Creation Conversion: The Turning Point (Dr. Vernon Cupps, PhD)

Institute for Creation Research ^ | May 2014 | ICR staff

[fishtank]

Creation Conversion: The Turning Point

Last month we ran our first Creation Conversion article, in which ICR zoologist Frank Sherwin described his shift from adhering to a billions-of-years evolutionary model to believing in biblical creation, which holds that the universe is only thousands of years old. A scientist with a similar experience, nuclear physicist Dr. Vernon Cupps, came to ICR from Fermilab, America’s particle physics laboratory.1 He describes his creation conversion as follows:

"I came to believe in a young-earth view of creation when I took the time to investigate the actual scriptural, observational, and experimental evidences for both the young- and old-earth hypotheses. A young-earth view of creation is first of all, and most importantly, what is clearly taught by a straightforward reading of Scripture. Dr. Steven W. Boyd presented a particularly persuasive argument for this interpretation of Scripture in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth.2 When one considers that the most reasonable explanation for the fossils in various rock strata is a sudden catastrophic burial—[along with] the absence of transitional [fossil] forms in the rock strata, the presence of collagen in dinosaur bones supposedly hundreds of millions of years old, and the presence of measurable 14C in that collagen—it becomes very difficult to hold an old-earth view. The preponderance of observational and experimental data seem to support the concept of a young earth...."

...more at link

[fishtank]

ICR article image.

Those look like lead bricks on the table, and of course the chart of the nuclides on the wall.

[fishtank]

References

(1) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is in Batavia, Illinois. Its vision is to inspire the world and enable its scientists to solve the mysteries of matter, energy, space, and time for the benefit of all. Scientists at Fermilab carry out research in high-energy physics to answer these questions: What is the universe made of? How does it work? Where did it come from?

(2) Boyd, S. W. 2005. Statistical Determination of Genre in Biblical Hebrew: Evidence for an Historical Reading of Genesis 1:1–2:3. In Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative. El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research and Chino Valley, AZ: Creation Research Society.

(3) Epistemology is the study or theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge, especially with reference to its limits and validity.

(4) Psalm 19; Romans 1:19-20.

Image credit: Fermilab, Batavia, IL

* Dr. Cupps earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at Indiana University-Bloomington. He is a Research Associate at ICR.

[Da Coyote]

Gasp, as a Christian, and a Christain with academic credentials the Obamadork couldn’t even spell, I really wish you folks would stop embarrising me by trying to tell God (and all of us) the time scale in which he pulled off the universe.

If you believe the place if only 4K years or so old, why not believe it was created only a millisecond ago, with all the past just planted there? Or perhaps it’s just God’s version of the matrix - in which we’re merely applications running on a (hopefully NOT Microsoft) OS?

That would make things a lot less bothersome for God, who could then go on to other more meaningful universes.

All the problems we’ve got in this world, and you choose to argue on the age of the earth?

[ThisLittleLightofMine]

I think you miss the point a godless society points to billions and billions of years, evolution points to death before the fall. It is very important that Christians decide whether they believe Gods word or mans. One doesn’t have to believe but they should at least consider the evidence presented, it has eternal ramifications.

[Buggman]

Actually, I believe what the Bible says quite well. And it makes two points concerning sin and death:

1) Death through Adam came to all men--it doesn't say anything about Adam's sin bringing death to animals.

2) Adam was not intrinsically immortal, or else the Tree of Life had no purpose. Ergo, there was already entropy that could bring about the death of even a sinless lifeform in the world, so God provided an antidote for it. Kangaroos in Austrailia would have a hard time making a regular pilgrimage to Eden to eat of the Tree of Life, so we can infer that even if the world were young and even if Adam had not sinned, there would still have been animal death.

Simple logic tells me a third point about animal death:

3) If there was no animal death, there could not be animal reproduction either. If there were, earth's food resources would have been stripped bare within a few centuries, and everything would have died of starvation anyway. Since even before Man was created, God made the animals to "bring forth after their kind," it follows that animal death must have been intended from the beginning.

