Posted on 10/29/2010 9:53:29 PM PDT by skeptoid
Here's an audio excerpt from Thursday night's Alaska Public Broadcasting gubernatorial debate, in which Republican Gov. Sean Parnell and Democratic challenger Ethan Berkowitz respond to the moderator's question of whether Earth is closer to 6,000 or 6 billion years old. (Audio courtesy Think Progress.)
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Video and links at the source.
Objection! Relevance?
It’s 4.54 Billion years old, plus or minus 45 million years.
Ya got any elixir or snake oil juice friend? How bout some hog jaw hair?
Mr. Parnell is correct. Only atheists and agnostics believe otherwise.
This is what liberals want to know from candidates? And they wonder why no one takes them seriously?
And no, am not in the mood to battle with creationists tonight - it's nice to be back 'home' after defending O'Donnell over on Gawker (and p*ssing them all off!). Drama-free Freeping is the best :-)
Only people with a basic understanding of science believe otherwise.
Multiple lines of evidence from multiple terrestrial and meteorite samples, and decades of careful analysis, have all coalesced around a 4.5 billion year age, which is basically universally accepted.
If someone really wants to know the age of a huge, old, tree, I suspect coring the tree and counting the rings is somewhat more useful than throwing up your hands and saying “Only God knows.”
Brim stones the size of grape fruit raining down on their evil heads.
There are several possibilities:
(1) God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, but added a “back story,” so the Earth is about 5,000,000,000 years old.
(2) God didn’t try to explain “5,000,000,000” to a bunch of shepards, warriors, priests, and slaves who probably had a hard time with any numbers much over 100, or in the case of the more educated, 100,000, if that. (I’m very well educated, and I personally have a hard time conceptualizing numbers over a few hundred billion in real terms.)
(3) The universe spontaneously created itself out of nothing about 10,000,000,000 years ago, and here we are!
(4) God’s day and year aren’t the same as ours. Hey, only implausible if God is limited by the constructs (Earth, the sun, the galaxy, etc.) He created.
(5) Plenty other theories.
I personally believe (1) or (2) is closer to the barely imaginable reality. Anyone who can disprove one of those, have at it!
It was an irrelevant, screwball question and he fielded it with no hesitation.
He is an honest man and his answer was immediate and definitive.
‘zactky!!
Heh. "If six was nine."
Dr Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is one of the most intelligent, best educated men in America. He argues unassailably that Young Earth Creation is the only acceptable answer, for both scientific and theological reasons. He writes extensively about it on his blog. http://www.albertmohler.com/category/blog/
Yep. God knows. And He told us. But whatever, the answer that only He knows (exactly to the second) is correct.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity showed that time is not a constant, but depends upon the viewpoint of the observer (i.e., a person travelling at near the speed of light would age “less” than someone stationary on earth.
He also showed that gravity bends time.
For us to count time periods from our stationary position, and with our present gravity (instead of the gravity which existed when all the universe was compressed into a tiny ball, as the theory goes) is bad science.
Since when are planetary geology/astronomy questions appropriate for a political debate? I don’t give a rip if the candidates think the earth was formed last Tuesday. Just lower my taxes, stop the irresponsible gov’t spending, and keep your dirty hands off my property.
The humanist has the distinct advantage in this arena, that is exegisis of Genesis, since from this point of view it is beautiful, inspiring, true ... and uncanny.
“2) God didn’t try to explain “5,000,000,000” to a bunch of shepards, warriors, priests, and slaves who probably had a hard time with any numbers much over 100, or in the case of the more educated, 100,000, if that. “
The problem with (2) is that it presupposes we have evolved into smarter people now. Which I categorically reject.
I do like how you lay out all the major possibilities next to each other in your list.
I was at a Planetarium show recently and was soberly informed that in the beginning was Dark Matter, which was eternally there, and about several billion years ago it spontaneously blew up.
So to believe in the eternal Dark Matter means you are scientific and smart, but to believe in an eternal God who is light (in Him is no darkness at all) is unscientific and stupid, apparently.
Another point, God Himself acknowledges that He created the universe “with age” in the Genesis account. For example he created Adam a full grown man. Not a zygote or an infant. Similarly, Eve. Also the stars’ light reached earth the day He created it, so obviously, they were created “with age.” The trees were no doubt in dirt? Which of course is composed of decomposed stuff of various types. So it is no denial of Scripture, but rather an embrace of Scripture, to confess that God created the earth with pre-aged components.
Honest man indeed.
It’s going to be interesting watching science explain yet another “big bang” with the discovery of Gleise 581. Not to mention them trying to come up with the figure for another “coincidence”. Earth was what? 10X1,000,000,000 to the 123rd power. lol.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.