couldn't fit.

First of all, not all animals had to fit, only kinds of animals.
I'll quote from a ark study:

[ QUOTE ]
Doctors Morris and Whitcomb in their classic book, "The Genesis Flood," state that no more than 35,000 individual animals needed to go on the ark.

In his book, Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, John Woodmorappe suggests that far fewer animals would have been transported upon the ark. By pointing out that the word "specie" is not equivalent to the "created kinds" of the Genesis account, Woodmorappe credibly demonstrates that as few as 2,000 animals may have been required on the ark. To pad this number for error, he continues his study by showing that the ark could easily accommodate 16,000 animals.

But, let's be generous and add on a reasonable number to include extinct animals. Then add on some more to satisfy even the most skeptical. Let's assume 50,000 animals, far more animals than required, were on board the ark, and these need not have been the largest or even adult specimens.

The largest animals were probably represented by "teenage" or even younger specimens. The median size of all animals on the ark would actually have been that of a small rat, according to Woodmorappe's up-to-date tabulations, while only about 11% would have been much larger than a sheep.

The Ark measured 300x50x30 cubits (Genesis 6:15) which is about 459x75x44 feet, so its volume was 43,500 m3 (cubic metres) or 1.54 million cubic feet. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent volume of 522 standard American railroad stock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep.

If the animals were kept in cages with an average size of 50x50x30 centimetres (20x20x12 inches), that is 75,000 cm3 (cubic centimetres) or 4800 cubic inches, the 16,000 animals would only occupy 1200 m3 (42,000 cubic feet) or 14.4 stock cars.

The three trains hauling 69 cars each would have ample space to carry the 50,000 animals, filling only 37% of the ark. This would leave an additional 361 cars or enough to make 5 trains of 72 cars each to carry all of the food and baggage plus Noah's family of eight people.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Ark had plenty of space.

Venom

05-06-2003, 08:11 PM

[ QUOTE ]
As far as outside biases I'd much rather believe what God has shown me in life than to be asked to accept on faith alone the words of Genesis.

[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
He's not asking me to believe in the bible, only in Him, and I know that He's behind the creation of the entire universe. Just not as Genesis states it

[/ QUOTE ]
Again, we are not questioning your salvation. Were saying you are inhibiting your spiritual growth by cutting out the bible. God does want you to succeed, and to walk in that good and perfect will he has for your life. By cutting out his word, you will definitely fall short of your potential, it's that valuable.

For example in bodybuilding, you don't have to have 300 grams of protein a day to call yourself a bodybuilder. But in order to be a pro, and reach your full genetic potential and beyond, you must consume that and more!

That's all were saying, you are holding back your walk with the Lord by not listening to the bible. Yes your saved, but now God wants you to be in his spiritual army. /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif And you need a sword bro. /forum/images/graemlins/shocked.gif Don't you want to be the best warrior for Jesus as you can be?

2 Timothy 2:1-7
1 Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2 And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. 3 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 4 No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. 5 And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. 6 The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits. 7 Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things.

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 08:51 PM

[ QUOTE ]
There they have proven the existence of the top quark. The way it was done was like ramming two VW Bugs together and having a couple of semis pop out. Hard to belive but it happens.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no idea what you are talking about.

They rammed two cars together and a semi was produced? /forum/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

Give me a link or something. There has to be more to it than that.

But I don't see what that has to do with an explosion in a junkyard producing a stealth fighter.

I'll make it easier. Collect all the parts of a disassmebled car engine. Now put them in the dryer. The time is up to you. Give it millions of year, I don't care.

See how long it takes to get an assembled engine.

John D.

05-06-2003, 09:26 PM

A dog, will always bring forth a dog

Well I got you here President. See a dog was not always a dog. In actuality, it's origins were from the wolf which adapted and became tame as humans interacted in their enviroment. Also, though breeding we have produced different breeds or dogs for which to take care of guarding sheep to attacking intruders.

I would also like to point out the evolution and breeding of the mule which was born through the breeding of a donkey and a horse. At any rate, the mule wasn't around before we started breeding them, that much I'm sure of. The reason I am sure of that is because they are sterile. Go to http://www.lovelongears.com/ for info.

I respect your beliefs even though you use all your bias on a 2000 year old book. All I ask is that you respect mine in science.

realjones

05-06-2003, 09:27 PM

[ QUOTE ]
There they have proven the existence of the top quark. The way it was done was like ramming two VW Bugs together and having a couple of semis pop out. Hard to belive but it happens.

[/ QUOTE ]

i don't agree with your example. The top quark was one of the six quarks (as predicted by the standard model) we didn't have proof for. It was found by smashing together different kinds of subatomic particles. When they collide, they release the elementary particles of matter. Nothing new was created, just the "building blocks" were released. They weren't created out of nothing, we were just able to finally build something capable of detecting them.

it would be more like the equivalent of smashing together two VW's and looking for some piece that is very rarely produced and that doesn't stick for around for very long when it does show up. we just had to find it.

Another example similar to the one presented by old school is the odds of a tornado going over a junkyard and creating a working 747 (assuming all the parts neccessary to build the 747 were present in the junkyard). Although technically possible, I think we would all agree that the odds of this happening are very very small. Now we know a 747 is made up of about five million pieces. Well the human body contains TRILLIONS of cells, and those cells arent even the smallest pieces. Imagine trying to put those randomly together in a way that you would be able to create a working human. The purpose of this example I believe was to show the complexity of amino acids...the odds of putting them together in the right order is so very very tiny that it is almnost impossible for it to have happened randomly /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

sickbikes

05-06-2003, 09:29 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Palmetto State Dude said:
[ QUOTE ]
OldSchool said:

The Bible says there was no sin or death until man brought them into the world.

Evolution is fueled by death.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
OldSchool said:Man brought sin into the world.There was no death before sin.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent point. But you know my stance on the literality of Genesis. I can only say that I interpret that verse as the author's emphasis of the effects of the sins of man on earth. By saying that the sins of man caused death, (which is about the worst thing that can happen to a person), the author creates a detterent to sinning, doesn't he?

[/ QUOTE ]No. God allowed sin to become our fleshly nature.But He also made a way out from under the curse of sin. His name is Jesus.Thank you, Father!

John D.

05-06-2003, 09:36 PM

Which is why I said, if there is other life, God would have had to create it. But he makes no mention of it, and made it clear the earth is the focus of his intention. And that the stars were made for determining the signs of the seasons. No mention is made of alien life anywhere else.

Well perhaps God, didn't want us to know just yet. Perhaps it felt we weren't ready to deal with an alien race when we can't even deal with differences we have in the human race. It is plausible. Isn't it just possible God didn't tell us about all his work, just the stuff that pertained to man here on earth. Afterall, if those guy 2000 years ago found out there was life on other planets they would probable freak out.

sickbikes

05-06-2003, 09:43 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Palmetto State Dude said:
And I've seen no evidence to support a world-wide flood. No ark. Nothing physical.

[/ QUOTE ]

All you have to do is look to your science books.Many paleontologists have found fossils of aquatic life in the deserts! Others have found sediments from one geographic location in a totally different area where these sediments do not naturally occur.Just a thought.

alanlws16

05-06-2003, 10:01 PM

This isn't really on the subject I just wanted to tell OS that I respect his complete faith & reverence to our God, you will not see to many people who will go to any length to show you proof of God.

Big MatT

05-06-2003, 10:03 PM

Well, If i ever had to write an essay on this, i'd come here, cause some of you guys have a LOT to say. I think it's kinda cool that you guys remember all of these things from the bible by, or so it seems by, heart.

With that said, 6 posts in i forgot i was reading about the existence of aliens, so just to get everyone back on track (yeah, right...this is FAR from over) i believe in aliens.

One more thing: With all the many religion's out there, who's to say which one is right? I really don't want to spend my life worshipping the Christian God, and then when I die I end up in a desert staring up at Anubis (or some such other Egyptian god, just remembered that one from THE MUMMY!)...or vice versa ir whatever.

President Wilson

05-06-2003, 10:20 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Well I got you here President. See a dog was not always a dog. In actuality, it's origins were from the wolf which adapted and became tame as humans interacted in their enviroment.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you stand back, and look at a wolf, and any other dog kind, a three year old can tell you that they are the same kind of animal. The Bible said animals would bring forth after their own kind. A wolf will never turn into a cat

[ QUOTE ]
Also, though breeding we have produced different breeds or dogs for which to take care of guarding sheep to attacking intruders.

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed, we have produced different varieties. This is based on information already contained within the genetic code. This is not an increase, but a loss of information.
Explain how the information arrived in the first place.

You are explaining, what is called microevolution, it has nothing to do with macroevolution.

Show me, one example of information increasing macroevolution. Not microevolution. Dogs produce a variety of dogs, thats a fact. It is based on information already contained within the genetic code. When an animal is selected, by a farmer for example, they lose information overall. But the " selection " is based on what is already within the genetic code.

Selecting information, already contained within a code, such as dog breeders do, has absolutely nothing to do with a gain in information. Nothing. Give me one example of information gaining macroevolution.

renob

05-06-2003, 10:22 PM

ok how did this go from a thread on E.T.'s to micro and macro evolution?

Adam Knowlden

05-06-2003, 10:54 PM

[ QUOTE ]
ok how did this go from a thread on E.T.'s to micro and macro evolution?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because your world view will affect this situation. If you believe in evolution, you are much more apt to believe in alien life.

[ QUOTE ]
Afterall, if those guy 2000 years ago found out there was life on other planets they would probable freak out.

[/ QUOTE ]

You consistent mockery makes it extremely hard to want to answer anything you say. For example, Saw Palmetto and I have opposing view points, yet we can express our differences in a non-mocking manner. By doing this we are both learning.

But you consistent mockery of "a biased 2000 year old book" makes it hard to take you very seriously.

[ QUOTE ]
I respect your beliefs even though you use all your bias on a 2000 year old book. All I ask is that you respect mine in science.

[/ QUOTE ]

First you've showed us no science, only mockery. Science means "to know", you do not know that life came from non-life. All origins are religion based. You were not there, science has not proven the creation, or non-creation scenario. Abiogenesis is not scientific.

I could easily be just as mocking. For example, Organic evolution was first taught by the Greeks at least as early as the 7th century BC. Greek philosophers probably borrowed and adapted their evolutionary ideas from the Hindus, who believed that souls transformed from one animal to another until they reached a perfection state called nirvana.

One of the first evolutionary theories was proposed by Thales of Miletus (640-546 BC) in the province of Ionia on the coast near Greece. He was also evidently the first person to advance the idea that life first originated in water.

Birdsell notes that Thales' view of biological evolution "was not too far from modern truth". One of Thales' students, Anaximander (611-547 BC), developed these ideas further, concluding that humans evolved from fish or fishlike forms.

These fish-men eventually cast off their scaly skin and moved to dry land where they have been ever since.

The Greek philosopher Empedocles (493-435 BC), often called the father of evolutionary naturalism, argued that chance alone "was responsible for the entire process" of the evolution of simple matter into modern humankind.

Empedocles concluded that spontaneous generation fully explained the origin of life, and he also taught that all living organism types gradually evolved by the process of trial-and-error recombinations of animal parts. He also believed that natural selection was the primary mechanism of evolution, the fittest being more likely to survive to pass their traits on to their offspring.

In short, Empedocles pre-Darwin "survival of-the-fittest theory taught that life evolved by pruning the less-fit life formsi.e. the merciless destruction of the weaker animals and plants. Unfortunately, many early Greek manuscripts have been lost, but the texts that survive provide enough details to determine with some accuracy what the ancient Greeks believed. This evidence motivated Osborn to conclude that "Darwin owes more even to the Greeks than we have ever recognized."

Evidence also exists that the Greek philosophers gleaned their evolution-of-life ideas from the Hindus, who believed that souls transformed from one animal to another until they reached a level of perfection called nirvana. Both the Greeks and Hindus also could have obtained their evolution-of-life ideas from even more ancient peoples.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) claimed that humans are the highest point of one long, continuous "ascent with modification" of life. Modern scientific research, though, has found that that natural selection often does not eliminate weak individuals in a species. Evidence now points to the conclusion that nearly all extinctions are the result of chance and/or human mismanagement. Natural selection cannot create, but can only prune the less-perfect organisms, serving primarily to slow the rate of biological degeneration.

So as you can see your religion is older than Christianity.

[ QUOTE ]
I respect your beliefs even though you use all your bias on a 2000 year old book. All I ask is that you respect mine in science.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is not respectful.

"I respect your faith even though you base your biases on a seventh century BC religion.All I ask is that you respect mine in science."

[ QUOTE ]
2000 year old book

[/ QUOTE ]

This also shows you have no idea what you are saying. The bible is well over 2000 years old. Christianity is 2000 years old, not the Old Testament, where Genesis is found.

President Wilson

05-06-2003, 11:42 PM

[ QUOTE ]
First you've showed us no science, only mockery. Science means "to know", you do not know that life came from non-life. All origins are religion based. You were not there, science has not proven the creation, or non-creation scenario. Abiogenesis is not scientific.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point. Abiogenesis has been proven wrong countless times. There is not 1 shred of evidence for it. That is not science. It is religion. And purely based on faith.

As Old School stated, we have yet to see any evidence outside of variation, based on already existing information in the genetic code. And, you have yet to address organic evolution, only showed that you have faith in it. That is the opposite of science.

John D.

05-07-2003, 12:10 AM

Wow, okay Wilson. I'm just going to drop this right here. You are getting a little too heated to me. I believe in what I believe in and you believe in what I believe in. Let's just shake on that and agree to disagree. Deal?

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 01:23 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I'm just going to drop this right here

[/ QUOTE ]

Since all you can do is mock, that's for the better.

For those interested in the biblical perspective(as was the intention of the original question /forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif ), I have done some praying and feel I can make a biblical connection.

First of all, let me quote Exodus again:

11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.



So we see that God made all creation at once. Including the earth and the heavens(Gen. 1:1)This would include any other intelligent life forms.

Daniel 12 states in the end time:

4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.


No one can argue the vast increase in technology over the past 100, heck 50, heck 25 years! If the bible says we have greatly increased technology in the end times, it makes it hard to believe aliens can be much more advanced than us.

I feel this shows that if (just consider that the aliens are real) their is other intelligent life, they are no more advanced than we are. Due to the fact we were all created at the same time.

Now we need to discuss the vast distances in space.

The closest star (apart from the sun) to earth, Proxima Centauri is 25 million million miles) away. The Apollo flights took three days to get to the moon. At the same speed one would need 870,000 years to get to this nearest star.

Of course, one could accelerate (particularly unmanned) probes to a greater speed. At the incredible speed of one-tenth of the speed of light, the trip would still take 43 years. However, one would need enormous amounts of energy to reach such a speed -energy roughly equivalent to the electricity output of the world's largest hydroelectric power station for four days.

Furthermore, in every cubic kilometre of space, there are an estimated 100,000 dust particles (made up of silicates and ice) weighing only a tenth of a gram. At such a velocity, colliding with even one of these tiny objects could destroy a spaceship.

There is no way that the bible supports an alien race that is so advanced that they can conquer these distances and travel to earth. Even by today's rate of increase in technology these advancements are eons out of our reach.

Furthermore, it takes extreme conditions for life to thrive on a planet.

For example, it must be at the right distance from its sun, so as to be neither too hot nor too cold.

See this link: http://www.doesgodexist.org/Charts/EvidenceForDesignInTheUniverse.html

Although one cannot rule out the possibility that planets around other stars may be confirmed at some future point, it is at least extremely improbable that any of them would fulfil all the requirements needed for life. Just having liquid water is completely insufficient, despite the excitement reigning when such was detected as possibly being on the surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa.

Now let's look at the salvation aspect.

Adam's sin caused all of creation to be affected by the curse, so why would a race of beings, not of Adam's (sinful) seed, have their part of creation affected by the curse, and then be part of the restoration brought about by Christ, the last Adam? All of this would seem exceedingly strange.

But furthermore this is not biblically sound.

For Jesus to attone for the sins of all the universe he would have had to have gone to each planet and die. The bible states that Christ's death attones for mankind's sin, not any type of extraterrestrial intelligence.

"For God so loved the WORLD" not worlds. I could give more scriptural evidences if you guys want. But the bible clearly states Christs death attones only for mankind. But that all of creation is under the effect of the curse.

So, as I said, he would have had to have gone to each planet and died for their sins. Remember all of creation is under the curse of sin and death.

It is cleary unscriptural that Christ died multiple times:

Hebrews 9:

 24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:

25 Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others;

26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.


Christ only died once, and that is the only time he will do it.

1 Peter:

 For Christ also hath ONCE suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:


2 Timothy one states:

7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.


God does not give us a spirit of fear. He would not allow this to be kept silent. The Bible teaches that life is only possible through a process of creation. Even if there were other galaxies with planets very similar to Earth, life could only be there if the Creator had fashioned it. If God had done that, and if these beings were going to visit us one day, then He would surely not have left us unenlightened about this.

Ironman_81

05-07-2003, 03:59 AM

hmm...i guess I'll add my two cents to this interesting conversation. From skimming through the replies, it appears that there are a lot of bible literalists, which is fine. I just wanted to elaborate further on the scientific nature of things.

There is this device physicists and chemists use to describe the state of randomness: entropy. The general trend is for the universe to tend to increase this and is based in the probability of exisiting in a particular state of order (macrostate). The example they always give is a deck of cards in a particular order...supposed you let the cards fall....then state of disorder, and entropy has increased. This happened spontaneously, and the probability of the deck reassembling in its original order is next to none. This is often the argument given to support the claims that evolution of such complex beings as humans could not have occurred without divine intervention.

There is something else about entropy that almost seems counter-intuitive. Let's consider oil in water. Oil naturally forms globules and does not readily mix with the water...if you have multiple globules form, then tend to blend together to form a larger one. At first glance, this would seem to contradict what was stated about entropy. However, the TOTAL entropy WAS increased depite achieving a perceived ordered state. You see, there are tons of water molecules solvating the oil, essentially forming little cages around the oil, decreasing the entropy (free motion) of the water molecules. Now, if you make a large oil globule, you can free up some of the water molecules making the cages, thus allowing for more freedom (entropy) of the water. There was a net gain of entropy.

That long and drawn out rant was to support my next claim. Oil is a hydrocarbon chain (Carbon and hydrogen) much like the fatty acids (except fatty acids have an additional headgroup that can mix with water. Now, these fatty acids can aggregate naturally to form the basic cell membrane that makes up every cell of our body. They do this spontaneously without any intervention.

DNA readily forms a double helix spontenously in aqueous (water) solutions...etc. i could go on...

One more rant: Speciation happens all the time that we can observe. Some plants have been known to interbreed with others to give rise to new species of plants that can reproduce among themselves, but not with the parent plants.
For instance, if you take two plants each with 2 chromosomes, and interbreed them, you can get a plant with 4...a new species that cannot breed with eithe of the plants with 2. So if the speciation can occur, I would argue a macroevolution, then it could be reasonable to assume that it has occurred in other instances.

I had a recent conversation with a fellow Christian (yes I am a Christian), though she was a literalist and I am not. We discussed evolution and the possibility thereof. I gave her the above speciation argument and she concurred that that type of evolution could occur. So I made the next leap of logic. We know that mutations can spontaneously occur (a microevolution, if you will). Plants have been shown to speciate when exposed to different environments over a long period of time. Studies have been done where rifts have split the same same for sufficient time where the two plants can no longer breed together.

The reason I start with plants is because they are easier to swallow that animals (all plants look essentially the same). Now let's jump to animals, in particular humans. There have been several humanoid remains that have been unearthed. Some have dubbed them the missing link between man and ape. Having the same speciation arguments in mind, I would not find it implausible to suggest that these humanoids may have been our predecesors. Furthermore, the 98% genetic agreement with the chimp suggest a close relationship that may be due to an evolutionary lineage. Other instances that tend to support this claim further involve the existence of inactive gene families within our DNA that resemble active genes in other species. Why would there be DNA that is not used if our creator made us directly?

Perhaps this evidence is not absolutely convincing to prove evolution is the answer. My fellow christian friend asked me: "would you not agree that the genetic similarity among species suggest a common creator?"...I said i agree with that as the possible answer, and asked "would you not agree that it could be possible that it suggest a common lineage and speciation via evolution?"

..ok...now back to my paper due tomorrow.

John D.

05-07-2003, 04:06 AM

****! Nice post! Good job man! Pure science. Got to love it.

Ironman_81

05-07-2003, 04:33 AM

wow...I didnt realize I'd written that much

PsychoJr

05-07-2003, 10:34 AM

[ QUOTE ]
msickbikes said:
The only life mentioned in the Bible is:
1.God Himself
2.Jesus
3.Holy Spirit(all three of which were eternally present)
4.The angels(created to serve and worship God)
5.Man
5.animals, birds,plant life
6.woman

Dinosaurs are even mentioned in the Bible,but nothing of extra-terrestial life forms.The way I see it, the Bible contains all truth, and if they are not mentioned in God's word, they are not what I would call truth.

[/ QUOTE ]

ha ha. The Bible didn't mention televisions either, but they exist. It's not something I dwell on, but the existence of other lifeforms doesn't seem to have any relevance to my faith.

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 01:52 PM

[ QUOTE ]
ha ha. The Bible didn't mention televisions either, but they exist. It's not something I dwell on, but the existence of other lifeforms doesn't seem to have any relevance to my faith.

[/ QUOTE ]

First off, re-read the entire post. I showed that for their to be salvation for another kind of extraterrestrial life that Jesus would have had to die there too. That is not biblical. The logical conclusion is that there is no one else to die for.

We talked about an increase in technology already.

The bible doesn't have to say:

Psalm 301:32

In the last days, man will invent televison.

The bible mentions television indirectly and I will be glad to show you where. But first of all know that as our technology increases(see my above post about Daniel), we see how biblical prophecy makes more and more sense.

Revelation chapter 1:

 7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.


Notice. "every eye shall see him", and "all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him."

This is a reference to the second coming of Jesus at the battle of Armageddon. A century ago, ministers were baffled and perplexed how the those across the globe would see Jesus return.

As I said with increases in technology biblical prophecy makes more and more sense.

What have we all been doing the past 3 months?

Watched the War in Iraq live on TV.

A decade ago during the gulf war we saw bits and pieces, now we see everything live. The technology in this area is doubled. And will probaby double again in the next decade.

The battle of Armageddon will no doubt be seen on TV.

and every eye shall see him,

Every eye, that includes the US, even though the battle takes place in Israel.

And again, we see the internet and TV in action

Revelation 11

 7 And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.

8 And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.

9 And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.

10 And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.

11 And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.


 And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half 

Here we see all nations and tounges viewing the events of the two witnesses. TV and the internet again.

Jesus said, "The message will be preached to all nations"

This is now possible through the internet and TV.

Behind the scenes we have seen many come to know the Lord from this site, and many others become stronger in their faith.

Hey ironman81! First nice spinal erector development!

That's awesome you're a Christian, and I will address your post in it's entirely later.

[ QUOTE ]
I just wanted to elaborate further on the scientific nature of things.

[/ QUOTE ]

We need to realize that a lot of what you said isn't hard science but only a theory. Science means "to know". We do not know that the extent of the universe as a closed system or opened system. I will elaborate later.

[ QUOTE ]
DNA readily forms a double helix spontenously in aqueous (water) solutions...etc. i could go on...

[/ QUOTE ]

As will I. Information never arises from a state of chaos. I will discuss Information theory later as well.

[ QUOTE ]
Furthermore, the 98% genetic agreement with the chimp suggest a close relationship that may be due to an evolutionary lineage.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is something else I will address. We often here this "98%" as though it's proof for evolution. In reality it means nothing. First of all 2% difference is huge, secondly it means nothing anyway.

For example, we have 50% genetic agreement with banannas.

Does that mean I'm 50% bannana?

No. The logical flow of this type of arguement leads to a dead end.

Secondly, what evolutionists claim as "proof for a common ancestor" could just as easily be "proof of a common designer", which is the stance I would take.

