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Today's Poll: How old is the Earth, do you believe?

By Howard B. Owens
Randy Smart

From the book of Genesis, Chapter 1:
"1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day."

So a literal interpretation of the Bible would show that the Earth existed (was created by God) before God commenced his six days of creation (before he created time as it were--the first day).

Oct 23, 2013, 10:48am Permalink
Ed Hartgrove

Good video, Doug.
I especially liked the clockworks (the horseman lopping the guy's head off was precious).
Thanks, Doug!!

Oct 23, 2013, 1:00pm Permalink
Randy Smart

Science and religion do not have to be at odds. Just because the Earth is 4.5 billion years old does not mean that it was not created by God. Consider Pangaea and other supercontinents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supercontinents). The Book of Genesis also seems to confirm the existence of supercontinents:
"9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good."
Now if all the water was gathered into one place, it would make sense that all of the land was also in one place. This was written 3000+ years ago, when the surface of the earth looked almost identical to the way it does now and before there were scientists studying the age of the earth, it's evolution, etc. yet the writer of Genesis knew that in the creation of the earth the land was massed together. Science and religion in agreement!

Oct 23, 2013, 3:23pm Permalink
Bob Harker

People solely focused on science do not understand that our conception of measures of time is meaningless to our Creator.

Question for the Darwinist s and evolutionists: If man is derived from apes, why are there still apes?

Oct 23, 2013, 7:17pm Permalink
Sean McKellar

"Question for the Darwinist s and evolutionists: If man is derived from apes, why are there still apes?"

Because man didn't derive from apes. Just like a house cat didn't derive from a Bengal tiger, or chickens didn't derive from ostriches.

We are similar species that evolved side by side, is all.

Oct 23, 2013, 7:47pm Permalink
Kyle Couchman

Don the fiction aspect of the Bible could be debated as it has been the only historical reference that led to more than a few archeological sites. If it was entirely a bread mold induced story this would not have been the case.

Oct 23, 2013, 7:55pm Permalink
Mark Brudz

When people discuss divinity and the Bible I always have to chuckle.

For the biblically oriented folks, I challenge anyone that takes the bible literally, the bible is strewn with metaphoric statements and example by parable. For the record, I am a Christian and believe that the bible was inspired by something beyond our comprehension, thus the metaphor and Para biblical style,, so that we can understand. You must also remember that before the bible was cast to stone or drafted on scrolls it was verbally passed from generation to generation, again an account for parable and metaphor.

For those believing that we are here by chance and science is the only answer, there are many things to consider.

1) Bob Harker was correct in saying "our conception of measures of time is meaningless to our Creator" That is something all that are believers in the bible should pay heed to. Our concept of God is one that as humans, we fool ourselves to believe that we know what God would say, do our believe based on our concepts.

2) To Bob, the 'Why are there still apes" question you actually answered yourself indirectly. If you believe in an Almighty, if you believe that the almighty is the creator and the conception of time is beyond our cognizance, then it stands to reason that so to is our concept of how and how long in our concept of time it took for man to be created, and in what manner the almighty was prone to create us. The evolution of the humanpid to what we know now as mankind could easily have taken millions of years as we count years, to the Almighty maybe only a second transpired in the last 30 years. So Science very well can explain the evolution and keep with FAITH which is truly glue that holds belief together. While Sagan discounted all divine intervention, scientist like Hawkings have come to believe that there is in fact a divine guidance albeit beyond our comprehension.

3) Finally, I have personally come to the conclusion that some like me believe or have faith and some others do not and place their faith on physical evidence. Neither of us will know for certain until such time as our life on earth ends, a true miracle aside.

In summation, I am comfortable with both, the beauty of nature and science which creates a very plausible timeline and the faith and belief that nothing so magnificent as the universe could happen as a matter of mere chance.

Oct 23, 2013, 8:39pm Permalink
Dave Olsen

I'm with Randy, Sean, Mark, Bob and Kyle. There are many parallels between scientific findings and the Bible. My God is awesome and all things are possible. Beyond my tiny comprehension.

Oct 23, 2013, 8:48pm Permalink
James Renfrew

Interesting. 14.5% of Batavian readers chose the second option. I guess God decided to bury countless and varied dinosaur bones in deep strata ten thousand years ago in order to ... hmm ... sorry, I can't think of a reason.

Oct 23, 2013, 8:57pm Permalink
Kyle Couchman

I took alot of heat from religious folk in my days of paranormal study. The gist is when you die you go to heaven or hell. Pretty black and white to me to be truth. I studied the pararnormal (ghosthunting if you will) to satisfy my own personal curiosity. I truly believe we will never come close to proving life after death in any form, just because this reality the Creator made that we live in would be forever altered by such a revelation. But I draw the line at attempts at communication with whatever this phenomena is ghost or not as God was very specific in the Bible that communication with these entities is forbidden, especially for gaining knowledge from them.

The Archbishop that presided over my confirmation a few years ago spoke on this saying if these things are spirits and arent in heaven then they arent from God. Therefore things to be avoided.

I will give you to ponder the same question I gave him in response....

Does God not say his greatest gift to mankind is free will. He doesnt make us believe and worship him. He didnt even give this gift to his choirs of angels. He gives us a choice. Now why, when we die would he change things and force us to heaven, hell, purgatory etc. Does the image of God that your faith has taught you seem like the type that would tell a mother killed in an accident that NO you cant linger and watch over your deathly ill child, you must got to heaven and wait for them there.

Thats the way I feel about things, I ignore religions that tell me God wants me to hate some group or another, or religions that tell me that without giving money as a tithe that God will ignore me, and so on. God doesn't make cruel thing happen in this world, that is the burden that comes with our free will to choose what we do and dont do. All our actions in life will be judged by only 2 entities, ourselves, and God because they are the only two entities in all of creation qualified to judge our actions. Because ourselve and God are the only entites that KNOW what the true intent behind our actions in life were.

Wow sorry bout the rant but this subject touches off some passions sometimes.

Oct 23, 2013, 9:12pm Permalink
Jeff Allen

I had no internet access yesterday and missed this discussion until I got up this morning. It is one of my favorites. I am one of those ignorant, young earthers that put my faith in the Bible. So here is the Readers Digest condensed version of my belief before I head off to work. Time is created. It is either created by God (I believe) or man. By human definition all things have a beginning and an end. So what preceded time? More days/nights, what preceded that?, or that, and so on. Time as it is defined in our terms is ruled by our rotation around the sun. The sun and moon were not created until day 4 of the Genesis account. Until that time there was simply a God defined light and dark. Therefore I am open to the possibility that days 1 - 3 could have been of unlimited proportion. Also, if one has faith that God created all things then it would stand to reason that when he created them, they would carry all the attributes of age. In other words, when he created the first rock, it would have had the physical characteristics of being "millions of years old" at it's moment of creation. He created Adam and Eve as fully formed adults and at the "age" of just a few minutes, had all the physical characteristics of an adult. Those two aspects alone allow God and science to peacefully coexist without compromising either. I also agree with Dave, he summed it up nicely in far fewer words.

Oct 24, 2013, 6:22am Permalink

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