Which makes sense. How can the punishment "you shall surely die" mean anything to Adam if there is no such thing as death?

Moreover, the Bible points to the constancy of the natural laws (i.e., the laws of physics) as evidence of the constancy of the Lawgiver (cf. Jer. 31-33). Every YEC model out there requires some sort of massive discontinuity in the laws of physics in order to explain why we can see anything further than 6000 light years away--and such a confluence of changing natural laws put together that somehow completely negate our ability to detect them.

As someone else has pointed out, we might as well posit that nothing is real and that God put us in the Matrix.

If it magnifies God to have an observable universe 30 billion light years across in the spacial dimensions, I fail to see how it diminishes Him to have one 13.8 billion years old in the time dimension. And the more that I've learned about what the actual Hebrew of Genesis says, the more comfortable I am with an old universe and an old earth.

Shalom

[fishtank]

So, do you think someone like Vern Cupps just fell off the turnip truck???

That’s the very point I’m trying to make by posting creation science articles - that we (as a human race) have been fed a pack of lies about God, Creation, Jesus, and the need for a Savior.

The first seeds of planted doubt in the classroom regard science and creation ... groups like ICR, CMI and AIG are my heroes for the work they do.

[Jeremiah Jr]

Genesis 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Day, Yom, Yud Vav Mem the same word (day) from Genesis 1, first day, second day, etc.

Now!

Genesis 5:5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

Years Shanah Shin Nun Hei, as in Rosh Hashanah.

Adam did not die on the yom he ate from the tree of knowledge, how do you bridge the contradiction of these verses?

In the study of the Torah, there may seem to be two verses that contradict. The sages say that if the contradiction reaches an impasse, it is necessary to find a third verse that will reconcile the two verses.

Tehillim 90

1. A Prayer by Moses the man of G-D. O L-rd, You have been an abode for us in all generations! 2. Before the mountains were born and You had not yet fashioned the earth and the inhabited land, and from the remotest past and to the most distant future, You are G-D.

3. You reduce man to pulp, and You say “Repent O sons of man.” 4. For even a thousand years in Your eyes are but a bygone yesterday, and like a watch in the night. 5. You flood them away, they become sleep like; by morning they are like grass that withers.

Also: 2 Peter 3:8

Notice: from the remotest past and to the most distant future...

The formula is 1000 years = 1 day and 1 day = 1000 years.

Lets go for 6000 years...

First plug in the lunar year numbers. After all the Hebrew word for year is Shana, Shin Nun Hei.

Gematria of Shana is 355

Shin = 300
Nun = 50
Hei =5

Which is the number of days in the year, the lunar year...

A lunar calendar is a calendar that is based on cycles of the lunar phase. Because there are about twelve lunations (synodic months) in a solar year, this period (354.37 days) is sometimes referred to as a lunar year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_calendar

So: 354.37 x 1000 (day) = 354370 x 7000 (1 week) = 2480590000 x 6 (millennium) = 14,883,540,000 years.

Note: These parameters differ from cosmological calculations. They measure from the big bang to the present day, the above calculations are from the Tzimtzum to 6 millinum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzimtzum

The sages say: da’at kanita ma chasarta, da’at chasarta ma kanita – “if you have gained da’at you lack nothing, if you lack da’at what have you gained?”

[Jeremiah Jr]

Correction: Adam did not die in a 24 hour period, he did die the day he ate from the tree of knowledge the formula being, one day as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

So there goes the young earth theory out the window and on to the trash heap where it belongs. Is Ken Ham a scholar or a charlatan that lines his pockets with other peoples money? What else would you call someone that puts dinosaurs on Noach's Ark?

The Missing Link in the Debate
Isibiel Myrna Cohen

http://www.yashanet.com/library/missing_link.htm

[fishtank]

Adam and Eve were "dead" spiritually when they hid themselves from God.

[fishtank]

All creation fell as a result of Adam's sin.

[fishtank]

Ephesians 2:1-2

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world,”

Adam was dead (and so were you) as soon as he sinned.