But before I get into the specifics of your post, let me address this biblically:

 8 But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.

Here we see a prophecy of God the Father telling God the Son(Jesus) his throne is from eternity past to eternity future.

9 Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

 10 And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:


The Lord created the earth and the universe(heavens)

11 They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment;

12 And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.


God was here before us. He created it all. If we want to know the truth we need to look to the creator, not the creation's limited perceptions.

 1 Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.


We need to keep this thought close to our hearts, lest we make the Word of God null and void in our minds.

Isaiah 55:

 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.


This is a nice way for God to say. I'm smart and you're not.

We need to look to God's Word before faulty man's limited mind.

PsychoJr

05-07-2003, 02:56 PM

I appeciate your post, Old School, but I think you are taking it a bit far.

"First off, re-read the entire post. I showed that for their to be salvation for another kind of extraterrestrial life that Jesus would have had to die there too. That is not biblical. The logical conclusion is that there is no one else to die for."

How do we know he didn't die there too. I think the Bible was written for us alone.

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 03:13 PM

First, my posts always end up long too!LOL /forum/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Secondly, let me give a defenition of entropy:

1.For a closed thermodynamic system, a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.
2.A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.
3.A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.
4.The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
5.Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.

Firstly, of course, the "law" of entropy itself appears to bring about great debate as to its true meaning, as does "closed systems", "open systems", "isolated systems" and other such "systems", particularly in relation to the universe. Which in itself makes it difficult to take a categorical "scientific" stand on the entropy issue.

That is why I advise against using the thermodynamics argument, and recommend concentrating on information.

The universe is running down, i.e. as a whole, not that everything in the universe is running down . This commits the fallacy of division (e.g. an elephant is heavy, therefore all its atoms are heavy).

[ QUOTE ]
There is this device physicists and chemists use to describe the state of randomness: entropy. The general trend is for the universe to tend to increase this and is based in the probability of exisiting in a particular state of order (macrostate).

[/ QUOTE ]

It is wrong to equate such an anthropomorphic conception of "running down" with thermodynamic entropy increase. This is because even processes which we would call "building up" will still increase the overall entropy of the universe.

Yes, a garment wearing out is an expression of the second law, but the manufacture of a pristine garment also increases the overall entropy of the universe.

What is contrary to Scripture is death of nephesh animals before sin, and suffering (or "groaning in travail"(Rom. 8:20-22)). It is more likely that God withdrew some of His sustaining power at the Fall. He still sustains the universe (Col. 1:17) otherwise it would cease to exist.

[ QUOTE ]
They do this spontaneously without any intervention.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Second Law can be stated in many different ways:

1.that the entropy of the universe tends towards a maximum (in simple terms, entropy is a measure of disorder)

2.usable energy is running out

3.information tends to get scrambled

4.order tends towards disorder

5.a random jumble won't organize itself

It also depends on the type of system:

1.An isolated system exchanges neither matter nor energy with its surroundings. The total entropy of an isolated system never decreases. The universe is an isolated system, so is running down.

2.A closed system exchanges energy but not matter with its surroundings. In this case, the 2nd Law is stated such that the total entropy of the system and surroundings never decreases.

3.An open system exchanges both matter and energy with its surroundings. Certainly, many evolutionists claim that the 2nd Law doesn't apply to open systems. But this is false. Dr John Ross of Harvard University states:

"...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems.There is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself."

Open systems still have a tendency to disorder. There are special cases where local order can increase at the expense of greater disorder elsewhere. One case is crystallization.

The open systems argument does not help evolution. Raw energy cannot generate the specified complex information in living things. Undirected energy just speeds up destruction. Just standing out in the sun won't make you more complex -the human body lacks the mechanisms to harness raw solar energy. If you stood in the sun too long, you would get skin cancer, because the sun's undirected energy will cause mutations. (Mutations are copying errors in the genes that nearly always lose information).

Similarly, undirected energy flow though an alleged primordial soup will break down the complex molecules of life faster than they are formed.

It's like trying to run a car by pouring petrol on it and setting it alight. No, a car will run only if the energy in petrol is harnessed via the pistons, crankshaft, etc.

To make proteins, a cell uses the information coded in the DNA and a very complex decoding machine. In the lab, chemists must use sophisticated machinery to make the building blocks combine in the right way. Raw energy would result in wrong combinations and even destruction of the building blocks.

The information in even the simplest organism would take about a thousand pages to write out. Human beings have 500 times as much information as this. It is a flight of fantasy to think that undirected processes could generate this huge amount of information, just as it would be to think that a cat walking on a keyboard could write a book.

[ QUOTE ]
Some plants have been known to interbreed with others to give rise to new species of plants that can reproduce among themselves, but not with the parent plants.
For instance, if you take two plants each with 2 chromosomes, and interbreed them, you can get a plant with 4...a new species that cannot breed with eithe of the plants with 2. So if the speciation can occur, I would argue a macroevolution, then it could be reasonable to assume that it has occurred in other instances.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is not macro evolution. Speciation is not macro evolution.

Using your plant example let's look at a recent study.

Two British scientists have reported their findings of a new species of a type of weed known as a groundsel. The title of their paper seems innocuous enough, merely stating that this new weed "Senecio eboracensis" is a hybrid between two other groundsel species.

But then they go on to say this is proof of evolution. Of course here's the old "switch and bait again". Using micro to prove macro, and including both defenitons in one word.

But is it?

The formation of a new species (i.e. "speciation") really conflict with Scripture? Not at all, as we have repeatedly shown. Rapid diversification within the Genesis kinds "including speciation" is a specific prediction of the Creation model.

In this particular case, the hybrid weed, called the York Groundsel,is apparently unable to breed back to either of its parent species, the Common Groundsel and the Oxford Ragwort. This reproductive isolation is not evolution of the sort which would be capable of eventually turning microbes into magnolias and microbiologists.

 That sort of change requires the generation of new genetic information in the DNA. Rather, a hybrid" or cross between two species"results from the recombination of existing information from both parent species; no new information has been generated. 

 "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so." 

In the last analysis, groundsels breeding groundsels is not evolution.

[ QUOTE ]
Plants have been shown to speciate when exposed to different environments over a long period of time. Studies have been done where rifts have split the same same for sufficient time where the two plants can no longer breed together.

[/ QUOTE ]

Micro evolution does not prove macro in the slightest. In fact we see repeatedly, that micro evolution disproves macro!

[ QUOTE ]
The reason I start with plants is because they are easier to swallow that animals

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. It's like trying to swallow a watermelon whole.

[ QUOTE ]
Why would there be DNA that is not used if our creator made us directly?

[/ QUOTE ]

When introns were discovered, some evolutionists suggested that these represented "junk" DNA. Introns, as well as other sequences which did not code for protein, were considered to be left-overs of evolutionary ancestry "vestigial" DNA.

To quote Dr Donald James Batten:

[ QUOTE ]
Little by little, the so-called "junk" DNA is revealing its functions.2 In a further revelation, researchers have found that mutations in an intron interfere with imprinting, the process by which only certain maternal or paternal genes are expressed, not both. Expression of both genes results in a variety of diseases and cancers.3,4 The discovered intron segment in some way promotes the transcription of an antisense-RNA sequence which is involved in suppressing the expression of the paternal gene in this case.

The burgeoning field of molecular biology continues to reveal unimagined complexity in the biochemistry of cells. It would be foolish indeed to pronounce anything as &#8216;junk&#8217;. Like the &#8216;vestigial organs&#8217; idea, it seems that evolutionary ideas about the molecular machines in cells feed on lack of knowledge.

[/ QUOTE ]

This goes back to the 98% statement.

The belief that DNA research improves our understanding of human origins is a untrue. Although the field of comparative genetics has revealed some interesting facts about the similarities (and differences) of DNA among different species, it says nothing about the origin of our DNA or the historical relationship between species.

Just because we share half our genes with bananas, doesn't mean we're "half a banana." Similarly, if there were 98% genetic similarity between humans and chimps wouldn't mean that we were 98% chimps. But in fact, recent evidence indicates that the genetic similarity is significantly less than this.

DNA obeys the laws of physics and chemistry, but it carries something much more than that, something which is not known to arise from mere physics and chemistry...information.

A car functions according to the physical laws. there is nothing "spooky"that makes cars operate. But the physical laws plus time plus chance could never build a car. The missing ingredient is information--the intelligent purposive design impressed onto those raw materials.

In the same way, DNA carries the blueprint for living things, which is transmitted from one generation to the next, like a series of robots programmed to pass on their programs to other robots. But since observational science has never revealed any natural process that can create information, i.e. "write the program" the most logical conclusion is that the programs themselves, i.e. the information in the original created kinds, arose from an intelligent mind-the same way programs arise today.

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 03:18 PM

[ QUOTE ]
but I think you are taking it a bit far.

[/ QUOTE ]

In what manner? The original question asked for a biblical answer.I tried my best to find one. If you have a better explanation, I'd love to hear it. I'm open on this topic.

Please show me biblically a contradiction to these two verses. And this is only two. I can get more if you'd like:

Hebrews 9:

24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:

25 Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others;

26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

Christ only died once, and that is the only time he will do it.

25 Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others;

26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

1 Peter:

For Christ also hath ONCE suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

PsychoJr

05-07-2003, 03:30 PM

I think you missed my point.

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 03:39 PM

I guess so.

I saw your logic as being,

"God doesn't directly mention TV", therefore, "ET might exist".

In other words, "If God doesn't say it directly, then he didn't address it at all".

I see that as faulty logic. For example abortion is not directly mentioned in the bible. But using references to "life at conception" and "Thou shalt not murder" we can arrive at the conclusion that abortion is biblically wrong.

I tried to show that God doesn't have to say everything directly for us to arrive at a logical conclusion using biblical reference points.

- All of creation(this would include aliens- "all") is under the curse of sin.
- The bible clearly states, Jesus only died for mankind.
- To attone for ET's sins, he would have had to die on their planets as well
- The bible says clearly he only died once and will only die once
- Conclusion: There is no one else to die for.

05-07-2003, 04:15 PM

Just my opinion, but I think it is a mistake, and even dangerous to draw scientific conclusions about our universe from verses in the Bible.

The Bible teaches us about God, about our relationship with Him, and His desire for us - to be with Him for all eternity in Heaven. But God did not give us the Sacred Scriptures to use as a scientific reference source. Instead, He gave us our senses, our intellect, and the unquenchable thirst to understand the world around us, so that we would, over time, come to a greater understanding of His creation.

The Bible is the inspired Word of God. It contains the Truth. But it is not some hokus pokus magical book that has every answer to every question ever thought of by man.

The Bible does not address extra terrestrial life. And it doesn't matter.

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 05:08 PM

[ QUOTE ]
But God did not give us the Sacred Scriptures to use as a scientific reference source.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree the bible isn't a science book, but where it discusses science it's 100% accurate.

[ QUOTE ]
The Bible is the inspired Word of God. It contains the Truth. But it is not some hokus pokus magical book that has every answer to every question ever thought of by man.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but it does contains foundational truth.

For example, Creationists argue about the mechanism for the flood waters. But the foundation is that the flood happened. Which is derived from the Word of God.

Creationists argue Evolution is wrong. We don't know all the mechanims of creation, but the foundation is Creation is right. Which is derived from the Word of God.

"39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds."

God gives us solid foundations, then enter what you said...
"He gave us our senses, our intellect, and the unquenchable thirst to understand the world around us, so that we would, over time, come to a greater understanding of His creation."

[ QUOTE ]
The Bible does not address extra terrestrial life. And it doesn't matter.

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe it does give an indirect answer to ET, just as it says abortion is murder without directly stating it.

For example: Jeh. 4

 2 Thus saith the LORD that made thee, and formed thee from the womb , which will help thee; Fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen.



Exodus 20:

 13 Thou shalt not kill.


Conclusion: Life begins in the womb. Thou shalt not murder = Abortion is murder.

Now ET;

 21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.



Adam brought death via sin.

 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.



...to all creation.

So the whole of creation is under the curse of sin and death because of Adam.

"all creation" means all creation. Not all creation except ETs.

So now we've established Adam's sin has caused death to all of creation, which can only be redeemed by our Savior Jesus Christ.

Now I will show that Christ's death is only for those of this world:

 1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.

8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.

10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

13 And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;


Christ came to save this world, he is glorified on earth, which is his only concern, he mentions the Holy Spirit is only for those of the earth, etc.....again...

15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.



The World. Emphasis on singular.

17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.


Christ came to redeem mankind on earth. That is it.
Also this shows that without Christ dying on their planet they are condemed already.

 17 All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.

18 We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.

19 And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.

20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life


The world is the only place where salvation is needed. Yet the existance of ET's means they are fallen creatures as well. Remember "all creation".

 6 Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth:


We see time and time again, that Christ came to die for the citizens of THIS world. And for mankind. Not for any body else.

This would mean that Christ would have HAD to go to their planet and die as well.

Christ said He died once and that is it:

 1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:

6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.


 17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last:

18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore , Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.


I could continue but I think you guys see my point.

Christ died for human beings, no one else.

Maybe there are planets with animals on it. I don't know.

But I truely feel it is biblically sound that their is no Intelligent creation(in regards to knowing Good and evil) anywere except right here, the place Jesus died and rose again. That is the only creation he mentions made in his image, and the only one he died for.

If there are ET's they are born into immediate ****ation because Jesus didn't die for them, and they are under the curse of sin.

If someone wants to show me where I am wrong, please do. As I said I am open to this topic, and would love to think there is other life. I consider myself decently versed in the bible. And the notion of ET's defies everything I know about salvation through Jesus.

I just can't see it scriputurally. In fact biblically it seems to defy this notion.

Palmetto State Dude

05-07-2003, 05:29 PM

[ QUOTE ]
OldSchool said:If there are ET's they are born into immediate ****ation because Jesus didn't die for them, and they are under the curse of sin.

[/ QUOTE ]

Could the ETs be intelligent and considered "animals", and thus not be ****ed? I understand where you're coming from with Christ dying only once for mankind, but I'm unclear: Are animals on this planet ****ed when they die? Does "****ed" mean you go to hell or, you just die and "return to dust" and don't go to heaven? I'd hate to think that my dog is spending eternity in hell because of our sins. That wouldn't be fair. Duchess (my Irish Setter when I was kid) did nothing to anybody ever. Or did Christ die for animals on this planet, too. You see what I mean?

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 05:59 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Could the ETs be intelligent and considered "animals", and thus not be ****ed?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well first of all I want to state it would be exceedingly strange for God to create animal life on another planet.

All I can say is that he makes no mention of it.

But I feel he makes it indirectly clear that man is the only creature created in his image. Man is the only one He died for. Man is the only one whom has the Holy Spirit. Man is the only one who has a choice about eternity. Man is the only one God loved enough to die for. "For God so loved the world". Not worlds.

Now to your question.

By intelligent I mean spiritual beings such as ourselves. I also think while animals may have some capacity to reason, they are largely driven by instinct(which by the way is another example of creationism), not by logic and reason. Man is made in the image of God and I think it's clear this has given us huge advantages over all other animals as far as intelligence is concerned. I believe God made us this way so we could comprehend him, love him, and enjoy his creation.

So from a biblical perspective for an ET to be intelligent, and as most believe, much more intelligent than us, they would have to be made in the image of God as we are, knowing good and evil.

By intelligent I also mean understanding Good and evil as we do. For instance a 2 year old does not understand the difference from Good and Evil. Therefore a child who dies is instantly in heaven. Animals are in this same boat. I can train my dog not to go to the bathroom in my house. But he doesn't know what good or evil is. The level of understanding for intelligent spiritual beings is above this marker, as we know the difference, and can be held accountable for our sins.

Animals, infants(up to age of understanding), and aborted fetuses go instantly to heaven.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd hate to think that my dog is spending eternity in hell because of our sins. That wouldn't be fair.

[/ QUOTE ]

We are born spiritually dead because of inherited sin via Adam. Animals do not have spirits like us. There are neither saved nor ****ed. Man is unique in this regard.

However as I said, all of creation is under the curse of sin. The bible says animals and all of creation are under this curse, until God returns to destroy death.

Let me break it down like this.

We are the only ones that need reedemed. We are born spiritually dead, and condemed to die physically as a result, as is all of creation(see my above post).

The only hope we have is the resurrection through the spirit of Jesus.

 45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

47 The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.

48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

51Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.



Our sinful flesh can not inherit the kindgom of God. As you know we are constantly battleing our flesh, even when we are saved. Our great hope is the day we are fashioned in the glory of Jesus. When we will no longer be bound to these sinful bodies and can live with God in heaven.

If a loved one in Christ dies today, there body is buried and there spirit goes to be with God. They are spiritually alive by the blood of Jesus. But there bodies are still sown in corruption. Until the rapture they will remain only in spirit in heaven. God can not tolerate the presence of sin. But thanks to His son who died for us, and took our sins, he became a worthy sacrifice so that our bodies could be changed like his did at his resurrection.

During the Resurrection Jesus will change our sinful bodies into new glorious bodies, just like the body He recieved at his resurrection! We will no longer be bound by the law of sin and we will never die physically again!

Phillipians:

21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.



The bible says this is our great hope:

 13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.



[ QUOTE ]
You see what I mean?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes and have no fear. Animals in heaven is something else I've studied. We can get into that if you want, but animals do not go to hell.

Omskakas

05-07-2003, 06:29 PM

Oh, this thread has turned to debate about evolution and creationism. I better stay out of it... /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

John D.

05-07-2003, 09:01 PM

First off, re-read the entire post. I showed that for their to be salvation for another kind of extraterrestrial life that Jesus would have had to die there too. That is not biblical. The logical conclusion is that there is no one else to die for.

Perhaps these aliens didn't fall for the same mistakes as man. Maybe their "Adam" didn't eat any of the fruit therefore no original sin. It is possible.

John D.

05-07-2003, 09:25 PM

Hi Oldschool,

Okay, hopefully I won't make you mad again but here we go.

Here is my main problem with your point of view. I know you believe that the bible is the be all and end all but I'd like you to at least consider this.

Let's say the bible is God's word for arguement sake and we ignore all other spiritual writings. Now, God wants us to have free will and to grow spiritually and I guess in knowledge. Now perhaps God gave us strong hints that it(or he) was behind all creation of life. That he made the sun, the moons, and everything else. Okay, fine. I don't think he actually mentioned specifics though, I could be wrong and if so show me. However, though science we have found HOW the stars, moons, and planets were made. Notice I said how but not who. God may still be directly involved in making these bodies, all we did is find out how (in theory of course). I mean I don't remember from CCD (after school Catholic studies) the mention of black holes but we've found them. Second, lets assume for a minute that a day to God is a heck of a lot different then what we consider a day. Therefore, a day for him maybe like 1 trillion years to us. Finally, isn't it possible that God just wanted the bible to mention the word of God for man and man only. Isn't it possible that their is another planet with life that may have a similar bible with the same rules but no mention of us so we can grow individually and then become one in heaven. My man point is that in science we say it is possible but we don't know, however in religion (take your pick) it's all or nothing. I guess that's why I like science better. To me, personally it gives more credit to God because as a scientist you have to say that you can't disprove something until you actually disprove which is why I think a God exist. I guess I just want to sum this up by saying I'm sorry for ticking you off. It wasn't intentional. Personally, I just think God might have left some stuff out for us to find on our own to test us and see how we grow. After all, no one really knows why, when, or how God works. It just does.

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 10:21 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps these aliens didn't fall for the same mistakes as man. Maybe their "Adam" didn't eat any of the fruit therefore no original sin. It is possible.

[/ QUOTE ]

Regardless, the bible says "all of creation". I've said that repeatedly, but since it's hard to grasp I'll repeat it.

Romans 8:

 19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,

21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.



Say the words, "the whole creation".

That would include any possible ET. "The whole creation", not "the whole creation but aliens".

The point being, regardless if they descended from Adam, and inherited a sinful nature, they are partakers of the curse. Again, The whole creation 

I agree this makes no sense. Why should they be cursed? Simple. There is no ET!

I don't know how many times I can say that or any other way to make it make sense. Adam, brought the curse of sin and death to ALL of the creation.

[ QUOTE ]
That he made the sun, the moons, and everything else. Okay, fine. I don't think he actually mentioned specifics though, I could be wrong and if so show me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Gen. 1:

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.


You've went so many directions with your post, I don't know where to begin.

First off no one has seen a star form. We know what they're made of(kind of). That's it. Their formation is not hard science. It's all speculative theory. Put 10 cosmologists in a room and you'll get 10 different theorys of star formation.

You seem to use the word science a lot as though what you say is factual and I what I'm saying is fairy tale. The truth is no one has seen a star form.

To quote Dr.Ronald G. Samec

[ QUOTE ]
As a former planetarium director and a current professor of astronomy, I have shown slides of the 'eagle nebula' and other similar gas complexes such as the 'horse-head nebula' in Orion. These two regions are favourites since they show more than one type of nebula.

These regions are called dark, reflection, and emission nebulae.

Dark nebulae are made mostly of dust.

Emission nebulae are fluorescent regions of gas glowing in the presence of embedded stars.

Reflection nebulae are cold un-ionized gas.

When dark nebulae collide with emission nebulae, features like those noted in the HST image result. The dust pushes its way through the hot gas. Gas along the front edge of the collision compresses and glows hotter. This results in the whitish appearing areas at the edges of the dark 'fingers' of dust.

I presume that the temperatures of these areas are near 10,000 K so that they glow like the surfaces of stars of similar temperature, that is, white. Gas at such temperatures will quickly disperse and there is no chance of it forming stars. We should not be convinced that embedded stars exist within the 'finger tips' of these dust regions unless they are actually imaged.

I strongly suspect that they are not there, and this is simply another example of the strong publicity emphasis surrounding the Hubble Space Telescope. Without such exciting 'new discoveries' coming regularly, the HST could fall under the knife of legislative budget cuts.



[/ QUOTE ]

Please show me one example. Black holes are an example of a decay. First off, no black holes have yet been positively identified, and not all astronomers accept their existence. So that's not hard science. But I agree they probably do. But even if black holes do exist, they give no support to the theory of evolution. Black holes are simply in line with the fact that the universe is decaying. Things do not spontaneously improve and become more orderly, as evolution theory would have people believe. They decay, run down, and lose their orderliness.

Evolutionists generally believe that stars formed by the collapse of gas clouds under gravity. This is supposed to generate the millions of degrees required for nuclear fusion.

But most clouds would be so hot that outward pressure would prevent collapse. Evolutionists must find a way for the cloud to cool down. One such mechanism might be through molecules in the cloud colliding and radiating enough of the heat away.

But according to theory, the "big bang" made mainly hydrogen, with a little helium;the other elements supposedly formed inside stars. Helium can't form molecules at all, so the only molecule that could be formed would be molecular hydrogen (H2). Even this is easily destroyed by ultraviolet light, and usually needs dust grains to form and dust grains require heavier elements. So the only coolant left is atomic hydrogen, and this would leave gas clouds over a hundred times too hot to collapse.

Show me one star we have seen form, or any solid science as to how they're formed. Then get back to me with "science".

[ QUOTE ]
Second, lets assume for a minute that a day to God is a heck of a lot different then what we consider a day. Therefore, a day for him maybe like 1 trillion years to us.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now you're condending the word "day".

John 3:12 If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

That is one day. If God meant it to be trillions of years, there are multiple other hebrew donations to represent long ages.

The major reason why people doubt that the days of creation are 24-hour literal days usually has nothing to do with what the Bible says, but comes from outside influences. For example, many believe that because scientists have supposedly proved the earth to be billions of years old then the days of creation cannot be ordinary days.

If I said I was going on vacation for 14 days, I'm sure no one would ask me, "Now, did you mean you'll be back in two weeks, or are you speaking metaphorically, and you'd actually be returning 14 years from now?"

Yet many people continue to question our all-knowing God when He says He created in six normal-length days and rested on the seventh (Exodus 20:11), "Did you mean one week, or a few billion years?"

