Home » General Discussions » Heated Discussions and Debates » How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible.
How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373722] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 00:46 |
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reborn
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The Bible is quite clear when it comes to the age of our planet, and places it at about 6000 years old.
A commonly accepted age amongst scientists places our planet to be at approx 4.5 billion years.
If you're Jewish, or even Christian, does this mean you accept that the Earth is 6000 years old, and scientists are always getting it wrong? Or do you accept that the Earth is older then it states in the Bible, but just choose not to think about it?
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373756 is a reply to message #373722] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 06:11 |
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Ma1kel
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reborn wrote on Fri, 27 February 2009 03:46 | The Bible is quite clear when it comes to the age of our planet, and places it at about 6000 years old.
A commonly accepted age amongst scientists places our planet to be at approx 4.5 billion years.
If you're Jewish, or even Christian, does this mean you accept that the Earth is 6000 years old, and scientists are always getting it wrong? Or do you accept that the Earth is older then it states in the Bible, but just choose not to think about it?
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The more general question to ask if they have actually read the bible once.
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373769 is a reply to message #373722] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 08:02 |
DeadX07
Messages: 40 Registered: December 2008 Location: Pueblo West, Colorado US
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The Bible states that the Earth was made in seven days. In numerous parts of the Bible you will read that to God, a day is like a thousand years (as well as other similar metaphors). So I suppose it is possible that the Earth itself is very old, but mankind has only been existant for the 6000 years. I don't personally believe science and their billion year statistics they always pull out, but who is to say I am right or wrong. Do we really know anything about our own planet or ourselves for that matter? Not really.
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373787 is a reply to message #373722] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 09:16 |
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R315r4z0r
Messages: 3836 Registered: March 2005 Location: New York
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Basic logic and common sense does..
It's totally ridiculous to think that one race of animal: Human, is so awesome as that they have their own place to go to after they die, apart from anything else in the entire universe. It's both highly ridiculous and makes humans look like total selfish, self promoting jerks..
Not just any form of ridiculous, I mean like squirrel cooking bacon ridiculous..
It really boggles the mind how selfish people can be...
[Updated on: Fri, 27 February 2009 09:18] Report message to a moderator
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373811 is a reply to message #373795] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 11:46 |
dr3w2
Messages: 485 Registered: September 2006 Location: Ottawa,Canada
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madrackz wrote on Fri, 27 February 2009 11:07 | The Bible is my Toilett Paper.
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to not beleive in something is yours or anyone elses choice and im completely fine with that
even though im sure this statement is untrue and just a statement, to mock and disrespect someone elses beliefs shows how pathetic you really are
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back on topic
I think the real problem right now is there are many things that has been proven by science, but many different things that are "proven" or beleived through religion. Until there's a theory that encapsulates and puts an answer to everything then the idea of who is right and wrong will go on forever.
I think many religious people, aside from the extremist, dont take the bible word for word in a literal aspect. It may say "7 days" or jesus was born X years ago , however i think majority of people don't take it so literal. So when science comes around and says the world is X years old, those people usually easily accept that and maintain a balance in their concience between fact with evidence and belief.
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[Updated on: Fri, 27 February 2009 11:48] Report message to a moderator
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373817 is a reply to message #373811] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 12:21 |
Genesis2001
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andr3w282 wrote on Fri, 27 February 2009 11:46 | back on topic
I think the real problem right now is there are many things that has been proven by science, but many different things that are "proven" or beleived through religion. Until there's a theory that encapsulates and puts an answer to everything then the idea of who is right and wrong will go on forever.
I think many religious people, aside from the extremist, dont take the bible word for word in a literal aspect. It may say "7 days" or jesus was born X years ago , however i think majority of people don't take it so literal. So when science comes around and says the world is X years old, those people usually easily accept that and maintain a balance in their concience between fact with evidence and belief.
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Yea, I agree with that statement.
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373839 is a reply to message #373722] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 15:20 |
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[NE]Fobby[GEN]
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Does anybody know the actual verse that says the earth is 6,000 years old? Or is that just the total amount of years the people in Jesus' genealogy had lived?
Either way, though, humanity is a lot older than 6 thousand years. DNA evidence indicates that modern humans originated in east Africa about 200,000 years ago.
I'm not an atheist, but at the same time I don't think one should believe that the Bible is absolutely accurate about everything - its authors include a lot of people we don't know much about.