When Moses, under the inspiration of God, compiled the account of creation in Genesis 1, he used the Hebrew word yom for "day". He combined yom with numbers ("first day", "second day", "third day", etc.) and with the words "evening and morning", and the first time he employed it he carefully defined the meaning of yom (used in this way) as being one night/day cycle (Genesis 1:5).

Now we need to discuss a basic biblical law. The Law of first mention. If we see something declared for the first time in the bible, it is the basis of truth for the rest of the bible. For example in Joel, we see the fig tree represents the nation of Israel. That's why when Jesus refers to the fig tree, we know he is talking about Israel. And that in the last days, Israel will regain their nation.

Throughout the Bible, yom used in this way always refers to a normal 24-hour day. There is thus a prima facie case that, when God used the word yom in this way, he intended to convey that the days of creation were 24 hours long.

Let us now consider what other words God could have used, if He had wanted to convey a much longer period of time than 24 hours.

There are several Hebrew words which refer to a long period of time. These include qedem which is the main one-word term for "ancient" and is sometimes translated "of old"; olam means "everlasting" or "eternity" and is translated "perpetual", "of old" or "for ever"; dor means " revolution of time" or "an age" and is sometimes translated "generations"; tamid means "continually" or "for ever"; ad means "unlimited time" or "for ever"; orek when used with yom is translated "length of days"; shanah means "a year" or "a revolution of time" (from the change of seasons); netsach means "for ever". Words for a shorter time span include eth (a general term for time); and moed, meaning "seasons" or "festivals".

If God had wanted to tell us that the creation events took place a long time in the past, there were several ways He could have said it:

yamim (plural of yom) alone or with "evening and morning", would have meant "and it was days of evening and morning". This would have been the simplest way, and could have signified many days and so the possibility of a vast age.

qedem by itself or with "days" would have meant "and it was from days of old".

olam with "days" would also have meant "and it was from days of old".

So if God had intended to communicate an ancient creation to us, there were at least three constructions He could have used to tell us this. However, God chose not to use any of these.

If God had wanted to tell us that creation started in the past but continued into the future, meaning that creation took place by some sort of theistic evolution, there were several ways He could have said it:

dor used either alone or with "days", "days" and "nights", or "evening and morning", could have signified "and it was generations of days and nights". This would have been the best word to indicate evolution's alleged aeons, if this had been meant.

olam with the preposition le, plus "days" or "evening and morning" could have signified "perpetual"; another construction le olam va-ed means "to the age and onward" and is translated "for ever and ever" in Exodus 15:18.

tamid with "days", "days" and "nights", or "evening" and "morning", could have signified "and it was the continuation of days'.

ad used either alone or with olam could have signified "and it was for ever".

shanah (year) could have been used figuratively for "a long time", especially in the plural.

yom rab literally means "a long day" ( "long season" in Joshua 24:7, or "long time" in the New American Standard Bible). This construction could well have been used by God if He had meant us to understand that the "days" were long periods of time.

If God had wanted us to believe that he used a long drawn-out creative process, there were several words He could have used to tell us this. However, God chose not to use any of these.

If God had wanted to say that creation took place in the past, while giving no real indication of how long the process took, there were ways He could have done it:

yom combined with "light" and "darkness", would have signified "and it was a day of light and darkness". This could be ambiguous because of the symbolic use of "light" and "darkness" elsewhere in the Old Testament. However, yom with "evening and morning", especially with a number preceding it, can never be ambiguous.

eth ("time") combined with "day" and "night" as in Jeremiah 33:20 and Zechariah 14:7 could have been ambiguous. Likewise eth combined with "light" and "darkness" (a theoretical construction). If any of these forms had been used, the length of the "days" of creation would have been widely open for debate. However, God chose not to use any of these.

Why did God not use any of these words with reference to the creation days, seeing that He used them to describe other things? Clearly it was His intention that the creation days should be regarded as being normal earth-rotation days, and it was not His intention that any longer time-frames should be inferred.

If there were death, disease, and suffering before Adam rebelled then what did sin do to the world? What does Paul mean in Romans 8 when he says the whole of creation groans in pain because of the Curse? How can all things be restored in the future to no more death and suffering, unless the beginning was also free of death and suffering? The whole message of the Gospel falls apart if one allows millions of years for the creation of the world.

If God had wanted to tell us it was an ancient creation, then there were several good ways He could have done this. If theistic evolution had been intended, then there were several constructions He could have used. If the time factor had been meant to be ambiguous, then the Hebrew language had ways of saying this. However, God chose not to use any construction which would have communicated a meaning other than a literal solar day.

The only meaning which is possible from the Hebrew words used is that the "days" of creation were 24-hour days. God could not have communicated this meaning more clearly than He did in Genesis 1.

 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.



[ QUOTE ]
Finally, isn't it possible that God just wanted the bible to mention the word of God for man and man only.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is excatly what I've been saying all along! /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ QUOTE ]
Isn't it possible that their is another planet with life that may have a similar bible with the same rules but no mention of us so we can grow individually and then become one in heaven

[/ QUOTE ]

Like I said though, if there is ET's out there, according the bible they are under the curse. Jesus would have had to die there too, and that is unbiblical. No one has come forth with any verses to contend this.

[ QUOTE ]
My man point is that in science we say it is possible but we don't know, however in religion (take your pick) it's all or nothing

[/ QUOTE ]

Insert "God" for "religion", and I think we're getting to the bottom of this.

[ QUOTE ]
Personally, I just think God might have left some stuff out for us to find on our own to test us and see how we grow.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. But he gave us solid foundations. To quote my above post:

Yes, but it does contains foundational truth.

For example, Creationists argue about the mechanism for the flood waters. But the foundation is that the flood happened. Which is derived from the Word of God.

Creationists argue Evolution is wrong. We don't know all the mechanims of creation, but the foundation is Creation is right. Which is derived from the Word of God.

"39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds."

God gives us solid foundations, then enter what you said...
"He gave us our senses, our intellect, and the unquenchable thirst to understand the world around us, so that we would, over time, come to a greater understanding of His creation."


[ QUOTE ]
After all, no one really knows why, when, or how God works. It just does.

[/ QUOTE ]

He has revealed himself to us. I have no problem accepting it. If God said, "I created", I believe it. If he says, "I did it in 6 days", I believe it no problem. If God says, "I only died for man", I believe it.

"Let God be true, but every man a liar" (Romans 3:4)

Chicker

05-07-2003, 10:53 PM

I have a comment, but I'm open to being corrected. The bible was no written by God himself, it was written by several different people who witnessed him, am I wrong? And when you read the different chapters (using the word chapters for lack of the real word) do you not see varying interpretations? I could be wrong, but my mom has a Ph.D in Theology and I thought I've heard her discussing with others the difference between each book within the bible, and how their interpretations vary? Again, I know nothing about the Bible, I'm not religious, so correct me if I'm way off. hehe...

Anyway, as for the aliens, I believe that it's possible for there to be life on other planets...perhaps another internet forum on some other planet is having the same debate as we are. Ha ha... /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Adam Knowlden

05-07-2003, 11:07 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I could be wrong, but my mom has a Ph.D in Theology and I thought I've heard her discussing with others the difference between each book within the bible, and how their interpretations vary?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes the bible has many authors. It's a collection of books.

Think of it this way. If I met you for the first time would I know everything about you? No way. Over time I would learn more and more.

This is the same way with the Word. Over time God has revealed more and more about Himself to us.

But although it has many authors, it has only one Author(captial A)

16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:



I don't know what you mean by "interpertations" though.

If you mean contradictions. Then no.

Chicker

05-07-2003, 11:22 PM

I meant interpretations of what God said and meant...because they all seem to have slightly different ideas about what God really wanted people to be doing...?

John D.

05-07-2003, 11:22 PM

Okay, I think I'm getting to the bottom of this. Here is where I think we disagree. You take every word for the bible as the truth. I don't. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying God is lying. I'm saying that since it was writen by man that perhaps there are mistakes. Besides, I never said that the idea on how stars form is a law, but a theory. It's not concrete, I'll give you that but it is a theory and the lastest journals I've recieved from the American Meteorology Society founds some proof (although not concrete) of black holes. How does this lead to evolution? Well, you see if one can leave into question of how the universe was made (notice I didn't mention by who) then perhaps we can say the same about how life started. What we have here is a difference of words. You want to talk about who started it, I want to say how. Therefore, if evolution is possible then so are aliens.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Okay, on top is the passage you wrote. It mentions a lot about who made the sun and stars (God of course) but doesn't talk about how the mechanisms work. In fact in the "lesser light" we talk about the moon. Now we know today that the moon doesn't produce it's own light but the guys who wrote it thought so. Also, I've been watching discovery channel a lot and there are tons of programs that illustrate the birth of a star and the death via the Hubble Telescope. It is true we are still trying to understand how it happens but there is strong belief in the theory that, much like our sun, stars go through stages as seen on pictures seen on Hubble.

To quote Dr.Ronald G. Samec

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a former planetarium director and a current professor of astronomy, I have shown slides of the 'eagle nebula' and other similar gas complexes such as the 'horse-head nebula' in Orion. These two regions are favourites since they show more than one type of nebula.

These regions are called dark, reflection, and emission nebulae.

Dark nebulae are made mostly of dust.

Emission nebulae are fluorescent regions of gas glowing in the presence of embedded stars.

Reflection nebulae are cold un-ionized gas.

When dark nebulae collide with emission nebulae, features like those noted in the HST image result. The dust pushes its way through the hot gas. Gas along the front edge of the collision compresses and glows hotter. This results in the whitish appearing areas at the edges of the dark 'fingers' of dust.

I presume that the temperatures of these areas are near 10,000 K so that they glow like the surfaces of stars of similar temperature, that is, white. Gas at such temperatures will quickly disperse and there is no chance of it forming stars. We should not be convinced that embedded stars exist within the 'finger tips' of these dust regions unless they are actually imaged.

I strongly suspect that they are not there, and this is simply another example of the strong publicity emphasis surrounding the Hubble Space Telescope. Without such exciting 'new discoveries' coming regularly, the HST could fall under the knife of legislative budget cuts.

Well I find this interesting, however he mentions in this one case where the dust is burned up. However, are we to assume this is the case in all situation? Once again this is a theory not a law. These are good questions that have yet to be answered, but I think we will find the answers to them over time. I do agree with him that more money should be put into the search for these answers AND for all science for that matter like stem cell research.

In closing, what I feel is that we need to leave open the possibility because I don't think God told us everything. You do. That's cool, but I just have to disagree. I don't claim to know anything concrete on the universe or even how life started but I also won't ignore the possiblity of evolution and that it was just God's way of making things rather then believe in whosh! there's life. I guess that's just the scientist in me.

CoLDTuRKeY

05-07-2003, 11:34 PM

Hmm okay been watching this for a few days with fascination and thought I might jump in here with my humble opinion.
First off, I do believe that there has to be some other form of life out there, somewhere. Our small human minds cannot begin to realize the vastness of outer space. There cannot be any definate "end". We are but one tiny rock in infinity. Of course no one can say they know for sure that there is life on other planets but just thinking about the vastness of what I look up at every night, I would find it very hard to believe that there are only about 6 billion intelligent life forms in the entire universe.
I am a Christian as Ive stated before but I don't really follow the Bible. It is full of wisdom and does give you a good idea of how things COULD be but I personally don't believe that the Bible is the final say in how things are, were, and are going to be. Again, this is just my opinion and I could be wrong on both sides of the fence. Maybe there is no God, in which case I look like an ***. Or maybe the Bible truly is the absolute word of God in which case it is the absolute truth, in which case I look like an ***. But try to keep in mind that the Bible was written by men and has been passed on through nearly countless generations. This could both be its most strong and its weakest point.
Lastly, I do believe in evolution. This doesn't mean that I don't believe in God, simply that I don't agree with the Bible's way of looking at things. Each to his own on this one, I respect anyones opinion on this because we will most likely never know. So with that John D, I don't believe that religion is an "all or nothing" situation. I simply find things here way too orderly to have gotten this way by simple chance. There are far too many things that could have happened to this tiny rock by now that could have brought about the end of all of us but haven't. I just think there has to be something out there forcing things along. Well theres my 2 cents. Hope I didn't piss anyone off too much.
And Old School - props for your knowledge. Though I don't agree with some of what you say the better part of it almost leaves me in awe...

John D.

05-07-2003, 11:41 PM

Okay, now on this day thing. Okay, if you don't believe that all that evidence (carb dating and such) is wrong then please give me an example of it being wrong, that the earth is not as old as have been believe through various essays stating such. I mean, how can you dispute the age of the dinosaurs? How about the earliest single cell organisms? More over, are you saying that man was around when dinosaurs were walking around and if so then how come we have found no fosils of man dating back to dinosaurs? Also, how can you explain the different layers of the earth which have been seen when we dig for fosils? Is there scientific proof to dispute these claims? If so then please provide the work which does so. I got a friend who is a geologist who would love to study it.

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 12:07 AM

[ QUOTE ]
You take every word for the bible as the truth. I don't.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes you pick and chose what to believe, I do not.

[ QUOTE ]
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying God is lying.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes you are. Be consistent. You are saying God purposely tricked us. That is no different than lying. You also said you don't believe His Word.

[ QUOTE ]
saying that since it was writen by man that perhaps there are mistakes

[/ QUOTE ]

16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God,

[ QUOTE ]
It's not concrete, I'll give you that but it is a theory and the lastest journals I've recieved from the American Meteorology Society founds some proof (although not concrete) of black holes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is the real difference. You say you believe in "science" what you believe in is theories, as do I. Just different theories. I would contend that I too believe in science.

What you are revealing to me is a religion you adhere too. This conflict is really part of the basic fight that has existed for millenia -- it's between two religions -- those who choose God, and those who oppose Him. Henry Morris dubbed it "The Long War Against God." Phillip Johnson, Professor of Law at UC-Berkeley, wrote of this conflict, calling it "The Church of Darwin."

Creation and evolution is not a battle of science vs. religion ,but rather religion vs. religion.

Origins are ultimately religious.

[ QUOTE ]
You want to talk about who started it, I want to say how.

[/ QUOTE ]

No you want to find a naturalistic explanation.

For example show me:

1.Natural chemical processes that produces all of the components of life from non-life in quantities sufficient to account for all life on earth.
2.A natural process that purifies amino acids in their left handed form, and sugars in their right hand form for use as the building blocks of life.
3.The origin of the DNA, RNA, protein manufacturing process.
4.The origin of photosynthesis and the appearance of chlorophyll.
5.The origin of reproduction at the chemical level.
6.The origin of the genetic code and the chemical infrastructure to make it work.
7.Once you have determined what these processes are, show that these processes are much more likely to happen than the processes that break down the components of life.
8.Once you have demonstrated that the chemical origin of life is possible from off-the-shelf chemicals, show the biochemical changes that occur to increase the meaningful information content of organisms to produce the vast variety of creatures found today.
9.A corollary to this would be to show that mutations in the vast majority of cases are beneficial and promote evolution.

Evolution says, "no God is needed", creation says, "There would be no life without God".

You seek natural explanations to the above scenarios. I propose there are no natural explanations for creating information from nothing, the universe from nothing, all life from nothing, ect.

Time is always given supernatural properties. For example, if man walked through the air, we'd say that's a miracle. If he walks slowly is it less of a miracle?

If a princess kisses a frog and it turns into a prince, it's a miracle. But according to evolution the frog did turn into the prince.

The missing ingredient? time.

Why can time do things in the past it can't do now?

[ QUOTE ]
Also, I've been watching discovery channel a lot and there are tons of programs that illustrate the birth of a star and the death via the Hubble Telescope.

[/ QUOTE ]

They are deducing this through the red shift. If you want we can get into that. But you will find, no one has seen a star form. Only stars decaying. Again, give me an example of a star forming.

To quote Dr. Winberg:

"It is also a bit disturbing that all these estimates of the ages and compositions of the stars rest on elaborate calculations of what is going on inside them, but all that we observe is the light emitted from their surfaces."

Also don't get me started on the Discovery Channel.

They say some of the most ignorant things. On one program they said that whales used to walk around on land, then they said they used to be amphibians!!!LOL Come ON!

That takes some serious imagination on someone's part!

Then they did a special on, and they said frogs evolved jumping skills to get away from dinosaurs!

LMAO! Give me a break! Get this garbage out!!!!!

There's tons of good science to talk about on these shows without them telling me fairy tales about whales that used to walk on land and frogs that "learned" to jump because of dinosaurs!

Then The April 2002 Discover magazine said this:

"The universe burst into something from absolutely nothing;zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. "

Basically:

1 - This is the evolutionary formula for making a universe:

Nothing + nothing = two elements + time = 92 natural elements + time = all physical laws and a completely structured universe of galaxies, systems, stars, planets, and moons orbiting in perfect balance and order.

2 - This is the evolutionary formula for making life:

Dirt on rocks + water + time = living creatures.

Thanks for clearing that up Discovery! Man I was sooo lost before, but now I've seen the light!

Man how scientific.

[ QUOTE ]
In closing, what I feel is that we need to leave open the possibility because I don't think God told us everything. You do.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why do you keep saying that? Are you intentionally ignoring what I've said?

I said, and I repeat for the third time, God gave us foundations. He gave us our minds to learn about his creation.

If you chose to not believe those foundations that is your choice. But quit saying I said, "I get every answer out of the bible", implying you are scientific and I am not.

Again, science means "to know", you do not know how stars formed, you do not know that rodents and people had a common ancestor, you do not know how old the earth is, you do not know birds used to be dinosarus. That is specualtion based on your bias.

That is not hard science. It is a theory, although to me a silly one. I have theories as well. And I would contend mine fit the observational and emperical evidences better.

Indeed you've yet to show me one shred of science.

I'll leave with some quotes from evolutionists in which they show their stong faith:

 "Finally, the evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern, however incompletely, the lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era. Just as stomachs are bodily organs concerned with digestion, and involving the biochemical activity of special juices, so are religions psychosocial organs concerned with the problems of human destiny, and involving the emotion of sacredness and the sense of right and wrong. Religion of some sort is probably necessary." (Huxley, Julian [late grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, former Professor of Zoology at King's College, London, and founding Director-General of UNESCO], "The Humanist Frame," in "Essays of a Humanist," [1964], Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1969, reprint, p.91).



 "But in our own culture, where many people officially have no religion at all, and those who have can chop and change, new faiths have much more scope and can become more distinctive. They are hungrily seized on by people whose lives lack meaning. When this happens, there arise at once, unofficially and spontaneously, many elements which we think of as characteristically religious. We begin, for instance, to find priesthoods, prophecies devotion, bigotry, exaltation, heresy- hunting and sectarianism, ritual sacrifice, fanaticism, notions of sin, absolution and salvation, and the confident promise of a heaven in the future. ... Marxism and evolutionism, the two great secular faiths of our day, display all these religious-looking features. They have also, like the great religions and unlike more casual local faiths, large-scale, ambitious systems of thought, designed to articulate, defend and justify heir ideas - in short, ideologies." 

 "With the failure of these many efforts [to explain the origin of life] science was left in the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate theories of living origins which it could not demonstrate. After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past." 

 Evolution is the creation-myth of our age. By telling us our origin it shapes our views of what we are. It influences not just our thought, but our feelings and actions too, in a way which goes far beyond its official function as a biological theory." 

 How much of this can be believed? Every generation needs its own creation myths, and these are ours. They are probably more accurate than any that have come before, but they are undoubtedly subject to revision as we find out more about the nature and the history of life. The best that can be said for any scientific theory is that it explains all the data at hand and has no obvious internal contradictions." 

 "The more one studies palaeontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion." 

 Bateson, William [late founder of the science of Genetics, first Professor of Genetics, Cambridge University, UK says the following statement

Let us then proclaim in precise and unmistakable language that our faith in evolution is unshaken." 

 Thus, a century ago, Darwinism against Christian orthodoxy. To-day the tables are turned. The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy, preached by its adherents with religious fervour, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith." (Grene, Marjorie [Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of California, Davis], "The Faith of Darwinism,"


 Lets look at world renowned scientist Steven Weinberg, has to say about what scientists know about origins

Among the most important relics are the structures we see in the sky: many stars are grouped into clusters, the clusters themselves along with loose stars like our sun are grouped into galaxies, and the galaxies themselves are grouped into clusters of galaxies. A second great disappointment of modern astrophysics has been that we still do not have a clear and detailed understanding of how these structures were formed. We do not even know whether the smaller structures formed first and then coalesced into the larger ones, or whether the larger structures formed first and then broke up into the smaller ones. 

http://www.icr.org/pubs/president/images/1201evolutionisreligion.jpg

Palmetto State Dude

05-08-2003, 12:22 AM

Hey John D.

I am a geologist, and the geologic and fossil record are snagging points where Old School and I agree to disagree, though very respectfully. He's provided much insight to me about the bible, and I greatly appreciate that. There's much to learn from OS.

However, I also believe in a very old earth (about 4.6 billion years), and I too asked OS about the very things you discussed recently in this thread (such as how long was God's day in the beginning and the Hebrew word for day, etc.), and he provided at length some very interesting arguments for a young (6,000 years)earth.

BUT, I haven't been convinced (much to the chagrin of OS /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif) that the earth could possibly be that young, and that Genesis, can not be taken as literally as OS takes it. The evidence I've seen in the geologic and fossil record does not allow for the creation of the entire universe (let alone just this planet) in 6, 24-hour days (days that are exactly as long as they are now).

And as far as evolution, I do believe in it (OS and JW say it's a religion, too. And they're right!), but I believe that either God created the rules that govern evolution, or continues to "stir His finger around in the DNA" to create new plants and animals over the ages.

And that's where mine and Old School's philosophies part ways. However, before discussing these things with Old School, I really only accepted the bible as a book teaching one how to live one's life (to be honest, I never really even thought much about it), and Old School was respectful enough to to help me to change my views somewhat on that. But, I'm still learning, and I'm open to all ideas. That's why we're discussing all of this, and if we all do it respectfully, we have much to learn from each other.

So, keep asking the questions, and I'm sure OS will have an answer /forum/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Palmetto State Dude

05-08-2003, 12:33 AM

[ QUOTE ]
OldSchool said:

Evolution says, "no God is needed",

[/ QUOTE ]

I wouldn't say that. I don't believe no God is needed. I think that's a little stereotypical of people who study and believe in the theory of evolution.

And I would venture to say (though I really don't have the time to prove it) that most evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, and DNA biologists (what's the technical name-brain fart!) are not atheists, agnostics, but Christians.

(OS, you answered John D's response while I was responding to it, so I just now read yours!) /forum/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 12:42 AM

[ QUOTE ]
is wrong then please give me an example of it being wrong, that the earth is not as old as have been believe through various essays stating such.

[/ QUOTE ]

I could show you scores of wrong dates.

I could also show you the assumptions the dates are based on.

But I'm glad you posted that. Because I now see you have probably never heard of Creation science.

Before 150 years ago all scientists were creationists, but now we have to label ourselves Creationists because of this notion that the universe can all be explained naturalistically.

Creationists say, "there is no natural explanation for the origin of life, information, seperate kindgoms/families of animals".

Evolutionists say, "There is a natural explanation for everything we see including, life from non-life, all living things having a common ancestor, God although he may exist, is not needed"

Basically what you have is two religions, both observing the evidence and coming to opposite conclusions.

However only one religion is taught. The religion of evolution. Which explains why you know nothing about Creationism. If you did the questions you asked you would be as obvious to you as the evolutionary answers are.

But unfortunately the public arena(discovery, national geographic, public schools) indoctrinate, they don't educate. They only show one side.What ticks me off is that my tax dollars pay for it. But that's another post.

But the bible predicts this.

 3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:


Man will scoff the creation of the earth, and the flood.

But the cool thing is we already know the outcome:

 7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.


[ QUOTE ]
Also, how can you explain the different layers of the earth which have been seen when we dig for fosils?

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL! Basically you've asked for the entire creation theory!LOL I would be here all day explaining this, but I'll give you the basics.

The different layers are known as the geologic column.

Evolutionists use the rock layers to date the fossils and the fossils to date the rocks. It's circular reasoning.

They claim each layer is a different age or geologic time.

Creationists believe differently:

[ QUOTE ]
t has been claimed that the geological column as a faunel succession is not just a hypothetical concept, but a reality, because all Phanerozoic systems exist superposed at a number of locations on the earth. Close examination reveals, however, that even at locations where all ten systems are superposed, the column, as represented by sedimentary-thickness, is mostly missing. In fact, the thickest local accumulation of rock is only a tiny fraction of the inferred 600-million year&#8217;s worth of depositions. The global &#8216;stack&#8217; of index fossils exists nowhere on earth, and most index fossils do not usually overlie each other at the same locality. So, even in those places where all Phanerozoic systems have been assigned, the column is still hypothetical. Locally, many of the systems have not been assigned by the index fossils contained in the strata but by indirect methods that take the column for granted &#8212; clearly circular reasoning. Thus the geologic column does not exist and so does not need to be explained by Flood geology. Only each local succession requires an explanation and Flood geology is wholly adequate for this task.

[/ QUOTE ]

Read more here if you are interested:

http://www.trueorigin.org/geocolumn.asp

For more info check out these sites:

www.icr.org (http://www.icr.org)
www.trueorigin.org (http://www.trueorigin.org)

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 12:55 AM

[ QUOTE ]
wouldn't say that. I don't believe no God is needed.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe I need to clarify.

Evolution does not say "there is no God", it says, "no God is needed". It certainly promotes an athiestic philosophy.

It's foundation is that everything we see is a result of randomness and everything has a naturalistic explanation.

That includes life origins, earth's formation, basically the universe.

#1 COSMIC: From the theorized Big Bang of (estimated) 14-20 billion years ago to the (evolution or) generation of hydrogen gas into existence.

#2 CHEMICAL: Gases (beyond hydrogen) and other higher elements evolving into existence. In other words, increasing molecular & chemical order and complexity over time happening by itself.

#3 STAR & PLANETS: Gravity, angular momentum, magnetism, radiation, and other "accidentally existing" forces coalesce (or evolve) the molecules (from above) that evolved into existence all by themselves into subsequent proto-stars, then later (over lots and lots of theorized time; billions of years) into stars and planetary bodies.

#4 ORGANIC EVOLUTION: Life emerging from sterile non-life by believed automatic advanced chemical processes. This has also been called spontaneous generation or more recently abiogenesis. Life from non-life; again, all by itself; increasing complexity and at some point in time - generating successive replication all by itself. Scientists today are using tax dollars to employ advanced, state-of-the-art equipment under expensive, carefully controlled high-technology laboratory conditions but this still hasn't succeeded in any way yet ... trying so hard ... all to show that life could happen accidentally, without much intelligence. (That being the case indeed.)

#5 MACRO-EVOLUTION: Kinds of life diverging and occasionally increasing in complexity through random processes down through time. The theory is that single-celled creatures gave rise to (possibly) multi-cellular marine organisms. Later fish evolved into amphibians, and then into reptiles which (possibly diverged and) evolved into the birds and mammals. Over the theorized millions of years the divergent complexity of life in nature has (apparently) increased in order, numbers and magnitude. Many of today's textbooks show lots of artistic illustrations of such beliefs.

For example, Darwin stated that all life forms, plant and animal can all be traced back to a common ancestor. In other words, bannanas and people are related.

#6 MICRO-EVOLUTION: Structured changes within pre-existing kinds of life. Heredity & Variation. This one is scientific and is observable in nature.

Each layer of evolution rests on the other and none require the any intelligent interferance. They all occur naturally.

I think that's great Palmetto Dude, that you believe in God! /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

But many come to the oppostie conclusion when they learn about evolution in school and college.

Which is why I believe both should be taught.

President Wilson

05-08-2003, 01:28 AM

Hi Pallmetto,

[ QUOTE ]
but I believe that either God created the rules that govern evolution

[/ QUOTE ]

We completely agree on this issue. The problem is, what were those laws? If we are to deduce them biblically, it is that all animals will bring forth after their own kind.

One of the leading evolutionists / paleontologists in the world, was the late Stephan J. Gould. He made this scientific statement

" The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:

1) Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless;

2) Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed

To extrapalate, on this, Richard Dawkins who hates God. In fact, Richard made this statement about the religion of evolution

 "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that 

And yet, as Gould admits, so too does Dawkins admit that

[ QUOTE ]
that in the Cambrian explosion we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists( R, Dawkins, TBWM, 229 )."

[/ QUOTE ]

Now, why the sudden appearance of dead animals all over the earth, when, as your geological column suggests, there were essentially none below. In fact, in the Cambrian, the famous scientist Lewton makes this statement

[ QUOTE ]
The body plans that evolved in the Cambrian by and large served as the blueprints for those seen today. Few new major body plans have appeared since that time. Just as all automobiles are fundamentally modeled after the first four-wheel vehicles, all the evolutionary changes since the Cambrian period have been mere variations on those basic themes

[/ QUOTE ]

All major body plans appear at once. The flood, clearly can explain this scenereo of masses of dead animals, completely destroyed by the massive catastrophy of the flood much better than a theory that has no mechanism for an increase in genetic information.

As you have it from the scientist Dr. Spetner

[ QUOTE ]
: "in all the reading Ive done in the life-sciences literature, Ive never found a mutation that added information "

[/ QUOTE ]

This, therefore is the law that God set down.

You see, he gave animals a tremendous amount of information, already in the gene code.

What we see in fossil evidence, is devoid if gradualism.
Which is why the Prominant evolutionist and God hater Richard Dawkins confesses the following

[ QUOTE ]
( the cambrian ) in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists

[/ QUOTE ]

Now, lets talk science.

Old School said it best, when he said that Origins are metaphysical. But what observations are more scientific.

We have spoken about laws of evolution. So far, all mutations have shown is to lose information. Indeed, Dr. Curtis made the following statement

[ QUOTE ]
"Certainly the vast majority of mutations must be deleterious, so if the organs of older animals contain appreciable numbers of cells which are carrying mutations, it is a virtual certainty that the organs are functioning less efficiently than they otherwise would"

[/ QUOTE ]

That is a scientific statement.

Now, was Darwin scientific? Accoring to Stephan J. Gould he was just the opposite, as were lyle

[ QUOTE ]
"in defending gradualism as a nearly universal tempo, Darwin had to use Lyell's most characteristic method of argument -- he had to reject literal appearance and common sense for an underlying "reality." (Contrary to popular myths, Darwin and Lyell were not the heroes of true science, defending objectivity against the theological fantasies of such "catastrophists" as Cuvier and Buckland. Catastrophists were as committed to science as any gradualist; in fact, they adopted the more "objective" view that one should believe what one sees and not interpolate missing bits of a gradual record into a literal tale of rapid change.

[/ QUOTE ]

What did Gould just say?

A. Darwin ignored what was seen
B. The catastrophists who believed in a world wide flood were more scientific,

If this is the case, then what does the bible say about this?

[ QUOTE ]
2 Peter 3:3-7
3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

[/ QUOTE ]

A. They are willingly ignorant of the flood
B. They are willingly ignorant of Gods creation

So far, contrary to the evidence this is all we see.

What are the laws of evolution?

1. There is no evidence whatsoever for a mechanism to increase information
2. All point mutations result in a loss of information
3. SPontaneous generation is without a leg to stand on.

In fact, Richard Hutton The scientist, evolutionist, and producer of the most incredibly funded evolutionary documentary in History, was asked by the Washington post, the following question:

"What are some of the larger questions which are still unanswered by evolutionary theory?" Hutton replied by saying: "There are open questions and controversies, and the fights can be fierce. Just a few of them: The origin of life. There is no consensus at all here ; lots of theories, little science. Thats one of the reasons we didnt cover it in the series. The evidence wasnt very good "

Translation - There is no evidence whatsoever.

This leads me to quote, the famous evolutionist Richard Lewton, one of the top evolutionists in the world

[ QUOTE ]
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door

[/ QUOTE ]

That is not scientific. In spite of the evidence of design, they refuse to agknowledge God almighty. As you have it in Romans

[ QUOTE ]
Romans 1: 19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; F6 for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so F7 that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

[/ QUOTE ]

Notice the last part, after they knew as Lewton said, they

[ QUOTE ]
worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator

[/ QUOTE ]

By believing the Universe can create itself out of nothing, and believing that animals can spontaneously form, we give nature creative God like powers, and essentially bow to it. In spite of the evidence against it.

The question is, is it scientific to place ones FAITH
in a statement by one of the leading scientists Wienberg who says this of the creation

[ QUOTE ]
For there is a scientific problem even more fundamental than the origin of the universe. We want to know the origin of the rules that have governed the universe and everything in it. Physicists, or at least some of us, believe that there is a simple set of laws of nature, of which all our complicated present physical and chemical laws are just mathematical consequences. We do not know these underlying laws, but as an act of faith if you like, we expect that eventually we will.

[/ QUOTE ]

Or this

In The Beginning God Created the Heavens and The Earth

The first person stated that

A. He has no clue of how the universe was created. But still asks you to place your faith in him

God States

A. I created all things

And, if you place your faith in God, then it follows to place our faith, that the one who created all things can preserve his word. Which says the following

[ QUOTE ]
All Scripture is breathed by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;

[/ QUOTE ]

It is inspired by him. And, we not only place our faith in the Lord. But all evidence points to a designer, and all science has shown is that the laws of evolution result in a net loss of information. The theory requires a massive, massive gain. We see no such evidence.

To close, I will quote an evolutionist once more, on just how scientific the theory of the orgin of life is

Dr. Wald in Scientific America, one of the leading supporters of the Religion of evolutions concludes

 "One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation ." 

That once again shows our point that the orgin of life is religous, and the statement above is contrary to all science

http://www.creationists.org/image3/thelie01.jpg

John D.

05-08-2003, 01:55 AM

I think I like your view a lot better. I could try to listen more to Old School and perhaps I'll e-mail him on more serious question I have. At any rate, this has been pretty interesting. I guess sooner or later we'll find out who's right.

bam311food

05-08-2003, 02:00 AM

Question

If a person who follows the story of creation believes in a young earth(6000 years old) , how can they explain the fact that fossils of other organisms have been carbon dated to be older than that by millions and millions of years.

and dont jump all over me

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 02:23 AM

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If a person who follows the story of creation believes in a young earth(6000 years old) , how can they explain the fact that fossils of other organisms have been carbon dated to be older than that by millions and millions of years.

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I will be glad too.

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and dont jump all over me

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I understand it's a legit question. First recognize there are so many evidences of a young earth(actually 6-10 thousand years is very old, but not next to billions of years), I can only touch on a few here.

First off understand the concept of the geologic column.

The geologic column is the picture is Palmetto's sig.

Now they do not automatically take every creature and date it.

Indeed they use the geologic layer to tell the age of the index fossil, and the index fossil to date the geologic rock.

Yes, the fossils date the rocks, and the rocks date the fossils. It's circular reasoning.

Arriving at a "date" depends upon a chain of assumptions, each link in the chain being an assumption. The validity of the calculated date can be no stronger than the weakest link (weakest assumption) used in the calculation.

ASSUMPTION: Evolutionists generally assume the material being measured had no original "daughter" element(s) in it, or they assume the amount can be accurately estimated. For example, they may assume that all of the lead in a rock was produced by the decay of its uranium.

PROBLEM: One can almost never know with absolute certainty how much radioactive or daughter substance was present at the start.

ASSUMPTION: Evolutionists have also tended to assume that the material being measured has been in a closed system. It has often been wrongly assumed that no outside factors altered the normal ratios in the material, adding or subtracting any of the elements involved.

PROBLEM: The age estimate can be thrown off considerably, if the radioactive element or the daughter element is leached in or leached out of the sample. There are evidences that this could be a significant problem. Simple things such as groundwater movement can carry radioactive material or the daughter element into or out of rock. Rocks must be carefully tested to determine what outside factors might have changed their content.

ASSUMPTION: They assume that the rate of decomposition has always remained constant - absolutely constant.

PROBLEM: How can one be certain that decay rates have been constant over billions of years? Scientific measurements of decay rates have only been conducted since the time of the Curies in the early 1900s. Yet Evolutionists are boldly making huge extrapolations back over 4.5 billion years and more. There is some evidence that the rate of radioactive decay can change. If the decay rates have ever been higher in the past, then relatively young rocks would wrongly "date" as being old rocks.

In addition to the above assumptions, dating methods are all subject to the geologic column(the evolutionists bible which exists nowhere in it's entirety *except in the holy textbooks*) date to verify their accuracy. If a date obtained by radiometric dating does not match the assumed age from the geologic column the radiometric date will be rejected. The so-called geologic column was developed in the early 1800's over a century before there were any radiometric dating methods.

"Apart from very 'modern' examples, which are really archaeology, I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils."Ager, Derek V., "Fossil Frustrations," New Scientist, vol. 100 (November 10, 1983), p. 425.

Laboratories will not carbon date dinosaur bones (even frozen ones which could easily be carbon dated) because dinosaurs are supposed to have lived 70 million years ago according to the fictitious geologic column. An object's supposed place on the geologic column determines the method used to date it. There are about 7 or 8 radioactive elements that are used today to try to date objects. Each one has a different half-life and a different range of ages it is supposed to be used for. No dating method cited by evolutionists is unbiased.

A few examples of wild dates by radiometric dating:

Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old. Science vol. 224, 1984, pp. 58-61

Living mollusk shells were dated up to 2300 years old. Science vol. 141, 1963, pp.634-637

A freshly killed seal was carbon dated as having died 1300 years ago! Antarctic Journal vol. 6, Sept-Oct. 1971, p.211

"One part of the Vollosovitch mammoth carbon dated at 29,500 years and another part at 44,000.
--Troy L. Pewe, Quaternary Stratigraphic Nomenclature in Unglaciated Central Alaska, Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 (U.S. Gov. printing office, 1975) p. 30.

"One part of Dima [a baby frozen mammoth] was 40,000, another part was 26,000 and the "wood immediately around the carcass" was 9-10,000.
--Troy L. Pewe, Quaternary Stratigraphic Nomenclature in Unglaciated Central Alaska, Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 (U.S. Gov. printing office, 1975) p. 30

"The lower leg of the Fairbanks Creek mammoth had a radiocarbon age of 15,380 RCY, while its skin and flesh were 21,300 RCY.
--In the Beginning Walt Brown p. 124

The two Colorado Creek mammoths had radiocarbon ages of 22,850 670 and 16,150 230 years respectively."
--In the Beginning Walt Brown p. 124

"A geologist at the Berkeley Geochronology Center, [Carl] Swisher uses the most advanced techniques to date human fossils. Last spring he was re-evaluating Homo erectus skulls found in Java in the 1930s by testing the sediment found with them. A hominid species assumed to be an ancestor of Homo sapiens, erectus was thought to have vanished some 250,000 years ago. But even though he used two different dating methods, Swisher kept making the same startling find: the bones were 53,000 years old at most and possibly no more than 27,000 years;a stretch of time contemporaneous with modern humans."
Kaufman, Leslie, "Did a Third Human Species Live Among Us?" Newsweek (December 23, 1996), p. 52.

"Structure, metamorphism, sedimentary reworking, and other complications have to be considered. Radiometric dating would not have been feasible if the geologic column had not been erected first."

O. Rourke, J. E., "Pragmatism versus Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, vol. 276 (January 1976), p. 54

We can't imply that the problem of radiometric dating has been proven, and that there are no anomalies. So if we take a lava flow and date several minerals for which one knows the daughter element is excluded, we should always get the exact same date, and it should agree with the accepted age of the geological period. Is this true? I doubt it very much. If the radiometric dating problem has been solved in this manner, then why do we need isochrons, which are claimed to be more accurate?

The same question could be asked in general of minerals that are thought to yield good dates. Mica is thought to exclude Sr, so it should yield good Rb-Sr dates. But are dates from mica always accepted, and do they always agree with the age of their geologic period? I suspect not.

Indeed, there are a number of conditions on the reliability of radiometric dating. For example, for K-Ar dating, we have the following requirements:

For this system to work as a clock, the following 4 criteria must be fulfilled:

1. The decay constant and the abundance of K40 must be known accurately.

2. There must have been no incorporation of Ar40 into the mineral at the time of crystallization or a leak of Ar40 from the mineral following crystallization.

3. The system must have remained closed for both K40 and Ar40 since the time of crystallization.

4. The relationship between the data obtained and a specific event must be known.

"It is also possible that exposure to neutrino, neutron, or cosmic radiation could have greatly changed isotopic ratios or the rates at some time in the past."

It is known that neutrinos interact with atomic nucleii, so a larger density of neutrinos could have sped up radioactive decay and made matter look old in a hurry. Some more quotes from the same source:

a. In the lead-uranium systems both uranium and lead can migrate easily in some rocks, and lead volatilizes and escapes as a vapor at relatively low temperatures. It has been suggested that free neutrons could transform Pb-206 first to Pb-207 and then to Pb-208, thus tending to reset the clocks and throw thorium-lead and uranium-lead clocks completely off, even to the point of wiping out geological time. Furthermore, there is still disagreement of 15 percent between the two preferred values for the U-238 decay constant.

b. In the potassium/argon system argon is a gas which can escape from or migrate through the rocks. Potassium volatilizes easily, is easily leached by water, and can migrate through the rocks under certain conditions. Furthermore, the value of the decay constant is still disputed, although the scientific community seems to be approaching agreement. Historically, the decay constants used for the various radiometric dating systems have been adjusted to obtain agreement between the results obtained. In the potassium/argon system another adjustable "constant"called the branching ratio is also not accurately known and is adjusted to give acceptable results.

Argon-40, the daughter substance, makes up about one percent of the atmosphere, which is therefore a possible source of contamination. This is corrected for by comparing the ratio argon-40/argon-36 in the rock with that in the atmosphere. However, since it is possible for argon-36 to be formed in the rocks by cosmic radiation, the correction may also be in error. Argon from the environment may be trapped in magma by pressure and rapid cooling to give very high erroneous age results. In view of these and other problems it is hardly surprising that the potassium/argon method can yield highly variable results, even among different minerals in the same rock.

c. In the strontium/rubidium system the strontium-87 daughter atoms are very plentiful in the earth's crust. Rubidium-87 parent atoms can be leached out of the rock by water or volatilized by heat.

All of these special problems as well as others can produce contradictory and erroneous results for the various radiometric dating systems.

The geologic column is the bible to the evolutionists.

Also know the geologic column as it is displayed in his sig, extists nowhere but on paper.

The bible is document on paper that is used to compare the truth with. Evolutionists have one too:

1. Holy Bible.
2. Holy Geologic column.

Evolutionist William Stansfield, Ph.D., California Polytech State, has stated:

"It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological 'clock'."

Evolutionist Frederick B. Jueneman candidly summarizes the situation:

"The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such 'confirmation' may be shortlived, as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio-decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of man."

Here are a few blunders. One example is K-Ar dating; of five historical andesite lava flows from Mount Nguaruhoe in New Zealand. Although one lava flow occurred in 1949, three in 1954, and one in 1975, the datesrange from less than 0.27 to 3.5 Ma.14

Again, using hindsight, it is argued that excess argon from the magma (molten rock) was retained in the rock when it solidified. The secular scientific literature lists many examples of excess argon causing dates of millions of years in rocks of known historical age.15 This excess appears to have come from the upper mantle, below the earths crust. This is consistent with a young world the argon has had too little time to escape.16 If excess argon can cause exaggerated dates for rocks of known age, then why should we trust the method for rocks of unknown age?

Other techniques, such as the use of isochrons,17 make different assumptions about starting conditions, but there is a growing recognition that such fool proof techniques can also give dates. So data are again selected according to what the researcher already believes about the age of the rock.

Geologist Dr Steve Austin sampled basalt from the base of the Grand Canyon strata and from the lava that spilled over the edge of the canyon. By evolutionary reckoning, the latter should be a billion years younger than the basalt from the bottom. Standard laboratories analyzed the isotopes. The rubidium-strontium isochron technique suggested that the recent lava flow was 270 Ma older than the basalts beneath the Grand Canyon an impossibility.

Here is Dr. Haus to explain:


In 1984, I was on a geological excursion in Mägenwil (Switzerland). I collected some sandstone samples with fossilized mussels in it. This rock is classified as belonging to the Upper Tertiary geological system. Evolutionary belief therefore maintains that this rock is around 20 million years old.

In the same rock, right alongside the fossil mussels, are fragments of coalified wood.

Some time after I took my samples, I discovered the same sandstone, appropriately described as coming from Mägenwil, exhibited in the Geologisch Mineralogische Austellung der in Zürich naturally, also labelled 20 million years old

That means the wood must also be at least that old. Mainstream geologists would never think of trying to get a radiocarbon (14C) date for the coalified wood in this Mägenwil sandstone, because anything that old should not be datable by this method.

This is because radiocarbon decays very rapidly compared to other radioactive elements such as uranium. So after, say, a theoretical 100,000 years at the most the amount of radiocarbon left in the wood would not be detectable anymore.

So anything which really was millions of years old would have no detectable radiocarbon left, and would register as giving an ;infinite radiocarbon age;. Carbon dating, as it is often called, is thus never used to date old; fossils (which usually have no organic carbon left anyway).

However, I felt this wood probably would give a radiocarbon date because I was convinced that this sandstone was the result of residual post ;Flood catastrophism, just a few thousand years ago.

Such dating wouldnt show the woods true age, since creationists have long shown that the huge imbalance of carbon in the world due to the global Flood catastrophe would give artificially old radiocarbon dates, especially those from the early post ;Flood era.1

However, if it registered any age at all on the radiocarbon test (and all sources of potential contamination had been eliminated), it would mean that it could not possibly be millions of years old.

So I arranged for this coalified wood to be radiocarbon dated by the Physikalisches Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland.2 I assumed that such a prestigious laboratory would take all necessary precautions to eliminate contamination, and allow for all other sources of error.3

The result: 36,440 years BP ± 330 years. This discovery, that the 14C in the wood has not yet had time to disintegrate totally, is in line with what one would expect, based on the true history of the world given in the Bible by the One who made all, and Who alone is infinite in knowledge, wisdom and power. The real age is probably less than four thousand years.

It seems that long ;age believers are left with only three options:

1. Accept the radiocarbon date. This would mean that the age of the Upper Tertiary shrinks from 20 million to 36,000 years, a factor of around 500 times. The whole geologic dating system would be thrown into disrepute.

2. Arbitrarily reject the radiocarbon date. To be consistent, therefore, they would have to conclude that radiometric dates are not the absolute age indicators we are persistently told, which destroys the main plank in the old-age dogma to begin with.

3. Ignore the result, and hope not too many get to know about it.



Another study:

 Heres another one

The Hawkesbury Sandstone has been assigned a Middle Triassic age of 230 million years of age. Fossil wood was found in here. And dated by carbon dating.
The analytical report from the laboratory measured that radiocarbon had been found in the fossil wood, yielding a supposed 14C age of 33,720 ± 430 years.

Anticipating objections that the minute quantity of detected radiocarbon in this fossil wood might still be due to contamination, the question of contamination by recent microbial and fungal activity, long after the wood was buried, was raised with the staff at this, and another, radiocarbon laboratory. Both labs unhesitatingly replied that there would be no such contamination problem. Modern fungi or bacteria derive their carbon from the organic material they live on and don't get it from the atmosphere, so they have the same as their host. Furthermore, the lab procedure followed (as already outlined) would remove the cellular tissues and any waste products from either fungi or bacteria.

This is, therefore, a legitimate radiocarbon However, a 33,720 ± 430 years BP radiocarbon emphatically conflicts with, and casts doubt upon, the supposed evolutionary age; of 230 million years for this fossil wood from the Hawkesbury Sandstone. 

If dating works so great, how can an assigned date of a quarter billion years be so completely screwed?

bb decay has been experimentally demonstrated in the rhenium-osmium (187Re-187Os) system. The experiment involved the circulation of fully-ionized 187Re in a storage ring. The 187Re ions were found to decay to a measurable extent in only several hours, amounting to a half-life of only 33 years.6 This represents a staggering billion-fold increase over the conventional half-life, which is 42 Ga! (Ga = giga-annum = a billion years).