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[Updated on: Fri, 27 February 2009 15:21] Report message to a moderator
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373873 is a reply to message #373722] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 20:20 |
DeadX07
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Quote: | Either way, though, humanity is a lot older than 6 thousand years. DNA evidence indicates that modern humans originated in east Africa about 200,000 years ago.
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That takes into consideration that our science is actually correct though. We could be right, or we could be wrong. We don't "really" know. After all, we created our own science, so how do we know we are right? Food for thought, anyways.
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373889 is a reply to message #373722] |
Fri, 27 February 2009 23:48 |
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R315r4z0r
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A lot of people make that misconception. We didn't "make our own science." Science is simply the study of something.
"Our" science is the ability physically and logically prove something using the resources we have. We can then put the facts we find and put them against our units of measurement that we created.
Or to put it another way: We find proof and then interpret it through the use of human measurement.
So it isn't the facts or science behind it that human's created, what humans created was the means to read and record said facts.
For example:
It is a proven scientific fact that you are able to see how old a tree is by counting the rings inside of it. That is something that occurs naturally in nature. However, it was humans that introduced a counting system and a system of time.
We can figure out a tree's age in years by counting it's rings. (Two human derived measurement standards.) However, if those standards didn't exist, that doesn't mean trees would stop producing rings inside of them, nor would it mean that those rings would no longer represent one of Earth's rotations around the Sun.
Do you understand what I mean? The science and facts will always be there. They aren't human creation. The only thing that is human creation is the means to interpret those facts.
[Updated on: Fri, 27 February 2009 23:49] Report message to a moderator
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373897 is a reply to message #373769] |
Sat, 28 February 2009 01:24 |
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Spoony
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fobby, it's basically done by counting the number of generations in the bible. unfortunately the people who do so don't seem to mind that people attend impossibly old ages, nor are they phased by little details like the fact the two accounts of jesus' genealogy in two gospels are so radically different from each other (but then, the gospels manage to contradict each other about every other single major event to do with jesus, so no surprise there)
to answer the general question by reborn: welcome to the way religious people argue compared to the way scientists argue. when scientists look at the evidence and it doesn't tie up to their theory, they adapt the theory or start a new one from scratch. with the religious, the automatic reflex is "oh, it's a metaphor", "i know it says 'days' but it really means something else" etc etc etc. the possibility that the bible is just plain wrong never crosses the mind.
DeadX07 wrote on Fri, 27 February 2009 09:02 | The Bible states that the Earth was made in seven days. In numerous parts of the Bible you will read that to God, a day is like a thousand years (as well as other similar metaphors).
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...like so.
DeadX07 wrote on Fri, 27 February 2009 09:02 | So I suppose it is possible that the Earth itself is very old, but mankind has only been existant for the 6000 years.
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Except it hasn't, it's more like hundreds of thousands of years since we became distinct from the neanderthals and the cromagnons (sp?). Yahweh, on the other hand, has only 'existed' (and I'm stretching that word to breaking point) for a few thousand years.
God did not create Man. Man created God.
DeadX07 wrote on Fri, 27 February 2009 09:02 | I don't personally believe science and their billion year statistics they always pull out
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What do you mean "pull out"? These are conclusions that have been arrived at after studying enormous amounts of evidence, and which are faced by continual scrutiny. If you wanna see a statistic that was "pulled out" of nowhere, go read the Bible.
DeadX07 wrote on Fri, 27 February 2009 09:02 | but who is to say I am right or wrong. Do we really know anything about our own planet or ourselves for that matter? Not really.
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We know buckets and buckets and buckets more about the world, the universe and ourselves than we did at the time the Bible was written.
DeadX07 wrote on Fri, 27 February 2009 09:02 | After all, we created our own science, so how do we know we are right?
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We didn't "create" science, science is simply the word used for the process of studying the world around us. On the other hand, something we clearly did create is gods. They were a very very primitive version of science.
I'll just repeat a point I made in a few other threads. Now, we know a great deal about the planet; we know the world has fissures in its crust, a turbulent weather system, a molten core that is still cooling. This explains earthquakes and hurricanes and whatnot. We know about bacteria, which goes a long way to explaining most diseases.
When the Bible was written, we didn't know any of this. Therefore we had no real clue why earthquakes and plagues and such happened, so we can perhaps be forgiven for making the best guess we could; "it's the wrath of a celestial super-bully". Why not think that? It was probably the best we could do at the time.
Now, we know better.