It was accelerated a billion fold! Why, should I assume a uniformitariun view, when modern, nor experimental evidence supports it? I have to start with an assumption, when void of past observation.

And example of assumptions is that for years the KBS tuff, named for Kay Behrensmeyer, was dated using Potassium Argon (K-Ar) at 212-230 Million years. See Nature, April 18, 197, p. 226. Then skull #KNM-ER 1470 was found (in 1972) under the KBS tuff by Richard Leakey. It looks like modern humans but was dated at 2.9 million years old. Since a 2.9 million year old skull cannot logically be under a lava flow 212 million years old many immediately saw the dilemma. If the skull had not been found no one would have suspected the 212 million year dates as being wrong. Later, 10 different samples were taken from the KBS tuff and were dated as being .52- 2.64 Million years old. (way down from 212 million. Even the new "dates" show a 500% error !)

ALL dating methods (including ones that point to thousands, not billions of years, are based on assumptions;beliefs, no matter how reasonable-sounding, that you can't prove, but must accept by faith.

For example:

Assuming how much of a particular chemical was originally present;

Assuming that there has been no leaching by water of the chemicals in or out of the rock;

Assuming that radioactive decay rates have stayed the same for billions of years, and more.

2. Radiometric "dating" labs do not measure age;they measure amounts of chemicals, then from this they infer age, based on the underlying assumptions.

3. When the assumptions are tested by measuring rocks of known age(e.g. recent lava flows)they often fail miserably.

4. Objects of the same age, tested by different methods, have been shown to give "dates"varying by a factor of a thousand.

5. Does modern radiometric dating prove billions of years?

The fact that there is some consistency to radiometric dates is explained in part by the tendency to publish only data consistent with the "evolutionary age" already "established" by fossils.

Most radioactive dating laboratories prefer you to tell them what age you expect. It is hard to see why this would be necessary if these were "absolute" methods. The entire geological millions of years system was largely in place, based on the philosophical assumptions of men like Charles Lyell and James Hutton, before radioactivity was even discovered. Where a radioactive date contradicts the system, it is invariably discarded. I can show more examples of this if you want.

6. If a radiometricdate and a fossil(evolutionary) date conflict, the radiometric date is always discarded.

I agree the earth is old. But how you define old, is where I differ.

Thousands of years is old! But its consistent with what we can currently observe!

Here are some great evidences from AiG showing the earth can not be billions of years old!

1) The continents are eroding too quickly.

If the continents were billions of years old, they would have eroded by wind and water many times over. Mountain uplift and other recycling processes are nowhere near capable of compensating for this.

2) There is not enough helium in the atmosphere.

Helium, a light gas, is formed during radioactive alpha-decay in rock minerals. It rapidly escapes and enters the atmosphere much faster than it can escape Earth's gravity. Even if God had created the world with no helium to begin with, the small amount in the atmosphere would have taken at most around two million years to accumulate. This is far less than the assumed 3,000-million-year age of the atmosphere.

The polar wind is a magnetohydrodynamic expansion into space of the ionospheric plasma at high altitudes near the poles where the geomagnetic field is stretched far "downstream" by the solar wind.

The ions are drawn out through open magnetic field lines by the electric field of charge separation. At high altitudes the positive ions are sufficiently accelerated by the electric field that they escape rather than settle into diffusive equilibrium.

The process appears to be relatively effective for removing hydrogen from a planet, but has not been adequately demonstrated to do the same for helium.

The study of the influx and outflux processes of gases like hydrogen, helium, argon, neon, and krypton may lead to better estimates of the age of the earth's atmosphere.

Evolutionary/uniformitarian models of the earth's atmosphere have run into formidable obstacles in explaining these processes. We believe the source for these problems is the assumption that the earth's atmosphere is billions of years old.

The standard evolutionary/uniformitarian explanation for the origin of the earth's atmosphere is by outgassing of volatile compounds from the solid earth, and its modification by escape of gases and biological processes.

Supposedly, these processes occurred over a period of 4.5 billion years. Many problems have been encountered, however, when attempting to reconcile the composition and processes in today's atmosphere with basic tenets of this model.

For example, the composition of no single planetary atmosphere in the solar system matches the assumed primordial material which supposedly made up the original nebula, even after complex heating, recombination, outgassing, and escape scenarios are considered.

The controversy continues as to whether the earth originally had a reducing or oxidizing atmosphere. It is not certain how carbon dioxide maintains its equilibrium or why it has been increasing in recent years, nor is it clear why methane is so plentiful on the earth.

The evolutionary/uniformitarian model of the origin of the atmosphere assumes that there were no Primordial gases but that they were all outgassed from the solid earth. One of the sources for helium in today's atmosphere is generally agreed to be processes in the crust.

The radioactive decay of uranium and thorium in the earth's crust produces 4He, one of the isotopes of helium, which seeps to the surface and subsequently mixes through the atmosphere.

"The flux of helium by this process is estimated to be about 2x106 atoms/cm2-sec."

This is an estimated rate because the exact composition of the crust and mantle of the earth isn't known and, therefore, the exact rate of decay of uranium and thorium is not known. Estimates are based on measured and calculated rates of heat flow and compositional models of the earth. Heat flow from the earth is assumed to be caused by the initial heat of formation of the earth and radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium.

One of the most intriguing problems with the evolutionary model has been the attempt to explain why there isn't more helium in today's atmosphere, if the earth has existed for 4.5 billion years.

3) Many fossils indicate that they must have formed quickly, and could not have taken long time-spans.

a) Common fossils.

There are billions of fossil fish in rock layers around the world which are incredibly well-preserved. They frequently show intact fins and often scales, indicating that they were buried rapidly and the rock hardened quickly. In the real world, dead fish are scavenged within 24 hours. Even in some idealized cold, sterile, predator-free and oxygen-free water, they will become soggy and fall apart within weeks. A fish buried quickly in sediment that does not harden within a few weeks at the most will still be subject to decay by oxygen and bacteria, such that the delicate features like fins, scales, etc. would not preserve their form. Rapid burial in the many underwater landslides (turbidity currents) and other sedimentary processes accompanying Noah's Flood would explain not only their excellent preservation, but their existence in huge deposits, often covering thousands of square kilometres.

b) Special examples.

We've often featured in this magazine instances which are particularly spectacular, like the mother ichthyosaur apparently "freeze-framed" in the process of giving birth. Then there are the fossil fish which are found either in the process of swallowing other fish or with undigested fish intact in their stomachs.

4) Many processes, which we have been told take millions of years, do not need such time-spans at all.

a) Coal formation.

Argonne National Laboratories have shown that heating wood (lignin, its major component), water and acidic clay at 150°C (rather cool geologically) for 4 to 36 weeks, in a sealed quartz tube with no added pressure, forms high-grade black coal.

b) Stalactites and stalagmites.

Many examples have shown that cave decorations form quickly, given the right conditions. For example the mining tunnel in Mt Isa, Queensland, Australia.

c) Opals.

Despite the common teaching that it takes millions of years to form opal, Australian researcher Len Cram has long been growing opal in his backyard laboratory. His opal is indistinguishable, under the electron microscope, from that mined in the field. He was awarded an honorary doctorate (by a secular university) for this research. All he does is mix together the right common chemicals ;no heat, no pressure, and definitely no millions of years.

d) Rock and fossil formation.

Scientists have long known that petrifaction can happen quickly. The petrifiedbowler hat (is on display in a mining museum in New Zealand). A roll of no. 8 fencing wire which, in only 20 years, became encased in solid sandstone, containing hundreds of fossil shells. Petrified wood can also form quickly under the right conditions-one process has even been patented.

The famous multiple levels of "fossil forests" in America's Yellowstone National Park have now been shown to have formed in one volcanic event. Successive mudflows transported upright trees (minus most of their roots and branches) whose tree-ring signatures confirm that they grew at the one time.

5) The oceans are nowhere near salty enough.

Each year, the world's rivers and underground streams add millions of tonnes of salt to the sea, and only a fraction of this goes back onto the land. Using the most favourable possible assumptions for long-agers, the absolute maximum age of the oceans is only a tiny fraction of their assumed billions-of-years age.

Despite some inevitable unsolved problems in such a complex issue it is thus not hard to establish:

i) The reasonableness of believing what the Creator of the world says in His Word, the Bible, about the world being thousands, not millions or billions, of years old.

ii) The fact that the earth neither looks old nor looks youngas such-it all depends on the glasses through which the evidence is interpreted. We all need to be aware of how much we have been conditioned by our culture to see geological things as looking old.

The fact is evolutionists need billions and millions of years, or else there theory can be immediately discarded.

Let's take the theory of whale evolution(one of the worst theories ever). Without millions of years, a land dwelling land animal can not "evolve" into a sea dwelling animal.
Let's not even get into the impossibilty that whale evoluiton could even happen.

Time is alwasy given supernatural properties. Without millions of years of it, macroevolution within a kingdom is impossible.

So to teach that millions of years is a fact is absolutely ludicrious. Especially in 2nd grade school books, next to pictures of dinosaurs(more indoctrination-as you see they begin this at an early age, by the time kids are out of high school they beleive they are part-ape, can we blame them? We're teaching them that!).

The fact is without millions of years the theory is shot.

Shove aside all the dating techniques for a minute. Creationist don't need millions or billions of years. Everything we see today can easy be explained in thousands of years.

We don't need to explain "whale evolution" or "eye evolution". Because the evidence shows this type of evolution is impossible.

President Wilson

05-08-2003, 04:55 AM

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John D. said:
I think I like your view a lot better. I could try to listen more to Old School and perhaps I'll e-mail him on more serious question I have. At any rate, this has been pretty interesting.

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Hey John,

I'm glad you have enjoyed the thread. What Old School, and myself, and others are simply saying, is that God knows you, and has a plan for you. Essentially, evolution says that we all came from a rock, and have no meaning. God states that you do have meaning, and purpose.

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I guess sooner or later we'll find out who's right.

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Certainly, you can find out sooner if you'd like. Jesus has this to say

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. 22 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

Its essentially an open invitation, all you need do is answer it. Let us know if you would like any help in the area, and keep pumpin brother!

President Wilson

05-08-2003, 04:59 AM

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The fact is evolutionists need billions and millions of years, or else there theory can be immediately discarded

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In addition to Old School's outstanding discussion on the evidence for a young world, and the fallacies involved in Carbon dating, when it all boils down to it, time + dirt = could never equal life in the first place. It isn't a magic wand

One of my favorite quotes on the complexities of life, comes from Biologist Michael Denton. Here is his description of life

Perhaps in no other area of modern biology is the challenge posed by the extreme complexity and ingenuity of biological adaptations more apparent than in the
fascinating new molecular world of the cell. To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out.

If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which a functional protein or gene is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?

Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced [twentieth century technology appears] clumsy. . . . It would be an illusion to think that what we are aware of at present is any more than a fraction of the full extent of biological design. In practically every field of fundamental biological research ever-increasing levels of design and complexity are being revealed at an ever-accelerating rate.

Life is clearly designed. That being stated, excellent rendition on dating methods Old School and their clear religous assumptions.

When it all comes down to it, God's design and purpose in the world around us is clearly seen.

In fact, his power is also displayed. The quote above is a tip of the ice berg of the incredible complexity of his creation

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Genesis 1:1-2
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

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Venom

05-08-2003, 06:56 AM

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Chicker said:
I meant interpretations of what God said and meant...because they all seem to have slightly different ideas about what God really wanted people to be doing...?

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No, that's the same thing as O.S said. None of them contradict one another in their ideas or what have you. If their is a specific verse you would like to ask about, feel free.

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 12:29 PM

Another thing that cracks me up is this idea that we are afraid of dinosaurs. Like Creationists don't know what to do with them.

My local paper, "the Dispatch", said we get offended when dinosaurs are mentioned in text books.

No, we are sick of the erronous dating methods being pushed as though they are fact. This is just a subliminal trick to get kids brainwashed into evolution. These dates are stuck next to pictures of dinosaurs in 2nd grade text books. Nice trick. This is no better than a stranger using candy to get a kid in their car.

We have absolutely no problem with dinosaurs. God made them.

They're in the bible, ancient cultures mentioned them quit frequently, and the arrangement of a majority of dinosaur fossil beds suggest massive catastophe, via flood waters.

http://www.drdino.com/img/dinoblood.jpg

What happened to the dinosaurs? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/radio/pdf/whathappenedtodinos.pdf)

realjones

05-08-2003, 01:34 PM

I don't know if Old School mentioned this or not (he needs to make outlines for his posts lol), so I'll mention it anyway.

We have scientific evidence that the speed of light is slowing down. They made a curve representing the speed of light taken from different ages. To quote:

"This curve would imply that the speed of light may have been 10-30% faster in the time of Christ; twice as fast in the days of Solomon; and four times as fast in the days of Abraham. It would imply that the velocity of light was more than 10 million times faster prior to 3000 b.c. This possibility would also totally alter our concepts of time and the age of the universe. The universe might actually be less than 10,000 years old!"

radioactive decay depends on the speed of light. The age of universe was determined using the speed of light. if the speed of light isn't constant (if it's slowing down), then the universe could be much much younger than we think. We don't know for sure how old all those fossils are. We use methods such as carbon-14 to date them. if the speed of light isn't constant, then these methods are not going to be very accurate. The change in the speed of light could have been brought about by Adam's sin, as I believe that the curse God placed affected nature as well.

There was also an excellent site on population issues, but alas, I cannot find it. Basically what it boils down is that if you started out with 10,000 people 10,000 years ago (a very conservative estimate), then we would be totally overrun with people today. it also shows that todays population (6 billion) could have easily been formed by the survivors of the flood (i think there were eight) four thousand years ago. I wish I could find the site it was very in depth and definitely made me a believer in the younger earth.

Palmetto State Dude

05-08-2003, 01:36 PM

[ QUOTE ]
OldSchool said:

Yes, the fossils date the rocks, and the rocks date the fossils. It's circular reasoning.

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That's not exacly true. There are hundreds of absolute dating methods (not relative, as you are reffering to here) that are also used in conjunction with each other to date fossils and rocks. Additionally scientists use many, many dating methods on a particular sample to cross-reference for accuracy.

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ASSUMPTION: Evolutionists have also tended to assume that the material being measured has been in a closed system. It has often been wrongly assumed that no outside factors altered the normal ratios in the material, adding or subtracting any of the elements involved.

PROBLEM: The age estimate can be thrown off considerably, if the radioactive element or the daughter element is leached in or leached out of the sample. There are evidences that this could be a significant problem. Simple things such as groundwater movement can carry radioactive material or the daughter element into or out of rock. Rocks must be carefully tested to determine what outside factors might have changed their content.

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This is also innaccurate. Geochemists conduct an extreme amount of tests prior to radiometric dating to determine whether samples have been exposed to other processes that may affect parent atoms quantities, such as exposure to groundwater, metamorphosis, etc. For the most part the systems that have been recently radiometrically dated ARE basically closed systems (such as ingneous rocks.)

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ASSUMPTION: They assume that the rate of decomposition has always remained constant - absolutely constant.

PROBLEM: How can one be certain that decay rates have been constant over billions of years? Scientific measurements of decay rates have only been conducted since the time of the Curies in the early 1900s. Yet Evolutionists are boldly making huge extrapolations back over 4.5 billion years and more. There is some evidence that the rate of radioactive decay can change. If the decay rates have ever been higher in the past, then relatively young rocks would wrongly "date" as being old rocks.

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EXTENSIVE research has been conducted that has proven radioactive decay rates. It is an unfathomable amount of studies.

I will say though, that there are sources of error inherent to radioactive dating in measuring the minute amounts of the different elements and their isotopes. Mass spectometers are +/- 0.2 to 2% accurate in their measurements. Thus, a rock dated 10 million years old has a possible error of 20,000 to 200,000 yeras old. But if you think about it, that's not much.

See people, including me, have a very hard time relating to the idea of lengths of time that long. I mean, I don't even remember what I was doing this time last year, let alone 20 years ago!

And the following refernces are just plain outdated. Let's see some more recent references...

[ QUOTE ]

New Scientist, vol. 100 (November 10, 1983), p. 425.

Science vol. 224, 1984, pp. 58-61

Science vol. 141, 1963, pp.634-637

Antarctic Journal vol. 6, Sept-Oct. 1971, p.211

--Troy L. Pewe, Quaternary Stratigraphic Nomenclature in Unglaciated Central Alaska, Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 (U.S. Gov. printing office, 1975) p. 30.

--Troy L. Pewe, Quaternary Stratigraphic Nomenclature in Unglaciated Central Alaska, Geological Survey Professional Paper 862 (U.S. Gov. printing office, 1975) p. 30

O. Rourke, J. E., "Pragmatism versus Materialism in Stratigraphy," American Journal of Science, vol. 276 (January 1976), p. 54

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
"A geologist at the Berkeley Geochronology Center, [Carl] Swisher uses the most advanced techniques to date human fossils. Last spring he was re-evaluating Homo erectus skulls found in Java in the 1930s by testing the sediment found with them. A hominid species assumed to be an ancestor of Homo sapiens, erectus was thought to have vanished some 250,000 years ago. But even though he used two different dating methods, Swisher kept making the same startling find: the bones were 53,000 years old at most and possibly no more than 27,000 years;a stretch of time contemporaneous with modern humans."
Kaufman, Leslie, "Did a Third Human Species Live Among Us?" Newsweek (December 23, 1996), p. 52./

[/ QUOTE ]

This doesn't refute radiometric dating at all, just the fact that the homo erectus may have existed at the same time as homo sapiens.

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We can't imply that the problem of radiometric dating has been proven, and that there are no anomalies. So if we take a lava flow and date several minerals for which one knows the daughter element is excluded, we should always get the exact same date, and it should agree with the accepted age of the geological period.Is this true?

[/ QUOTE ]

That goes back to the errors in reading such minuscule quantities with such small particles. The result will not be exact, but within the margin of error.

Look at this way. I do environmental consulting. I collect soil and groundwater samples through very particular techniques and have them sent to a laboratory for testing. We have the samples analyzed for all sorts of conatmainants: gasoline, pesticides, heavy metals, you name it, I test for it.

And the lab runs the analyses through highly accurate, calibrated equipment, such as a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer. We look for contaminants in the parts per TRILLION range. And I submit duplicate samples collected from the same location to make to make sure the lab data is quantifiable.

Never, never, never, in my 10 years in this business has a data duplicate sample exactly coincided with it's twin. But 99% of the samples I collected duplicates on, the results are within 95% of each other. If it's less than 90%, we throw that sampl out and recollect another sample for analysis.

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All of these special problems as well as others can produce contradictory and erroneous results for the various radiometric dating systems.

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Again, all of this is taken into account before the sample is radiometrically dated.

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Also know the geologic column as it is displayed in his sig, extists nowhere but on paper.

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I'm hoping the info I've provided above gives at least some repute to this.

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Here are a few blunders. One example is K-Ar dating; of five historical andesite lava flows from Mount Nguaruhoe in New Zealand. Although one lava flow occurred in 1949, three in 1954, and one in 1975, the datesrange from less than 0.27 to 3.5 Ma.14

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, there was probably a problem in sample collection and/or preservation, not radiometric dating.
[ QUOTE ]
Dr. Haus to explain:

However, I felt this wood probably would give a radiocarbon date because I was convinced that this sandstone was the result of residual post ;Flood catastrophism, just a few thousand years ago.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, sounds a little biased to me. It's obvious this guy believes in flood catastrophism, so why wouldn't he find evidence for it. It's like the makers of aspartame paying for studies to determine health risks. Wonder what the outcome of those studies will be?
[ QUOTE ]
It seems that long ;age believers are left with only three options:

1. Accept the radiocarbon date. This would mean that the age of the Upper Tertiary shrinks from 20 million to 36,000 years, a factor of around 500 times. The whole geologic dating system would be thrown into disrepute.

2. Arbitrarily reject the radiocarbon date. To be consistent, therefore, they would have to conclude that radiometric dates are not the absolute age indicators we are persistently told, which destroys the main plank in the old-age dogma to begin with.

3. Ignore the result, and hope not too many get to know about it.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is one sample (though I'm sure there are counless samples that have been thrown out since 1903) that was anomolous. And I see this guy as very biased in his thinking.

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ALL dating methods (including ones that point to thousands, not billions of years, are based on assumptions;beliefs, no matter how reasonable-sounding, that you can't prove, but must accept by faith.

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This is out-and-out untrue. You're telling me that dating growth rings of trees is a fallacy? Coral fossils have the same markings, and they've been around a long time. Here's a study:

Professor John Wells of Cornell University conducted a study concerning the earth's rotation and coral growth rings. It is evident (and hopefully OS will agree with me on this) that the earth's rotation around it's axis is slowing down. Based on modern and ancient astronomical data, that during the past 3,000 years (our astronomical data only goes back this far), the length of the day has been increasing at a constant rate of approximately 2.5 seconds per 100,000 years.

Wells conducted a study whereby he counted the daily growth rings deposited per year by living and fossil corals. He found that modern corals had 365 growth rings per year. Pennsylvanian-age fossil corals had about 390/yr, and Devonian-age fossil corals had 400/year. Geologists studying growth increments of other fossil organisms have generally confirmed the same thing.

Well's study revealed the only known way to directly measure the earth's rotation in the geologic past. Paleontological data can thus be used to VERIFY other absolute dating methods (such as radiometric)
[ QUOTE ]
Most radioactive dating laboratories prefer you to tell them what age you expect. It is hard to see why this would be necessary if these were "absolute" methods.

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Well this helps considerably to reduce the time and costs of running all the absolute dating methods that are available. The lab asks me about what concentrations of contaminants I'm expecting my my water samples so that they can calibrate the equipment accordingly.

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The entire geological millions of years system was largely in place, based on the philosophical assumptions of men like Charles Lyell and James Hutton, before radioactivity was even discovered.

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Yeah, but these guys had no idea of the absolute age of the earth. Only by their geologic field observations did they conclude that the earth's landscape could not have been formed in less than hundreds of millions of years. Indeed, many tried to extrapolate the age of the earth in very archaic ways (Lord Kelvin comes to mind), but technologiacl advances in the 20th century have aided considerably in dating the earth.

[ QUOTE ]
Where a radioactive date contradicts the system, it is invariably discarded. I can show more examples of this if you want.

6. If a radiometricdate and a fossil(evolutionary) date conflict, the radiometric date is always discarded.

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Send some info. And I'll look for (and will no doubtedly find) where radioactive dating, or some other reliable means of dating, has changed the thresholds of the different geologic eras/ages.

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If the continents were billions of years old, they would have eroded by wind and water many times over. Mountain uplift and other recycling processes are nowhere near capable of compensating for this.

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Again, I think you are having a hard time comprehending how long it takes earth processes to occur. And I definitely have a hard time, too! /forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
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Evolutionary/uniformitarian models of the earth's atmosphere have run into formidable obstacles in explaining these processes.

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I would argue that this is an open system and that there are so many variables that assumptions made are innacurate at this time. We need to learn more, and we will.

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The standard evolutionary/uniformitarian explanation for the origin of the earth's atmosphere is by outgassing of volatile compounds from the solid earth, and its modification by escape of gases and biological processes.

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Which is an accurate statement. Example: Scientists are still studying the effects on the atmosphere of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption that occurred years ago! In the past, thousands of volcanoes released unfathomable amounts of gases.

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This is an estimated rate because the exact composition of the crust and mantle of the earth isn't known and, therefore, the exact rate of decay of uranium and thorium is not known.

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Why couldn't the dacay rate be derived through observation in a closed system in a laboratory (as it has been)

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3) Many fossils indicate that they must have formed quickly, and could not have taken long time-spans.

a) Common fossils.

There are billions of fossil fish in rock layers around the world which are incredibly well-preserved. They frequently show intact fins and often scales, indicating that they were buried rapidly and the rock hardened quickly. In the real world, dead fish are scavenged within 24 hours. Even in some idealized cold, sterile, predator-free and oxygen-free water, they will become soggy and fall apart within weeks. A fish buried quickly in sediment that does not harden within a few weeks at the most will still be subject to decay by oxygen and bacteria, such that the delicate features like fins, scales, etc. would not preserve their form.

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There are known geologic processes that would allow for rapid burial, and thus excellent fossil preservation.

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i) The reasonableness of believing what the Creator of the world says in His Word, the Bible, about the world being thousands, not millions or billions, of years old.

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Taking just what OS has told me, and the other sources I've seen, I'm on no uncertain terms, that the bible ALLOWS for an old earth. I know of one other that belives it:

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The fact that the earth neither looks old nor looks youngas such-it all depends on the glasses through which the evidence is interpreted. We all need to be aware of how much we have been conditioned by our culture to see geological things as looking old.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have seen no evidence that shows a young earth. Example:

The Hymalayas are currently gaining altitude (like 1 centimeter a year) than that which can be eroded. It's hard to think that that mountain range could have been uplifted 30,000 feet up into the air in 6,000 years!

[ QUOTE ]
Let's take the theory of whale evolution(one of the worst theories ever).

Let's not even get into the impossibilty that whale evoluiton could even happen.

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I would can and do believe it.

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So to teach that millions of years is a fact is absolutely ludicrious. Especially in 2nd grade school books, next to pictures of dinosaurs(more indoctrination-as you see they begin this at an early age, by the time kids are out of high school they beleive they are part-ape, can we blame them? We're teaching them that!).

[/ QUOTE ]

It's the preponderance of evidence that shows it! You act like somebody just made this all up, and started teaching it. These types of things have been physically observed and studied since man began to think and record their observations.

On one final note, I don't think that old-earth/evolutionary theory should be the only option taught to our kids. But since the young-earth theory is almost entirely religion-based, it must be taught by the parents. In this religiously pluralistic society, there is no place for teaching religious beliefs in public schools because then prejudices arise between various religious sects, and kids should not have to be subjected to that. It gives in to bigotry in later years.

OS, JW, et. al, again, I hope I didn't offend, just putting in my side of things. http://www.doesgodexist.com/Phamplets/GodsRevelationInHisRocksAndInHisWord/GodsRevelationInHisRocksAndInHisWord.html (http://<a href=)" target="_blank">Does God Exist.com</a>

akufadum

05-08-2003, 02:14 PM

I might have missed it, but OS can you tell me how old you believe the earth to be. Thanks.

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 02:24 PM

No offense taken Bro. We're just discussing.

Ok,

[ QUOTE ]
See people, including me, have a very hard time relating to the idea of lengths of time that long. I mean, I don't even remember what I was doing this time last year, let alone 20 years ago!

[/ QUOTE ]

As do I. Remember though, the earth neither "looks" old or young. It depends on ones preconcieved ideas.

ALL dating methods are based upon assumptions.

But first please give me the location where the entire geologic column exists in it's entirety.

Let us consider the question of how much different dating methods agree on the geologic column, and how many measurements are anomalous, since these points are often mentioned as evidences of the reliability of radiometric dating. It takes a long time to penetrate the confusion and find out what is the hard evidence in this area.

In the first place, I am not primarily concerned with dating meteorites, or precambrian rocks. What I am more interested in is the fossil-bearing geologic column of Cambrian and later age.

Now, several factors need to be considered when evaluating how often methods give expected ages on the geologic column. Some of these are taken from John Woodmoreappe's article on the subject, but only when I have reason to believe the statements are also generally believed. First, many igneous formations span many periods, and so have little constraint on what period they could belong to. The same applies to intrusions. In addition, some kinds of rocks are not considered as suitable for radiometric dating, so these are typically not considered. Furthermore, it is at least possible that anomalies are under-reported in the literature. Finally, the overwhelming majority of measurements on the fossil bearing geologic column are all done using one method, the K-Ar method. (And let me recall that both potassium and argon are water soluble, and argon is mobile in rock.) Thus the agreement found between many dates does not necessarily reflect an agreement between different methods, but rather the agreement of the K-Ar method with itself. For example, if 80 percent of the measurements were done using K-Ar dating, and the other 20 percent gave random results, we still might be able to say that most of the measurements on a given strata agree with one another reasonably well. So to me it seems quite conceivable that there is no correlation at all between the results of different methods on the geologic column, and that they have a purely random relationship to each other.

Let us consider again the claim that radiometric dates for a given geologic period agree with each other. I would like to know what is the exact (or approximate) information content of this assertion, and whether it could be (or has been) tested statistically. It's not as easy as it might sound.

Lets suppose that we have geologic periods G1 ... Gn. Let;s only include rocks whose membership in the geologic period can be discerned independent of radiometric dating methods. Lets also only include rocks which are considered datable by at least one method, since some rocks (I believe limestone) are considered not to hold argon, for example.

Now, we can take a random rock from Gi. We will have to restrict ourselves to places where Gi is exposed, to avoid having to dig deep within the earth. Lets apply all known dating methods to Gi that are thought to apply to this kind of rock, and obtain ages from each one. Then we can average them to get an average age for this rock. We can also compute how much they differ from one another.

Now we have to be careful about lava flows -- which geologic period do they belong to? What about rocks that are thought not to have their clock reset, or to have undergone later heating episodes? Just to make the test unbiased, we will assign altitude limits to each geologic period at each point on the earths surface (at least in principle) and include all rocks within these altitude limits within Gi, subject to the condition that they are datable.

The measurements should be done in a double-blind manner to insure lack of unconscious bias.

For each geologic period and each dating method, we will get a distribution of values. We will also get a distribution of averaged values for samples in each period. Now, some claim is being made about these distributions. It is undoubtedly being claimed that the mean values ascend as one goes up the geologic column. It is also being claimed that the standard deviations are not too large. It is also being claimed that the different methods have distributions that are similar to one another on a given geologic period.

The only correlation I know about that has been studied is between K-Ar and Rb-Sr dating on precambrian rock. And even for this one, the results were not very good. This was a reference by Hurley and Rand, cited in Woodmorappe&#8217;s paper. As far as I know, no study has been done to determine how different methods correlate on the geologic column (excluding precambrian rock).

The reason for my request is that a correlation is not implied by the fact that there are only 10 percent anomalies, or whatever. I showed that the fact that the great majority of dates come from one method (K-Ar) and the fact that many igneous bodies have very wide biostratigraphic limits, where many dates are acceptable, makes the percentage of anomalies irrelevant to the question I am asking. And since this agreement is the strongest argument for the reliability of radiometric dating, such an assumption of agreement appears to be without support so far.

The question of whether different methods correlate on the geologic column is not an easy one to answer for additional reasons. Since the bulk of K-Ar dates are generally accepted as correct, one may say that certain minerals are reliable if they tend to give similar dates, and unreliable otherwise. We can also say that certain formations tend to give reliable dates and others do not, depending on whether the dates agree with K-Ar dates. Thus we can get an apparent correlation of different methods without much of a real correlation in nature. Its also possible for other matter to be incorporated into lava as it rises, without being thoroughly melted, and this matter may inherit all of its old correlated radiometric dates. Coffin mentions that fission tracks can survive transport through lava, for example. It may also be that lava is produced by melting the bottom of continents and successively different layers are melted with time, or there could be a tendency for lighter isotopes to come to the top of magma chambers, making the lava there appear older. But anyway, I think it is important really to know what patterns appear in the data to try to understand if there is a correlation and what could be causing it. Not knowing if anomalies are always published makes this harder.

It is often mentioned that different methods agree on the K-T boundary, dated at about 65 million years ago. This is when the dinosaurs are assumed to have become extinct. This agreement of different methods is taken as evidence for a correlation between methods on the geologic column. One study found some correlated dates from bentonite that are used to estimate the date of the K-T boundary. I looked up some information on bentonite. It is composed of little glass beads that come from volcanic ash. This is formed when lava is sticky and bubbles of gas in it explode. So these small particles of lava cool very fast. The rapid cooling might mean that any enclosed argon is retained, but if not, the fact that this cooling occurs near the volcano, with a lot of argon coming out, should guarantee that these beads would have excess argon. As the gas bubble explodes, its enclosed argon will be rushing outward along with these tiny bubbles as they cool. This will cause them to retain argon and appear too old. In addition, the rapid cooling and the process of formation means that these beads would have Rb, Sr, U, and Pb concentrations the same as the lava they came from, since there is no chance for crystals to form with such rapid cooling. So to assume that the K-Ar dates, Rb-Sr dates, and U-Pb dates all reflect the age of the lava, one would have to assume that this lava had no Sr, no Pb, and that all the argon escaped when the beads formed. Since the magma generally has old radiometric ages, I dont see how we could have magma without Pb or Sr. In fact, I doubt that there is fresh uncrystallized lava anywhere on earth today that has zero U/Pb and Rb/Sr ages, as would be required if bentonite gave an accurate date for the K-T boundary. So to me it seems to be certain that these ages must be in error.

Furthermore, the question arises whether bentonite always gives correlated ages, and whether these ages always agree with the accepted ages for their geologic period. I believe that bentonite occurs in a number of formations of different geologic periods, so this could be checked. If bentonite does not always give correlate and correct ages, this calls into question its use for dating the K-T boundary.

[ QUOTE ]
. If it's less than 90%, we throw that sampl out and recollect another sample for analysis.

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Exactly. Preconcieved assumptions.

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Again, I think you are having a hard time comprehending how long it takes earth processes to occur. And I definitely have a hard time, too

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I would contend you are ignoring(not intentionally perhaps) evidence of mass catastrophe. This is the difference.

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Why couldn't the dacay rate be derived through observation in a closed system in a laboratory (as it has been)

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Again, preconieved ideas that the decay rate has not been altered via catastophe.

Pete914

05-08-2003, 02:26 PM

Personally, I am not Christian or anything else. I was raised a Christian Scientist (Im sure Venom, OS, and JW have heard something about them) but now think freely for myself.

I am not going to argue whether or not evolution (in this case, certain organisms evolving into other organisms) is a correct theory. (besides, this thread has veered far from that anyways)

You guys really must love quoting the Bible and trying to disprove all kinds of scientific theory, because you have all of these quotes and examples of its authenticity all ready to go. Which is fine, but here we go with my theory:

It just does not matter. Why? Because I look at religions as a guide to how you should live your life. I am not Christian, yet I am in a fraternity based on Christian ideals. Why is that not hypocritical? Because I think Christian ideals are good guidelines of how to live your life. Specifically, all of the 10 commandments that make no reference to the Christian God are good rules for ANYONE to live their life by, regardless of beleifs. Most religions share similar ideals. The problem comes when people take their religion too literally and let it dominate their every thought. Consider all of the wars that have been fought in the name of some god or another. Think about September 11, and how that was a bunch of religious fanatics bent on serving their god in the way they felt was right.(but was obviously was not, because killing people is wrong in the most general sense.)

So I plan on living my life by Christian ideals without worshipping any god. If, upon my death, I find that I was wrong and everything in the Bible was correct, I will feel confident upon my day of judgement, because I will have led a "good" life-one based on Christian ideals. However, I do remember some quote about not beleiving and worshipping God basically ****s you to hell...well, then your God can send me to Hell if He so chooses. Which would be a shame, because I follow Christian ideals far closer than many people I know that actually go to church.

So there you have it...I'm curious as to what you guys think.

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 02:28 PM

My range is 6-10000 years. Give or take 1000.

Really I'd like to discuss radio halos. These show instant creation of the earth. But I'm short on time now.

Also, realize,

[ QUOTE ]
Taking just what OS has told me, and the other sources I've seen, I'm on no uncertain terms, that the bible ALLOWS for an old earth. I know of one other that belives it:

[/ QUOTE ]

Is a gap theorists. Not a theistic evolutionists.

He believes in a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Not evolution by any means.

They still accept the Genesis "kinds" hypothesis. In other words, no macro-evolution.

realjones

05-08-2003, 02:32 PM

found the link I was looking for:

Population since Creation (http://www.ldolphin.org/popul.html)

i really don't see how you can argue against some kind of massive human wipeout occurring about 5,000 years ago.

akufadum

05-08-2003, 02:37 PM

Wow! That's such a short amount of time. Anything's possible though. I must say though that recorded history dates back 8000 years.

Palmetto State Dude

05-08-2003, 03:58 PM

[ QUOTE ]
OldSchool said:
But first please give me the location where the entire geologic column exists in it's entirety.

[/ QUOTE ]

It doesn't, and will most likely never be seen.

This is a result of erosional processes that have occurred over immense amounts of time. There have been many marine transgressions and regressions (rises and falls in sea level) over the ages, as well as tectonic events that would cause portions of the geologic column to be eroded away (regressions = erosion, transgression = deposition of sediment). So, over millions and millions of years, a combination of transgressions/regressions, as well as tectonic events have erased (eroded) some of the rock at various places in the geologic column. We all know that erosion occurs, you ought to see some of the beaches down here!

Here's an argument to your hypothesis of K-Ar dating, taken from Dr. Roger C. Wiens' (have you mentioned him before) paper:

Radiometric Dating: A Christian perspective

(also in it's entirety here: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html . In his paper, he supports most of what I mentioned in my previous threads (such as obtaining reliable samples, etc.)

Dr. Wiens has a PhD in Physics, with a minor in Geology. His PhD thesis was on isotope ratios in meteorites, including surface exposure dating. He was employed at Caltech's Division of Geological & Planetary Sciences at the time of writing the first edition. He is presently employed in the Space & Atmospheric Sciences Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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However, in reality there is often a small amount of argon remaining in a rock when it hardens. This is usually trapped in the form of very tiny air bubbles in the rock. One percent of the air we breathe is argon. Any extra argon from air bubbles may need to be taken into account if it is significant relative to the amount of radiogenic argon (that is, argon produced by radioactive decays). This would most likely be the case in either young rocks that have not had time to produce much radiogenic argon, or in rocks that are low in the parent potassium. One must have a way to determine how much air-argon is in the rock. This is rather easily done because air-argon has a couple of other isotopes, the most abundant of which is argon-36. The ratio of argon-40 to argon-36 in air is well known, at 295. Thus, if one measures argon-36 as well as argon-40, one can calculate and subtract off the air-argon-40 to get an accurate age.

One of the best ways of showing that an age-date is correct is to confirm it with one or more different dating

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As I said above.

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method(s). Although potassium-argon is one of the simplest dating methods, there are still some cases where it does not agree with other methods. When this does happen, it is usually because the gas within bubbles in the rock is from deep underground rather than from the air. This gas can have a higher concentration of argon-40 escaping from the melting of older rocks. This is called parentless argon-40 because its parent potassium is not in the rock being dated, and is also not from the air. In these slightly unusual cases, the date given by the normal potassium-argon method is too old. However, scientists in the mid-1960s came up with a way around this problem, the argon-argon method, discussed in the next section.

Argon-Argon. Even though it has been around for nearly half a century, the argon-argon method is seldom discussed by groups critical of dating methods. This method uses exactly the same parent and daughter isotopes as the potassium-argon method. In effect, it is a different way of telling time from the same clock. Instead of simply comparing the total potassium with the non-air argon in the rock, this method has a way of telling exactly what and how much argon is directly related to the potassium in the rock.

In the argon-argon method the rock is placed near the center of a nuclear reactor for a period of hours. A nuclear reactor emits a very large number of neutrons, which are capable of changing a small amount of the potassium-39 into argon-39. Argon-39 is not found in nature because it has only a 269-year half-life. (This half-life doesn't affect the argon-argon dating method as long as the measurements are made within about five years of the neutron dose). The rock is then heated in a furnace to release both the argon-40 and the argon-39 (representing the potassium) for analysis. The heating is done at incrementally higher temperatures and at each step the ratio of argon-40 to argon-39 is measured. If the argon-40 is from decay of potassium within the rock, it will come out at the same temperatures as the potassium-derived argon-39 and in a constant proportion. On the other hand, if there is some excess argon-40 in the rock it will cause a different ratio of argon-40 to argon-39 for some or many of the heating steps, so the different heating steps will not agree with each other.

There are occasions when the argon-argon dating method does not give an age even if there is sufficient potassium in the sample and the rock was old enough to date. This most often occurs if the rock experienced a high temperature (usually a thousand degrees Fahrenheit or more) at some point since its formation. If that occurs, some of the argon gas moves around, and the analysis does not give a smooth plateau across the extraction temperature steps. An example of an argon-argon analysis that did not yield an age date is shown in Figure 3. Notice that there is no good plateau in this plot. In some instances there will actually be two plateaus, one representing the formation age, and another representing the time at which the heating episode occurred. But in most cases where the system has been disturbed, there simply is no date given. The important point to note is that, rather than giving wrong age dates, this method simply does not give a date if the system has been disturbed.

Some young-Earth proponents recently reported that rocks were dated by the potassium-argon method to be a several million years old when they are really only a few years old. But the potassium-argon method, with its long half-life, was never intended to date rocks only 25 years old. These people have only succeeded in correctly showing that one can fool a single radiometric dating method when one uses it improperly. The false radiometric ages of several million years are due to parentless argon, as described here, and first reported in the literature some fifty years ago. Note that it would be extremely unlikely for another dating method to agree on these bogus ages. Getting agreement between more than one dating method is a recommended practice.

[/ QUOTE ]

Dr. Weins goes on to conclude (and remember this is a Christian):

[ QUOTE ]

Can We Really Believe the Dating Systems?

We have covered a lot of convincing evidence that the Earth was created a very long time ago. The agreement of many different dating methods, both radiometric and non-radiometric, over hundreds of thousands of samples, is very convincing. Yet, some Christians question whether we can believe something so far back in the past. My answer is that it is similar to believing in other things of the past. It only differs in degree. Why do you believe Abraham Lincoln ever lived? Because it would take an extremely elaborate scheme to make up his existence, including forgeries, fake photos, and many other things, and besides, there is no good reason to simply have made him up. Well, the situation is very similar for the dating of rocks, only we have rock records rather than historical records. Consider the following:

- There are well over forty different radiometric dating methods, and scores of other methods such as tree rings and ice cores.

- All of the different dating methods agree--they agree a great majority of the time over millions of years of time. Some Christians make it sound like there is a lot of disagreement, but this is not the case. The disagreement in values needed to support the position of young-Earth proponents would require differences in age measured by orders of magnitude (e.g., factors of 10,000, 100,000, a million, or more). The differences actually found in the scientific literature are usually close to the margin of error, usually a few percent, not orders of magnitude!

- Vast amounts of data overwhelmingly favor an old Earth. Several hundred laboratories around the world are active in radiometric dating. Their results consistently agree with an old Earth. Over a thousand papers on radiometric dating were published in scientifically recognized journals in the last year, and hundreds of thousands of dates have been published in the last 50 years. Essentially all of these strongly favor an old Earth.

- Radioactive decay rates have been measured for over sixty years now for many of the decay clocks without any observed changes. And it has been close to a hundred years since the uranium-238 decay rate was first determined.

- Both long-range and short-range dating methods have been successfully verified by dating lavas of historically known ages over a range of several thousand years.

- The mathematics for determining the ages from the observations is relatively simple.

The last three points deserve more attention. Some Christians have argued that something may be slowly changing with time so all the ages look older than they really are. The only two quantities in the exponent of a decay rate equation are the half-life and the time. So for ages to appear longer than actual, all the half-lives would have to be changing in sync with each other. One could consider that time itself was changing if that happened (remember that our clocks are now standardized to atomic clocks!). And such a thing would have to have occurred without our detection in the last hundred years, which is already 5% of the way back to the time of Christ.

Some individuals have suggested that the speed of light must have been different in the past, and that the starlight has not really taken so long to reach us. However, the astronomical evidence mentioned above also suggests that the speed of light has not changed, or else we would see a significant apparent change in the half-lives of these ancient radioactive decays.

Some doubters have tried to dismiss geologic dating with a sleight of hand by saying that no rocks are completely closed systems (that is, that no rocks are so isolated from their surroundings that they have not lost or gained some of the isotopes used for dating). Speaking from an extreme technical viewpoint this might be true--perhaps 1 atom out of 1,000,000,000,000 of a certain isotope has leaked out of nearly all rocks, but such a change would make an immeasurably small change in the result. The real question to ask is, "is the rock sufficiently close to a closed system that the results will be same as a really closed system?" Since the early 1960s many books have been written on this subject. These books detail experiments showing, for a given dating system, which minerals work all of the time, which minerals work under some certain conditions, and which minerals are likely to lose atoms and give incorrect results. Understanding these conditions is part of the science of geology. Geologists are careful to use the most reliable methods whenever possible, and as discussed above, to test for agreement between different methods.

Some people have tried to defend a young Earth position by saying that the half-lives of radionuclides can in fact be changed, and that this can be done by certain little-understood particles such as neutrinos, muons, or cosmic rays. This is stretching it. While certain particles can cause nuclear changes, they do not change the half-lives. The nuclear changes are well understood and are nearly always very minor in rocks. In fact the main nuclear changes in rocks are the very radioactive decays we are talking about.

There are only three quite technical instances where a half-life changes, and these do not affect the dating methods we have discussed.

1. Only one technical exception occurs under terrestrial conditions, and this is not for an isotope used for dating. According to theory, electron-capture is the most likely type of decay to show changes with pressure or chemical combination, and this should be most pronounced for very light elements. The artificially-produced isotope, beryllium-7 has been shown to change by up to 1.5%, depending on its chemical environment (Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 171, 325-328, 1999; see also Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 195, 131-139, 2002). In another experiment, a half-life change of a small fraction of a percent was detected when beryllium-7 was subjected to 270,000 atmospheres of pressure, equivalent to depths greater than 450 miles inside the Earth (Science 181, 1163-1164, 1973). All known rocks, with the possible exception of diamonds, are from much shallower depths. In fact, beryllium-7 is not used for dating rocks, as it has a half-life of only 54 days, and heavier atoms are even less subject to these minute changes, so the dates of rocks made by electron-capture decays would only be off by at most a few hundredths of a percent.

2. Physical conditions at the center of stars or for cosmic rays differ very greatly from anything experienced in rocks on or in the Earth. Yet, self-proclaimed "experts" often confuse these conditions. Cosmic rays are very, very high-energy atomic nuclei flying through space. The electron-capture decay mentioned above does not take place in cosmic rays until they slow down. This is because the fast-moving cosmic ray nuclei do not have electrons surrounding them, which are necessary for this form of decay. Another case is material inside of stars, which is in a plasma state where electrons are not bound to atoms. In the extremely hot stellar environment, a completely different kind of decay can occur. ' Bound-state beta decay' occurs when the nucleus emits an electron into a bound electronic state close to the nucleus. This has been observed for dysprosium-163 and rhenium-187 under very specialized conditions simulating the interior of stars (Phys. Rev. Lett., 69, 2164-2167; Phys. Rev. Lett., 77, 5190-5193, 1996). All normal matter, such as everything on Earth, the Moon, meteorites, etc. has electrons in normal positions, so these instances never apply to rocks, or anything colder than several hundred thousand degrees.

As an example of incorrect application of these conditions to dating, one young-Earth proponent suggested that God used plasma conditions when He created the Earth a few thousand years ago. This writer suggested that the rapid decay rate of rhenium under extreme plasma conditions might explain why rocks give very old ages instead of a young-Earth age. This writer neglected a number of things, including: a) plasmas only affect a few of the dating methods. More importantly, b) rocks and hot gaseous plasmas are completely incompatible forms of matter! The material would have to revert back from the plasma state before it could form rocks. In such a scenario, as the rocks cooled and hardened, their ages would be completely reset to zero as described in previous sections. If this person's scenario were correct, instead of showing old ages, all the rocks should show a uniform ~4,000 year age of creation. That is obviously not what is observed.

3. The last case also involves very fast-moving matter. It has been demonstrated by atomic clocks in very fast spacecraft. These atomic clocks slow down very slightly (only a second or so per year) as predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity. No rocks in our solar system are going fast enough to make a noticeable change in their dates.