Does the point need emphasising? Read the verses about the animals and God supposedly giving man 'dominance' over them. I'll name three examples of animals that are not mentioned absolutely anywhere: bacteria, dinosaurs, and marsupials. Why not? Because the men who wrote the Bible didn't know they existed. Nobody had found a dinosaur skeleton, nobody knew anything about germs, and nobody had a map that featured Australia. What's more, if they did know about bacteria they'd have known that for thousands of years we did not have 'dominance' over them. Indeed, they had dominance over us for thousands of years, a fight in which we are finally, finally turning the tide. No thanks to religion, of course.
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[Updated on: Sat, 28 February 2009 09:41] Report message to a moderator
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373937 is a reply to message #373922] |
Sat, 28 February 2009 09:42 |
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Spoony
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Muad Dib15 wrote on Sat, 28 February 2009 08:50 | Just because Dinosaurs aren't mentioned as dinosaurs doesn't mean they aren't mentioned. Read Job 40:15-32 and 41:1-26, then Isaiah 27:1. Though the bible may say these are hippos or crocidiles or elephants, realize that some of these animals don't really live up to the expectations. Dinosaurs could be the "Dragons" God was talking about.
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Spoony wrote | welcome to the way religious people argue compared to the way scientists argue. when scientists look at the evidence and it doesn't tie up to their theory, they adapt the theory or start a new one from scratch. with the religious, the automatic reflex is "oh, it's a metaphor", "i know it says 'days' but it really means something else" etc etc etc. the possibility that the bible is just plain wrong never crosses the mind.
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373983 is a reply to message #373722] |
Sat, 28 February 2009 14:21 |
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[NE]Fobby[GEN]
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Quote: |
That takes into consideration that our science is actually correct though. We could be right, or we could be wrong. We don't "really" know. After all, we created our own science, so how do we know we are right? Food for thought, anyways.
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I do respect that response, considering science is ever-changing. However, we do have an enormous amount of recorded history that dates back to far more than 6,000 years. To say that the first man was created in 4,000 BC is ignoring an important chunk of ancient history - political history, religious history, art, conflict, survival, etc.
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #373997 is a reply to message #373983] |
Sat, 28 February 2009 15:36 |
Muad Dib15
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[NE | Fobby[GEN] wrote on Sat, 28 February 2009 15:21]Quote: |
That takes into consideration that our science is actually correct though. We could be right, or we could be wrong. We don't "really" know. After all, we created our own science, so how do we know we are right? Food for thought, anyways.
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I do respect that response, considering science is ever-changing. However, we do have an enormous amount of recorded history that dates back to far more than 6,000 years. To say that the first man was created in 4,000 BC is ignoring an important chunk of ancient history - political history, religious history, art, conflict, survival, etc.
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Out of curiousity, what is this history? Is it the mesopatamians or others?
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #374012 is a reply to message #373722] |
Sat, 28 February 2009 17:59 |
Rocko
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it's pretty obvious to anyone who is capable of logical thinking and at least somewhat intelligent that religion is false and was only created to ease people's minds and to control them. There are so many fallacies in the bible and with the concept of God that it would impossible for me or others to believe. Though you can never totally disapprove the possibility of the clockmaker (deism), the concepts of christianity, islam, and others are most likely false.
the only good thing about religion is that it keeps stupid people from killing each other too often, sometimes, but not too much.
Though that is at least in America, Islamic extremism really throws that out the window.
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #374111 is a reply to message #373722] |
Sun, 01 March 2009 10:05 |
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[NE]Fobby[GEN]
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Quote: |
Out of curiousity, what is this history? Is it the mesopatamians or others?
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Well for starters, the Sumerians and ancient Egyptian societies date past 6,000 BC at the time of the Agricultural Revolution. That's a minimum of 8,000 years of organized human society. Before that, humans lived in small band societies and tribes of hunters and gatherers.
You've also got the Neolithic period dating back to around 10,000-12,000 BC, as well as other Stone Age periods that go back thousands of more years.
A 6-7 thousand year old humanity would assume that Adam, the first man, lived at around 4,000-5,000 BC, but at this time there were already entire societies being developed in east Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
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Re: How old is our planet, and the effect this question has on the Bible. [message #374188 is a reply to message #373722] |
Sun, 01 March 2009 13:53 |
Muad Dib15
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Genisis 5:3-5 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died. Everyone before Noah lived very long lives before they died. Take that into consideration before you say that we believe that people have only been here 6,000 years.
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