These cases are very specialized, and all are well understood. None of these cases alter the dates of rocks either on Earth or other planets in the solar system. The conclusion once again is that half-lives are completely reliable in every context for the dating of rocks on Earth and even on other planets. The Earth and all creation appears to be very ancient.

[/ QUOTE ]

And he touches on things I've brought up:

[ QUOTE ]
As Christians it is of great importance that we understand God's word correctly. Yet from the middle ages up until the 1700s people insisted that the Bible taught that the Earth, not the Sun, was the center of the solar system. It wasn't that people just thought it had to be that way; they actually quoted scriptures: "The Earth is firmly fixed; it shall not be moved" (Psalm 104:5), or "the sun stood still" (Joshua 10:13; why should it say the sun stood still if it is the Earth's rotation that causes day and night?), and many other passages.

Today there are many Christians who accept the reliability of geologic dating, but do not compromise the spiritual and historical inerrancy of God's word.

As scientists, we deal daily with what God has revealed about Himself through the created universe. The psalmist marveled at how God, Creator of the universe, could care about humans: "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him?" (Psalm 8:3-4). Near the beginning of the twenty-first century we can marvel all the more, knowing how vast the universe is, how ancient are the rocks and hills, and how carefully our environment has been designed. Truly God is more awesome than we can imagine!

[/ QUOTE ]

And he goes on to discuss other misconceptions concerning radiometric dating, as well as radio halos:

Misconception: [ QUOTE ]
"Radiation halos" in rocks prove that the Earth was young.

This refers to tiny halos of crystal damage surrounding spots where radioactive elements are concentrated in certain rocks. Halos thought to be from polonium, a short-lived element produced from the decay of uranium, have been found in some rocks. A plausible explanation for a halo from such a short-lived element is that these were not produced by an initial concentration of the radioactive element. Rather, as water seeped through cracks in the minerals, a chemical change caused newly-formed polonium to drop out of solution at a certain place and almost immediately decay there. A halo would build up over a long period of time even though the center of the halo never contained more than a few atoms of polonium at one time. "Hydrothermal" effects can act in ways that at first seem strange, such as the well-known fact that gold--a chemically un-reactive metal with very low solubilities--is concentrated along quartz veins by the action of water over long periods of time. Other researchers have found halos produced by an indirect radioactive decay effect called hole diffusion, which is an electrical effect in a crystal. These results suggest that the halos in question are not from short-lived isotopes after all.

At any rate, halos from uranium inclusions are far more common. Because of uranium's long half-lives, these halos take at least several hundred million years to form. Because of this, most people agree that halos provide compelling evidence for a very old Earth.

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
. If it's less than 90%, we throw that sampl out and recollect another sample for analysis.

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Exactly. Preconcieved assumptions.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not sure what you mean. We throw it out and collect another sample so that our data is reliable.

[ QUOTE ]
I would contend you are ignoring(not intentionally perhaps) evidence of mass catastrophe. This is the difference.

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Not ingnored intentinally. I could concieve of a somewhat mass catastrophe (percieved by the people who lived during that time (after all, there was no weather.com to go to to see if South America was also getting a deluge of rainfall!), as I've said there have been many marine transgressions/regressions that would explain what's been described in the bible.

As I've said before, the evidence through direct observations in geologic formations, as well as the well-documented accuracy of radiometric dating, indicates that this planet is billions of years old.

Venom

05-08-2003, 04:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Specifically, all of the 10 commandments that make no reference to the Christian God are good rules for ANYONE to live their life by, regardless of beleifs.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes they do, your missing the first and greatest commandment:

Matthew 22:34-38
34 But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. 35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment.

[ QUOTE ]
The problem comes when people take their religion too literally and let it dominate their every thought.

[/ QUOTE ]
So what? Tell me one time we preached man, or their ideals. We are telling you to follow Christ, and his word. This has nothing to do with September 11th or such like.

[ QUOTE ]
I will feel confident upon my day of judgement, because I will have led a "good" life-one based on Christian ideals.

[/ QUOTE ]

Romans 3: 10 - 21
10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: 14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: 15 Their feet are swift to shed blood: 16 Destruction and misery are in their ways: 17 And the way of peace have they not known: 18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.

19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

There is no one that is good except God. You will not be justified by the law, because you're a sinner. As am I, there is only one way to be saved:

Romans 3:22-25
22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

Now you say live by the law, and should be saved. Lets look at what the law actually says:

Galatians 4: 1 - 31
21 Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? 22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. 23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. 24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. 25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. 26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. 27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. 28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. 29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. 30 Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. 31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

Romans 10:1-11
1 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. 2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. 5 For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. 6 But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) 7 Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) 8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; 9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11 For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

Galatians 3:6-18
10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. 11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. 12 And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. 13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us : for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: 14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

You are under the curse of the law, and bondage. You are trying to establish your own righteousness, which will not stand in front of God, because you have sinned. This is why Christ came, and died that we might have life in his name. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

We all have sinned; all have fallen short of Gods glory. His gift is free, not by works but by grace.

[ QUOTE ]
well, then your God can send me to Hell if He so chooses. Which would be a shame, because I follow Christian ideals far closer than many people I know that actually go to church.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
So there you have it...I'm curious as to what you guys think.

[/ QUOTE ]

1. I think you're a sinner, in need of a savior. As we all our, you will not and cannot be justified by your works. This is why Christ came and suffered for you.
2. You do not have the right to judge God. What I recommend you do is read the book of Job before you decide to do so:

 Job 40: 1 - 24
1 Moreover the LORD answered Job, and said, 2 Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it. 3 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 4 Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. 5 Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.

6 Then answered the LORD unto Job out of the whirlwind, and said, 7 Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 8 Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous? 9 Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him? 10 Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty. 11 Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him. 12 Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place. 13 Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret. 14 Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.
15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. 16 Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. 17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. 18 His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. 19 He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him. 20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play. 21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. 22 The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. 23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth. 24 He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.

 Ezekiel 18:25
25 Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?

As stated above, you do not have the right to judge God. The only right you have is to thank him for making you, and dying for you, and giving you eternal life by his blood.
3. Next, you need to humble yourself.

James 4:1-10
6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

Humble yourself, and get rid of the pride. God will not bow to you, you need to come to him humbly, he is on the throne you are flesh.

Never the less, if you diligently seek him, with a broken heart, he will be found. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif
4. You need to understand what Christ went through, his sacrifice was not in vain, he died of you, here. (http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=bodybuilder&Number=498960& Forum=bodybuilder&Words=This%20post%20is%20dedicat ed%20to%20Jesus&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0 &Limit=25&Old=1month&Main=498960&Search=true#Post4 98960)

Last, you need to flee from the bondage of sin, and except the free gift of God through redemption of his spirit. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

http://www.bibleverseart.com/prints/framedart/freebythecross.jpg

Pete914

05-08-2003, 05:19 PM

[ QUOTE ]
So what? Tell me one time we preached man, or their ideals. We are telling you to follow Christ, and his word. This has nothing to do with September 11th or such like.

[/ QUOTE ]

YOU may not have preached any of that, but my point does relate, to an extent, and you know this. The crusades, for example. Perhaps that was partially political, but you cannot deny that religion itself has fundamental problems because of the way that they seperate groups of people. Believing that your actions are justified by a god that you have faith in can be a very dangerous frame of mind. The use of faith over logic can present problems in this case.

I could reply to some of your other comments (which were well backed, by the way-I can tell you know your scriptures very well.) but it all boils down to this: The fundamental difference between you and me is faith. You have it, I do not. I admire your unwavering faith, because complete belief of anything requires an amazing amount of courage.

You and I both have the same evidence in front of us, but we interpret it differently. There may be a time where this will change for me and I will be saved, as you put it, but right now I am just not in that frame of mind. We could argue for days and not get anywhere here. I will say that the mods from ABC that have posted on this thread have presented their points well, and are at least open enough to listen to the other side. I usually loathe any discussion over this topic because of the tension that it creates between me and other people. Thanks for the reply.

**DONOTDELETE**

05-08-2003, 06:23 PM

Palmetto State Dude

05-08-2003, 06:35 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Yu Yevon said:
[ QUOTE ]
you cannot deny that religion itself has fundamental problems because of the way that they seperate groups of people

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not a problem with religion, it's a problem with man.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree.

However, in my opinion, most religions (Christianity included) help to perpetuate an ideology of "My religion's right, you're wrong, so I'm going to heaven (or wherever), and your not". There's not much teaching of tolerance of others' religious orientation.

I'm not saying all of the followers of a particular religion are like that, but it's still there, and it has been throughout the ages.

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 09:09 PM

Real Jones that is an excellent case.

Population distribution is a great evidence for a recent population.

Nice link.

To the above poster. The reason this is so vital is because we need to realize we can trust God's word 100%.

Hey Palmetto! /forum/images/graemlins/cool.gif

[ QUOTE ]
Dr. Weins goes on to conclude (and remember this is a Christian):

[/ QUOTE ]

We can get into the differnt theories of gaps in the bible(which I can easily disprove, but anyway) to allow for "billions" of years, but the point is most gap theorists or long-day creationists do not accept evolution above the micro level.

[ QUOTE ]
Today there are many Christians who accept the reliability of geologic dating, but do not compromise the spiritual and historical inerrancy of God's word.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok. Then he goes about mocking the bible?

[ QUOTE ]
This is a result of erosional processes that have occurred over immense amounts of time.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK. This is why this will go nowhere, and you will see evidence one way and I will see it totally different. ie. dates accuracy via radiometric dating, carbon, potassium argon, etc., etc.

You assume a uniformitarion world view, I do not.

We are both starting with basic assumptions.

Which is we will see evidence like fossil beds, strata, poly strata fossils totally different.

[ QUOTE ]
Dr. Wiens has a PhD in Physics, with a minor in Geology. His PhD thesis was on isotope ratios in meteorites, including surface exposure dating. He was employed at Caltech's Division of Geological & Planetary Sciences at the time of writing the first edition. He is presently employed in the Space & Atmospheric Sciences Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory

[/ QUOTE ]

We can both sit here and pass around arguements from Dr.'s with vast credientionals in geology, oceanography, etc.

But the point is, the "dating game" is based upon fundamental assumptions.

Yours is a uniformitarium world view. This will affect all of your thinking in this area.

I could sit here and pick most of that apart. But I want to make a basic point here. I'm not trying to change anyones mind. Just to get them to realize there are choices, and the "billions of years" scenario is no without it's biases.

[ QUOTE ]
As Christians it is of great importance that we understand God's word correctly. Yet from the middle ages up until the 1700s people insisted that the Bible taught that the Earth, not the Sun, was the center of the solar system. It wasn't that people just thought it had to be that way; they actually quoted scriptures: "The Earth is firmly fixed; it shall not be moved" (Psalm 104:5), or "the sun stood still" (Joshua 10:13; why should it say the sun stood still if it is the Earth's rotation that causes day and night?), and many other passages.

[/ QUOTE ]

Come on. Do we really have to keep going through this though? Why are we constantly referred to as "flat earthers". Frankly it's a bit insulting. Both of those verses are taken extremely out of context. We both know that.

Neither of those have anything to do with astronomical anomolies. The Psalmist is not talking about the earth standing still literally(as in it doesn't orbit), but the foundation of the earth in the will of God. Totally out of context.

Joshua is the same arguement as the "weather man scenario". Totally rediculous that he would bring this up.

Why do we get blamed for the ancient churches mistake for geocentrism? Because they got one thing wrong, so now it's all wrong? That is the logic here, and it's faulty. And I might add not eveyone agreed with the church, but Galileo was the first to open his mouth.

I've read this guy's stuff before and he is lacking in several areas but...

This guy needs to stick to dating, and not analyzing the bible because I could rip him apart for that above quote.

[ QUOTE ]
"Radiation halos" in rocks prove that the Earth was young.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh no. He's not getting off that easy. This is a VAST subject. And even his credentials look miniscule compared to whom he has to stand up against in this area.

Dr. Robert V. Gentry is a nuclear physicist who worked 13 years for the Oakridge National Laboratory as a guest scientist. During the time he worked there, he was recognized as the world's leading authority on polonium halos. It is interesting to note that when he began his research, he was an evolutionist. Today, Dr. Gentry is a fully convinced young earth creation scientist.

A radioactive metallic element discovered late last century by the famous chemists and physicists Pierre and Marie Curie, has lately been shown to reveal strong evidence for creation. It has also sparked a fiery challenge to evolution theory.
The element is polonium. It was the first radioactive element to be isolated in a fairly pure state, which was done by the Curies in 1898. More recently, American physicist Robert V. Gentry has done immense research on tiny 'halos' (spheres of discoloration) formed by polonium and other radioactive elements in rocks. [See Dr Margaret Helder's article about Robert Gentry in this issue of Creation.]

In the early 1960s, Gentry developed a fervent interest in the age of the earth. Inspired by evidence for a young earth implied by Dr John Whitcomb and Dr Henry Morris in their book, The Genesis Flood. Gentry saw the halo evidence mentioned in the book as being a major key to correctly determining the earth's age.

For more than 20 years now, Gentry's excellent experimental work and observations on these radiohalos qualify him without doubt as the world's leading authority on them. During these 20 years he has submitted his results to the secular scientific community for review. He has had work published in such prestigious scientific journals as Science, Nature, and Physics Today. He has discussed his evidence with scientists from government research laboratories and told them the implications of his evidence.

And what does such a leading authority say the radiohalos indicate? He says they show that the basic evolutionary premise of earth history is wrong. He says that rocks known as Precambrian granites were created almost instantly as a part of the creation event recorded in Genesis 1:1 rather than [being] rocks that are a product of the evolution of the earth.' He says 'the Big Bang version of primordial polonium is without any scientific basis.'

Gentry believes our galaxy was created about 6,000 years ago. And this is what he proposes in his creation model. Early in his research, Gentry decided to investigate every possible explanation for the polonium halos - except, he says, the one 'that they were created'. He reasoned that if evolutionists were unable to dispute this evidence and provide a verifiable conventional explanation for the polonium halos, he would be certain they were placed there by God as indisputable scientific evidence for the Genesis record of creation.

Gentry's work has never been refuted. But in 1984 the US National Academy of Sciences published a booklet with sweeping criticisms of creation science. Gentry took particular exception to the booklet's statement that 'when the evidence for creationism has been subjected to the tests of the scientific method, it has been found invalid.' He eventually issued a public challenge to the academy.

On August 4, 1986, Gentry wrote to the academy and requested a copy of any report the may have had which supposedly invalidated his results. None came. He invited the academy's president to bring as many evolutionists as he could muster to a scientific presentation of Gentry's work at the International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh in August, 1986. They were asked to bring any evidence which they believed invalidated his scientific research, or phone if they could not come.

The academy's president and his invited team did not even respond to Gentry's challenge until April 7, 1987, after a lapse of eight months, and after Gentry's third letter. In his reply, the president of the National Academy of sciences presented no refutation of Gentry's evidence. He merely reaffirmed evolution. Another invitation to refute Gentry's work was made to the academy, this time at the University of Tennessee on April 13, 1987. Again no one from the academy turned up.

Robert Gentry suggests that if his work cannot be invalidated, then all who hold to the uniformitarian view of earth's history should carefully consider his claim: that God has provided scientific evidence of creation which will help those who doubt Genesis come to a full knowledge of the truth of His word.

Though scriptural truth neither stands nor falls on the accuracy of Gentry's work, in the face of such an important challenge to basic evolutionary premises, Gentry's claims must not be lightly dismissed by critics of creation science. Before further criticism, let those who believe that the earth was not created in accord with God's word in Genesis, at least show Robert V, Gentry where his work is wrong.

"Etched within Earth's foundation rocks--the granites--are beautiful microspheres of coloration produced by the radioactive decay of primordial polonium, which is known to have only a fleeting existence. A simple analogy shows, on one hand, how these polonium microspheres--or halos--contradict the evolutionary belief that granites formed as hot magma slowly cooled over millions of years. On the other hand, it demonstrates how these halos provide unambiguous evidence of an almost instantaneous creation of granites and the young age of the earth: A speck of polonium in molten rock can be compared with an Alka-Seltzer dropped into a glass of water. The beginning of effervescence is equated to the moment that polonium atoms began to emit radiactive particles. In molten rock the traces of those radioactive particles would disappear as quickly as the Alka-Seltzer bubbles in water. But if the water were instantly frozen, the bubbles would be preserved. Likewise, polonium halos could have formed only if specks of polonium had been instantly encased in solid rock. An exceedingly large number of polonium halos are embedded in granites around the world. Just as the frozen bubbles would be clear evidence of quick-freezing of water, so are polonium halos undeniable evidence that many rapidly "effervescing" specks of created polonium interacted with a sea of primordial matter which was directly "frozen" as solid granite. The occurrence of these polonium halos, then, distinctly implies that our earth was formed in a very short time, in complete harmony with the biblical record of creation."

Venom

05-08-2003, 10:01 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Joshua is the same arguement as the weather man scenario. Totally rediculous that he would bring this up.

[/ QUOTE ]
Exactly! Weather reporters do the same thing on TV. They announce the times of "sunrise" and "sunset" Everyone uses this in everyday conversation, relative to our view on earth.

[ QUOTE ]
This guy needs to stick to dating, and not analyzing the bible because I could rip him apart for that above quote

[/ QUOTE ]
True, people make statements like the above to often.
What man says or thinks means little to nothing. What God says is what counts.

http://www.bibleverseart.com/wallpapers/albums/Archives/Autumn_Valley.jpg

President Wilson

05-08-2003, 10:24 PM

[ QUOTE ]
You assume a uniformitarion world view, I do not.

We are both starting with basic assumptions.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd like to address this again. A Uniformitariunism view as Old School has stated, is based purely on assumption, and states that slow processes which occur today, are the key to the past. It does not allow for a catastrophy.

Peter, prophesied that this would be the last view of the world and it would be used to deny the flood.

Here is his quote

[ QUOTE ]
3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

[/ QUOTE ]

Notice what Peter states in this prophesy " since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. "

They are stating that all things are the same today, as they were yesterday, and that the present is the key to the past.

Here is the definition of Uniformitariunism from Websters

[ QUOTE ]
a geological doctrine that existing processes acting in the same manner as at present are sufficient to account for all geological changes

[/ QUOTE ]

Therefore, as Peter states further, they are willingly ignorant of the flood. Here is his quote of why they invented this " doctrine "

[ QUOTE ]
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old

[/ QUOTE ]

In other words

A They are willingly ignorant, that Gods word states that directly by the word of God the heavens were created

and B

[ QUOTE ]
and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

[/ QUOTE ]

So they are willingly ignorant that the world, was overun by a flood.

What is catastrophism? It essentially states that Geological formations can be explained by large catastrophies.

Lets illustrate one for example

The amount of energy released By Mr St. Helens is comparable to approximately 33,000 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs!

Surely, this is not an everyday event. It is a catastrophy!
And, this catastrophy had drastic results

Uniformitariunism states that slow and " gradual processes " can account for what is seen. And yet, here is the exact opposite. The events associated with the volcanos explosion accomplished in seconds, hours, or just a few days, geologic work that normally would be interpreted as having taken millions of years. And yet it is quite the opposite

An entire canyon, often refered to as the "Little Grand Canyon." was formed in one day! And newly formed river then flowed through the Canyon formed by the mud-flow.

The uniformitariunism view would say that that river, over millions of years carved that canyon, and yet, this was not the case at all!

What about strata?

The erosion of this canyon enables scientists to see some of the layers that were laid down. What astonished them were features such as the 25-feet-thick deposit that consisted of thousands of thin layers.

The uniformitariunism view states that those layers would take millions of years to form. And that each reprisents an age. And yet, they were all formed in a single day and perhaps a few hours! Exactly what the flood model would predict from a catastrophy.

People around the world are indoctrinated by evolutionists who believe that layers like those we see at the Grand Canyon took millions of years to be laid down. That belief of "billions of years" is foundational to evolutionary thinking. What happened at Mount St. Helens shatters this assumption, and shows that it can form in a few hours.

The evidence here shows that one can logically accept that the flood of Noah's day and its after-affects could have accomplished extraordinary geologic work, carving out canyons and the laying down of sediments in massive quantities all across the globe just as we see today!

And in fact, Increasingly, most geologists evolutionist or creationist who have been to the Grand Canyon will now acknowledge that the Canyon was carved by a lot of water over a little period of time, not over millions of years.

But, lets look directly at what they are saying

Dr. Fritz William J.

in , "Stumps Transported and Deposited Upright by Mount St. Helens Mud Flows," Geology, vol. 8 (December 1980), pp. 586-588.

Makes the following statements

[ QUOTE ]
p 586
During several visits to Mount St. Helens, Washington, from July to September 1980, I observed numerous stumps that had been deposited upright after being transported many kilometres by streams and mudflows resulting from the May 18, 1980, eruption. These observations support the conclusion that mud flows and streams of the same variety transported and deposited stumps that are preserved in a vertical position in the Eocene Lamar River Formation."

[/ QUOTE ]

He then states that

[ QUOTE ]
"Deposits of recent mud flows on Mount St. Helens demonstrate conclusively that stumps can be transported and deposited upright. These observations support conclusions that some vertical trees in the Yellowstone fossil forests were transported in a geologic situation directly comparable to that of Mount St. Helens."

[/ QUOTE ]

This, again is directly with a catastrophist flood model.

[ QUOTE ]
"The Earth is firmly fixed; it shall not be moved" (Psalm 104:5),

[/ QUOTE ]

Why do evolutionists use this verse? And completely take it out of context? When it says the earth shall not be moved, it is stating our of God's plan.

How do we know this? Because the same Hebrew is used with King David. See here

David says

[ QUOTE ]
I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

[/ QUOTE ]

SUrely, David is not saying that he will not " move " at all " physically " but rather be moved out of Gods will!

Its a clear understanding here. As clear as Crytsal. Same Hebrew, and yet no one would say that the Bible is saying that David will be frozen in time. It is clear what David is saying.

This is why Peter states that Scripture is not open to private interpretation, but rather scripture must explain itself.

Thats not an argument

Going back to radiometric dating however, I would like to address just how tremendous the disagreements in dating actually are

The Hawkesbury Sandstone is assigned a Middle Triassic age of 230 million years of age. Fossil wood was found in here. Now, radiocarbon, should not even be measurable after 50, 000 years. This is near a quarter of a billion years! And dated by carbon dating. The analytical report from the laboratory measured that radiocarbon had been found in the fossil wood, yielding a supposed 14C age of 33,720 ± 430 years.

This is, therefore, a legitimate radiocarbon However, a 33,720 ± 430 years BP radiocarbon emphatically conflicts with, the supposed evolutionary age; of 230 million years for this fossil wood from the Hawkesbury Sandstone.

If dating works so great, how can an assigned date of a quarter billion years be so completely flawed?

It seems that long ;age believers are left with only three options:

1. Accept the radiocarbon date. This would mean that the age of the Upper Tertiary shrinks from 230 million to 33,000 years, a factor of around 600 times. The whole geologic dating system would be thrown into disrepute!

2. Arbitrarily reject the radiocarbon date. To be consistent, therefore, they would have to conclude that radiometric dates are not the absolute age indicators we are persistently told, which destroys the main plank in the old-age dogma to begin with.

3. Ignore the result.

The creationist however looks and sees

A. The error is so drastic that it is apparent that both dates are erroneous.

A fact, shown in such modern day lava dates, which show flows 50 years old as being millions of years old.

The point again, however is the assumption you begin with

Just closely look at the assumptions

A. The Two groups of scientists go into the same place and begin with two assumptions.

1. The secular group says - This Middle Triasic Period is near 250, 000 million years old. Since it is this old, we have no need of even using carbon dating, because it will yield no results.

Premise - Its impossible to find carbon on a quarter of a billion year old site.

2. The creationists goes to the same site and says. Heres wood. This was laid down in the flood. And it will have carbon in it, even though the carbon 14 to carbon 12 ratio was vastly different pre-flood. premise - It will have carbon based on assumption.

result - The creationsists finds carbon in the wood. And everytime this has been tried it has been successful. This goes perfectly with our pre-assumptions.

The flood model explains both of those dates clearly.

sickbikes

05-08-2003, 10:59 PM

[ QUOTE ]
akufadum said:
I might have missed it, but OS can you tell me how old you believe the earth to be. Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]I can tell you what my own personal studying of God's word says about the age of the earth. If you look through the Bible, you can find the ages of specific men and women. These ages may seem to have no correlation to anything specific, but as you will see, they do. Start with th day Adam was created - you find out later just how old he was when he begat Cain. From there, you see the overlapping ages of the descendants at the time that they had children, etc.

You can find these accounts all throughout the Old Testament, and you can arrive at a certain time frame from the moment of creation, to the end of the Old Testament. If you understand the modern Roman calendar, you will know that there has been a period of approximately 2000+ years since the birth of Jesus.

Add to that the period of time (about 400 years), between the Old and New Testaments, you will see that the earth is actually between 4000 - 6000 years young!

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 11:11 PM

Exactly Venom. Herein lies the real problem:

Hebrews 4:

 7 Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,

8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.

10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.

11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.


People like this try to tempt God with their rediculous out of context examples of equivication.

These types of examples make it easy to see why he could get billions of years out of the bible.

This guy could literally get the bible to say anything he wanted to by simply taking verses out of context.

And he clearly demonstrated his ability to do so with the above examples of ignorance.

9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.

They tempt God's word, test God, even though He made the answers clear. God is not a trickster.

 22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:


Jesus was without sin, and His Word is without deception.

People who pull this "billions of years" out of the bible need to realize God is not trying to test their faith. He says there is no excuse for this type of out of context bait and switch tactic.

 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:


[ QUOTE ]
Surely, David is not saying that he will not " move " at all " physically " but rather be moved out of Gods will!

Its a clear understanding here. As clear as Crytsal. Same Hebrew, and yet no one would say that the Bible is saying that David will be frozen in time. It is clear what David is saying.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, the author of that article is ignorant of biblical laws.

Often the word, "PhD" are associated with these people, as though that means something compared to God. And time and time again we see these doctors commited logical fallacy with scripture. When I catch these mistakes so easily it makes it hard to believe this "science" he endorses as well.

Romans:

11 For there is no respect of persons with God.

Man's wealth, intelligence, looks, etc. do not impress God as though we have something he wants. He gave us everything we had. And I might add His mind is infinte ours is finite.

 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.


It has been shown that radio dating can be accelerated a billion fold in the laboratory. As demonstrated here in:
TJ 15(2):4-6, 2001

 Our understanding of ostensibly long-lived radioactive clocks in the light of the Creationist-Diluvialist paradigm, must necessarily consider both geologic and physical factors. Among the latter are decay-rate changes, and these may include a variety of superimposed processes occurring at the same or at different times in the several-thousand year history of the universe. Up to now, creationist research has summarized evidences of small decay-rate changes, as well as theoretical analyses suggestive of the possibility of more extreme changes in radioactive decay rates (the latter usually dependent upon corresponding changes in fundamental physical constants1). Here I report the experimental demonstration of radioactive decay-rate acceleration by an astonishing nine orders of magnitude. It requires special conditions but, in and of itself, no alteration of known physical constants.

This acceleration can occur under beta (negatron) decay. During b decay itself, a neutron changes into a proton, electron and electron-antineutrino, and the electron is expelled as a negative beta particle (b- often written without the negative sign, but sometimes it is necessary to distinguish it from the rarer positive beta or positron decay b+). Because the protons in the nucleus and the b particles have opposite charges, they attract each other, and the b must therefore acquire sufficient kinetic energy to overcome this attraction in order to escape the nucleus. This has been likened to a particle having sufficient energy to crash through the walls of a well.2 In some b emitters, the successful escape of a b-particle into the continuum is a relatively infrequent occurrence-hence the inferred long half life (t½) of the nuclide.

Accelerated b decay

http://answersingenesis.org/docs2001/images/beta_decay.jpg

(a) Atom showing the 1s electron orbital. The orbital is full. (b) The same atom in a completely ionised state. The atom has been stripped of its electrons. The energy required to escape an atom when the electron shell is filled (a) is greater than the energy required for the electron to jump to a vacant spot in an electron shell (b). r* is the distance from nucleus where finding an electron is most probable. For a 1s orbital r*=a0/Z where a0 = Bohr radius @ 52.9 pm; Z=atomic number.

The foregoing discussion assumes that electrons surround the nucleus, which of course is nearly always the case. For over 50 years, however, some theoreticians had suggested that negatron decay could be altered in the case of a nucleus bereft of its electrons (as occurs in a plasma state). Perhaps the b-particle attempting to leave a bare nucleus would have to overcome a much lower threshold of kinetic energy than if the electrons were absent. The fleeing b particle could take refuge in a vacant electron orbital around the nucleus instead of attempting to escape all the way into the continuum. This process is called bound-state b decay (or bb decay). Subsequently, theoretical analyses3 suggested that a significant perturbation of radioactive decay rates could occur in the nuclides of 25 different elements as a consequence of bb decay.

Experimental demonstration of the actual existence of bb decay, however, did not occur until the 1990s. 163Dy, a stable nuclide under normal-Earth conditions, was found to decay to 163Ho, with t½ = 47 days, under the bare-nucleus conditions of the completely ionized state.4 More recently, bb decay has been experimentally demonstrated in the rhenium-osmium (187Re-187Os) system. (The Re-Os method is one of the isotopic clocks used by uniformitarian geologists5 to supposedly date rocks.) The experiment involved the circulation of fully-ionized 187Re in a storage ring. The 187Re ions were found to decay to a measurable extent in only several hours, amounting to a half-life of only 33 years.6 This represents a staggering billion-fold increase over the conventional half-life, which is 42 Ga! (Ga = giga-annum = a billion (109) years).

A Creation Week scenario

Now, let us visualize the following situation at the beginning of Creation Week. As God creates the atoms which will subsequently be assembled into all of the matter that will constitute all of the objects in the physical universe, He first creates them all in a completely ionised state (i.e. nuclei alone). This plasma persists for several hours on the First Day, during which time bb decay freely takes place under the bare-nucleus conditions of all of the atoms. This process, though, is insufficient by itself to generate billions of years worth of excess 187Os.7 However, if there were a simultaneous weakening of the presently-existing nuclear force, as suggested by Humphreys,8 the Re-Os clock would be accelerated another few orders of magnitude. Not only the Re-Os clock, but probably many other radioactive (and even stable) nuclides would experience appreciable amounts of bb decay under the bare-nucleus conditions of the plasma. We note that the potential or actual bb decay gives a large head start to extreme accelerations of radioactive decay. Thus the postulated weakening of the nuclear force7 may need to be far less drastic than originally supposed (when assumed to be acting upon non-ionized atoms) to generate billions of years' worth of decay products in several hours.

It turns out that bb decay is not the only mechanism by which some ostensibly long-age clocks can experience major accelerations in radioactive decay rate. Consider the lutetium-hafnium (176Lu-176Hf) system, which is relatively new, and which is infrequently used by uniformitarian geologists to supposedly date rocks.9 At very high temperatures, part of the 176Lu decay to 176Hf bypasses the conventional slow route, and goes into an isomeric state which has a half-life of only 3.68 hours.10 In other words, part of the 176Lu decay experiences an alternative decay mode to 176Hf which represents, in effect, a shortcut that is 14 orders of magnitude faster than the conventional 176Lu decay (t½ = 41 Ga). Moreover, in this particular instance, no changes in the nuclear force are necessary. Extreme temperatures suffice, and the greater they are, the shorter the effective half life of 176Lu decay to 176Hf. In terms of specifics, at temperatures below about 200 million K, t½ remains unperturbed at about 41 Ga. But, over the interval of 200 to 300 MK, the effective t½ drops precipitously (by nearly 10 orders of magnitude), then begins to level off asymptotically at still higher temperatures. Thus, at 600 MK, the effective t½ of 176Lu is only about 8 days!11 This is short enough that if, as discussed earlier, all of the atoms in the universe had been created in a very hot state which just means very high kinetic energies and maintained that way for several hours on the First Day), all the excess 176Hf in existence would have been generated within that short period.

The rapidly-accumulated products of the accelerated radioactive decay subsequently became part of every object in the created universe, albeit at differing concentrations. During the remainder of the Creation Week, as God cooled and organized the plasma into solid celestial objects, such as planets, the excess radiogenic isotopes became partitioned into the relevant mineral phases, perhaps according to accelerated geochemical processes. The modern uniformitarian geologist misreads this deployment of the radiogenic isotopes as isochrons indicative of up to billions of years to time. This span of time never happened.


This demonstration that isotopic "clocks" can be accelerated at least a billion-fold is good news to creationist scholars. It raises fundamental questions about the temporal stability of isotopic "clocks". What else have we failed to consider in terms of the physics of radioactive decay? The myth of the virtual invincibility of radioactive decay to external forces has been decisively shattered, and the door to further research has now been opened.

Here is an excellent media event to listen to by Dr. Humphreys:

http://answersingenesis.org/AnswersMedia/play.asp?mediaID=010926_special

Should we believe in millions of years of fossils?

http://answersingenesis.org/AnswersMedia/play.asp?mediaID=030507_ans

What about dinosaurs?

http://answersingenesis.org/AnswersMedia/play.asp?mediaID=000419_special

CoLDTuRKeY

05-08-2003, 11:14 PM

[ QUOTE ]
President Wilson said:
[ QUOTE ]
I guess sooner or later we'll find out who's right.

[/ QUOTE ]

Certainly, you can find out sooner if you'd like. Jesus has this to say

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. 22 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

Its essentially an open invitation, all you need do is answer it. Let us know if you would like any help in the area, and keep pumpin brother!

[/ QUOTE ]

Good quote. But many people would more like to see with their own 2 eyes a physical presence of God or Jesus before they believe. I can understand that. Humans feel a natural need to know and for some knowing is only obtained through incontrovertible fact.
To be honest with you, I can't really tell you a certain instance in my life where I actually felt like God was around me but I'm certain there has been. Lets keep this rollin!!
And by the way, though I do believe in evolution and I do believe that we essentially evolved from nearly nothing I do still believe that God has a plan in the end for everyone.

Adam Knowlden

05-08-2003, 11:49 PM

[ QUOTE ]
But many people would more like to see with their own 2 eyes a physical presence of God or Jesus before they believe.

[/ QUOTE ]

 1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork 

He's given us a lot to see. The universe declares the glory of God.

But if your preassumption is that the universe is a act of blind random chance and not an act of creation, it defenietly puts a mask on the viewer.

20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

05-09-2003, 12:19 AM

Adam Knowlden

05-09-2003, 12:25 AM

Good links! /forum/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Venom

05-09-2003, 03:34 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the reply.

[/ QUOTE ]
No problem. /forum/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[ QUOTE ]
I will say that the mods from ABC that have posted on this thread have presented their points well, and are at least open enough to listen to the other side. I usually loathe any discussion over this topic because of the tension that it creates between me and other people.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, this has been a very enjoyable debate. Everyone has been very polite.

[ QUOTE ]
There may be a time where this will change for me and I will be saved, as you put it, but right now I am just not in that frame of mind

[/ QUOTE ]
Ok, but if you decide to join, be sure to update us. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

President Wilson

05-09-2003, 03:37 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I will say that the mods from ABC that have posted on this thread have presented their points well, and are at least open enough to listen to the other side. I usually loathe any discussion over this topic because of the tension that it creates between me and other people. Thanks for the reply.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thankyou also Pete!

PainMan

10-20-2004, 01:28 PM

A bit late to the party here but, as to the original quesiotn, I recall Billy Graham being asked this same question. His response was that he didn't really know and wasn't prepared to say either way. He said it was possible they existed because a) God can do anything including creating aliens and b) Christ once said "I have other flocks that ye know not of" allowing at least for the possibility that they might exist.

If they showed up one day it wouldn't necessarily be a contradiciton of God's existence or the validity of the bible. Frankly, I'm more worried about me and my problems and life than aliens.

**DONOTDELETE**

10-21-2004, 02:12 AM

OUTLAW20SICX

10-21-2004, 04:10 AM

ET lives dammit

ZachE84

10-21-2004, 08:59 AM

Then I wodner why God made the universe so big for one species and not the power to ever see it. Even if it is possible to travel at the speed of light...it could be tough to do! Then again, you don't age at the SOL [-]

**DONOTDELETE**

10-21-2004, 11:58 AM

PainMan

10-21-2004, 12:13 PM

Joe, I don't know the chapter and verse that he quoted. Sorry. It was in the NT though. This was a long time ago that I heard him say this.

Now, keep in mind that I'm not saying they do or do not exist. I'm not saying this quote from the bible confirms or denies their existence. All I'm saying is that Billy Graham, a man that's studied the bible all his life, when asked about this subject quoted this from the bible and said its a possibility and he wasn't in a position to say yes or no. I'm not going to argue scripture with the likes of him.

**DONOTDELETE**

10-21-2004, 04:25 PM

PainMan

10-21-2004, 04:55 PM

Ok, judt did a search on the web for the term "flock" in both the NT and OT and guess what? Nothing resembling what I've said comes up. Soooooo........... i guess Billy could have been quoting from a different version other then King James, he could have been "interpreting" a verse in a different way, he could have been pulling our legs or.........I could be dead wrong even though I recall it so vividly.

I wonder which one is most likely correct /forum/images/graemlins/blush.gif

Oh.....I DID find this verse:

Isaiah 61:5 - And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the ALIEN shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.

Now, if that doesn't prove the existence of "aliens" I don't know what does /forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif 'Course, I'm not sure I'd like them dressing my vines and all.............

**DONOTDELETE**

10-21-2004, 05:06 PM

RuthRose

10-21-2004, 09:57 PM

Painman: I think you were looking for this verse...

John 10:16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

**DONOTDELETE**

10-21-2004, 10:10 PM

William Ustav

10-22-2004, 12:36 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
John 10:16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

[/ QUOTE ]

That sounds more like what PainMan was intimating. Unfortunately, this does not intimate there is extraterrestrial life. /forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif

The "other sheep" in this verse is referring to Gentiles, or non-Jews. Jesus came to save Gentiles as well as Jews. This is an insight into his worldwide mission - to die for the sins of the world (note: the world, not the universe).

[/ QUOTE ]

Joe is correct here /forum/images/graemlins/smirk.gif It does not imply that there are extra terrestrials in any way.

Y'all should also try to check out www.crosswalk.com (http://www.crosswalk.com), for in-depth studies on all Bible verses. You'll find several different, independent, comments.

RuthRose

10-22-2004, 01:06 PM

I also agree with Joe's update. In fact I am going to re-read this thread a few more times. /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif Lots of good information in here!

Venom

10-22-2004, 01:18 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Christ once said "I have other flocks that ye know not of" allowing at least for the possibility that they might exist.

[/ QUOTE ]

Read this thread,
here (http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=670570&an=&page=&vc=1)

[ QUOTE ]
Oh.....I DID find this verse:

Isaiah 61:5 - And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the ALIEN shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.

Now, if that doesn't prove the existence of "aliens" I don't know what does 'Course, I'm not sure I'd like them dressing my vines and all.............

[/ QUOTE ]

lol! /forum/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Venom

10-22-2004, 01:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Then I wodner why God made the universe so big for one species and not the power to ever see it.

[/ QUOTE ]

For his glory.

Psalms 19:1
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Romans 1:20
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Read these threads,
http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/sho...o=7&fpart=1 (http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=915492&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=7&fpart=1) http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=719395&an=&page=&vc=1

And there is a lot we have never, or will ever see in our human bodies. We will one day though!

1 Corinthians 13:12
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

John 17:24
Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

1 Corinthians 2:9
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

ImmortalDragon

10-22-2004, 04:29 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Then I wodner why God made the universe so big for one species and not the power to ever see it.

[/ QUOTE ]

For his glory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds a little egotistical...

RuthRose

10-22-2004, 06:06 PM

[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Christ once said "I have other flocks that ye know not of" allowing at least for the possibility that they might exist.

[/ QUOTE ]

Read this thread,
here (http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=670570&an=&page=&vc=1)

[/ QUOTE ]

I get access denied on that thread

**DONOTDELETE**

10-22-2004, 06:52 PM

KrYptic.x

10-22-2004, 06:57 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Then I wodner why God made the universe so big for one species and not the power to ever see it.

[/ QUOTE ]

For his glory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds a little egotistical...

[/ QUOTE ]

Egotistical?

No, egotistical is what each one of us are when we reject his son.

Watch The Passion of the Christ once, maybe you'll get a GLIMPSE of what Jesus did for each of us because he loved us. Oh and not to mention that the moment when Jesus was on the Cross, and the Father left him...that is a pain that must be inexplicable.

From the every little blade of grass to the furthest reaching star, they are all testiments of God's power and grace.

Please don't mock him.

(Sorry for getting a little of subject)

ImmortalDragon

10-22-2004, 07:34 PM

What did he do to sacrifice himself for us? If he is omniscient than he can't really sacrifice anything, can he?

Venom

10-22-2004, 11:57 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Christ once said "I have other flocks that ye know not of" allowing at least for the possibility that they might exist.

[/ QUOTE ]

Read this thread,
here (http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=670570&an=&page=&vc=1)

[/ QUOTE ]

I get access denied on that thread 

[/ QUOTE ]

Try again. /forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Venom

10-23-2004, 12:15 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Then I wodner why God made the universe so big for one species and not the power to ever see it.

[/ QUOTE ]

For his glory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds a little egotistical...

[/ QUOTE ]

Egotistical?

No, egotistical is what each one of us are when we reject his son.

Watch The Passion of the Christ once, maybe you'll get a GLIMPSE of what Jesus did for each of us because he loved us. Oh and not to mention that the moment when Jesus was on the Cross, and the Father left him...that is a pain that must be inexplicable.

From the every little blade of grass to the furthest reaching star, they are all testiments of God's power and grace.

Please don't mock him.

(Sorry for getting a little of subject)

[/ QUOTE ]

That was just an excellent post, Kyptic!

And great breakdown, Joe.

[ QUOTE ]
What did he do to sacrifice himself for us? If he is omniscient than he can't really sacrifice anything, can he?

[/ QUOTE ]

How did you come to that conclusion?

I would recommend this thread, http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/sho...;o=&fpart=1 (http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=704512&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1) if you do, you will understand that it is for OUR benefit to glorify him. He does not need, or require anything from us. He graciously allows us to glorify his name, and share in his excellent inheritance.

It is an absolutely amazing privilege that God would choose us—sinful, rebellious man—to have a part in his eternal plan. I would advise being more thankful for the chance he has given you, and take advantage of each hour you have on earth for his glory. You will never find true peace and happiness in your life otherwise.

Romans 9:19-20
19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? 20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

My personal prayer daily is that God would give me more opportunities to glorify him, and account me faithful to do so as he did with Paul:

1 Timothy 1:12-17
12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; 13 Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. 14 And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. 15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. 16 Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting. 17 Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

And I would read this thread too for what God has planned for us, http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/sho...;o=&fpart=1 (http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=bodybuilder&Number=391186& page=3&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)

DukeOfEarl

10-23-2004, 07:03 AM

Aliens are aiding the U.S and Scadanavian governments to build advanced spacecraft.

OUTLAW20SICX

10-23-2004, 03:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Aliens are aiding the U.S and Scadanavian governments to build advanced spacecraft.

[/ QUOTE ]
dont forget about the alien/human hybrid that there making also

**DONOTDELETE**

10-23-2004, 03:37 PM

sta63bmx

10-23-2004, 04:55 PM

We know there are aliens among us. They can often be spotted, since they are just tiny creatures which grow a body and then control it fdrom a tiny capsule inside. Things to look for...

1. Temporary loss of control of facial features of the humanoid form. Compare to normal human on the left.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jpowell1/www/funny/kerry/hk1.jpg

2. Inability to control humanoid form leads to spasms, loss of control. Compare to natural human motion on the left.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jpowell1/www/funny/kerry/jk1.jpg

3. Fondness for unnatural colors and strange appearance is also a clue that the humanoid form may be controlled by an alien. Compare to typical human activity on the left.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jpowell1/www/funny/kerry/jk2.jpg

4. Can be spotted exiting space capsule dressed like an alien, surrounded by strange alien creatures. Attempts to mimic regular human behavior, shown on left.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jpowell1/www/funny/kerry/jk3.jpg

**DONOTDELETE**

10-23-2004, 05:03 PM

NJI

10-23-2004, 05:08 PM

LOL!

Adam Knowlden

10-23-2004, 06:17 PM

[ QUOTE ]
b) Christ once said "I have other flocks that ye know not of" allowing at least for the possibility that they might exist.

[/ QUOTE ]

As Joe pointed out the Lord was referring to the Gentiles.

You can see here the Jewish mindset regarding the gentiles. They would have never imagined that those other than themesleves, the seed of Abraham, could inherit the covenant of God.

22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.
27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.


 "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel" 

A lot of people like to deny this next verse, but the Lord does in fact call this woman a dog. A dog was a common term used by Jews for those who were not inheriters of the covenant.

 26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. 

First you must understand God is bound to His word. He does not break His coveants. Jesus was only bound to the covenant of the first dispensation. His covenant was not belong to the gentiles.

But what you also have to realize is that God likes people to "argue" with Him on the grounds of His Word. This is a sign of faith in His Word. We see that with Jacob wrestling the angel, Moses in th breech and many other examples. See my thread on prayer for a full explanation of this concept. Which is why Jesus does grant the woman's request. But...

God made a promise to Abraham and his seed, not to the rest of the world.

However, God did cause, through His Son's death for the rest of the world to be grafted into the covenant.

Here in Acts 10, we see Peter, one of the close disciples of the Lord, with reservations that the new covenant was for the Gentiles. God had to cause a literal miracle for him to accept it.

 Peter Meets Cornelius
24 And the following day they entered Caesarea. Now Cornelius was waiting for them, and had called together his relatives and close friends. 25As Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. 26But Peter lifted him up, saying, "Stand up; I myself am also a man." 27And as he talked with him, he went in and found many who had come together. 28Then he said to them, "You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. 29Therefore I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. I ask, then, for what reason have you sent for me?"
30So Cornelius said, "Four days ago I was fasting until this hour; and at the ninth hour[3] I prayed in my house, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing, 31and said, "Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your alms are remembered in the sight of God. 32Send therefore to Joppa and call Simon here, whose surname is Peter. He is lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner, by the sea.[4] When he comes, he will speak to you.' 33So I sent to you immediately, and you have done well to come. Now therefore, we are all present before God, to hear all the things commanded you by God."

Preaching to Cornelius' Household
34 Then Peter opened his mouth and said: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. 35But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him. 36The word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ--He is Lord of all-- 37that word you know, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. 39And we are witnesses of all things which He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they[5] killed by hanging on a tree. 40Him God raised up on the third day, and showed Him openly, 41not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. 42And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead. 43To Him all the prophets witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins."

The Holy Spirit Falls on the Gentiles
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word. 45And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 46For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God.
Then Peter answered, 47"Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" 48And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then they asked him to stay a few days.


Its easy to see why The Lord told them He has flocks they know not of.

He showed this as well in the parable of the husbandmen:

 33 Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:
34 And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.
35 And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.
36 Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.
37 But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.
38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.
39 And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.
40 When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?
41 They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.
42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.
44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
45 And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them.
46 But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet.


[ QUOTE ]
What did he do to sacrifice himself for us? If he is omniscient than he can't really sacrifice anything, can he?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. As I noted God is bound to His Word. That is His divine Will to be bound to His Word, which He will not break.

God standard demands absolute perfection and absolutely zero sin.

However, we have all sinned. This means God would have to send His Son to take our place.

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds a little egotistical...

[/ QUOTE ]

It is not. In fact the rest of the universe was mearly an after thought of God. In Genesis we see great detail on the creation of the earth, the animals and most of all Man.

But here is the description of the rest of the universe...

 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.


That is actually rather comical. A partial sentence used to describe the vast cosmos. But God shows through this His great love for us. That although He has the ability to do all things, He choses to place mankind as the pinnacle of the demonstration of His love!!!