How exactly do strict creationists explain geology?

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If the Earth is 5000 years old, that means it was all created at the same time.

Why then are rock formations, irregular, varied and different everywhere around the globe?

Shouldn't they all be pretty uniform especially beneath the surface?

The grand Canyon is a mile deep in places,
en.wikipedia.org...
if you agree that sedimentary rocks form from sedimentary deposit,
that would mean that it formed at over a foot a year. [Ignore that it is being compresed into rock from sediments]

So if you lived on a 50 foot cliff at the ocean then in 50 years your house would be level with the beach. Seems to me that is pretty observable.

If the oceans are sedimenting at over a foot a year that would cause the oceans to rise very significantly.

You should be able to go somewhere and see a change of a foot a year where sediments are building up.

Do you explain it that God, when creating the Earth, wanted to give it a 'naturalistic' [designer?] look, so he made it look much older than it is?

Is God artistic?

Is it just me or is a 5000 year old Earth a silly idea?
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This question I am asking is for me to "deny ignorance", because I don't know the answer. I have seen the claim prior to this about the earth being 5000 years old. Can you tell me where this claim originates?

The Christian Church.

The "official" birthday of the earth was October 23rd, 4004 BC pretty much from the 1600's (as a result of the combination of "scholarly science" to religion) to as late as 1970 when the Gideons still carried the chronology of the Universe by Bishop Ussher in every Bible they placed.

And fundamentalists wonder why their "theories" aren't taken seriously.

they would just say that its the devil who puts it in the sientists minds
or its all the god's plan to test our faith
-beleave me i know.

[edit on 29-6-2005 by belorus]

Its interesting that you selected the Grand Canyon as your example, because recently the government run visitor centeres for the Grand Canyon have started to carry a booklet that explains its formation in creationist mythology.

Bascically they insist that it was formed by flooding, if not The Flood of Noah itself. Absurdly, they cite fossil layers that were formed by flood deposits, within the canyon sequence itself, as evidence of this.

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That is just bizzare, Nygdan.

America is becoming the World's leader in ignorance and disinformation.
A Wierd Wally World of Lies and illusions.

I guess God must be afraid of truth.
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I had this very conversation last year with some extreme bible believers.

This is WHAT they told me, below.

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That when God was making this planet, he used parts and pieces from OTHER planets that no longer pleased him. That he mish-mashed these OTHER parts to make Earth. That the PROOF of this is Dinosoaur bones, and petrified wood, wich obviously came form another planet because dinosaurs could NEVER seriously have lived here. God would not allow for such beasties that would eat humans when humans have been created here to RULE.
(at this point I pointed out the lions, tigers, bears & sharks eat humans) They said that was only because God saw serious flaws in the person that is chosen by God to be eaten. This is Gods punishment to the unworthy, that they ARE eaten by these creatires that would NEVER eat a God fearing law abiding human.
They said the pertified wood is proof that there are trees on other planets.
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I am NOT saying that all serious Christians adhere to such a belief system.
I mean I CANT imagine how they possibly could???

The married couple that were telling me this, had met a a Bible Collage in California.....they told me this was what they learned in Collage.

Having THIS conversation with them truly scared me about the belief systems being taught in Bible collage, and makes me even MORE affraid of the hard core Christians in general.

I would truly LOVE to hear the other belief systems from hard core Christians concerning THIS very subject.......espescially since the OTHER conversation I has was truly mind boggeling IMO.......

Please, would some of you tell us all your explainations on this matter??

[edit on 29-6-2005 by theRiverGoddess]

Well. If you're a serious hot Christian (which most "Christians" aren't) you should adhere to some pretty crazy stuff.

The "normal" Christians are pretty much luke warm heathens living in bad faith that Jesus would vomit from his mouth. Something like that.

Which is why I'm ice cold. Jesus finds me refreshing.

Ya'll know I was serious here right?

This is the date God made earth as per a half millenium of Christianity.

October 23rd, 4004 BC

I wasn't kidding. Neither were they.

RiverGodess that is a lovely story indeed,

You know when I was taking psychology in college I remember that when you tell the same lie for a long period of time you can actually start to believe it and actually convince the people you tell the lie over and over too.

Funny I find the explanation that the extreme bible believers gave you kind of cute actually and very naive.

It reminds me when you tell a child a nice bed time story so they get nice pleasant dreams.

The grand canyon has never been a stumbling block to my belief in a young earth, so I will have to point you to a christian website www.answersingenesis.org... where the people there spend their life searching for the answers to these questions from a christian perspective.

The Bible does not say that God made the earth from other planets. And get ready for another stumbling block, it does say that God made the earth before the rest of the universe.

As far as dinosaurs and other animals eating people. It was after the flood that animals and mankind had enmity put between them. Up until that point ALL animals were vegetarian, even dinosaurs. I believe another part of this(besides all animals being vegetarian) is that before the flood there was some sort of a bond between animals and people that cannot be explained to anyone's satisfaction now. Why? because for centuries this is all mankind has known, some animals are dangerous and deadly. We have instilled in us that this is the way it is and we don't think about an alternative. When sin entered the human race, a very important thing must be remembered, sin entered creation. The weather is affected, the way the earth looks, the aging and deacying of things and people and animals etc.

I forgot to add this. I wonder if sometimes why people choose to believe evolution and the billions of years it says are needed for things to happen is because we(christian and nonchristian) make God too small in power. All of us have no concept of who God truly is. We cannot understand His holiness and we cannot grasp how awesome in power He is. Just a thought.



[edit on 29-6-2005 by dbrandt]

So how do you account for all those dinosaurs which have fangs [and jaw structures] for tearing meat and not molars for grinding vegetation? Were they just decoration?

[edit on 30-6-2005 by riley]

There is no way in hell that megalodon sharks were herbivorous. Please source your arguments. I'm quite familiar with the Bible, and I am not aware of any passages that state that before Noah's flood, all animals ate plants.

I don't think it's out of the question, but I would be surprised if you could relate the passage in the Bible where it says that. Searching through the Blue Letter Bible, I cannot find this claim, but maybe I'm using the wrong keywords...

Or maybe it's just your interpretation? If so, it'd be helpful if you stated so, rather than speaking for all Christianity.



This does not imply that animals did not eat each other beforehand unless you interpret it that way. It's still merely a Bible quote, unscientific, proving nothing, and does not explain megalodon sharks and T-Rex dinosaurs at all. If you ask me, I would tell you that it doesn't explain these things because the authors of the Bible were not aware of megalodons' and T-Rex' existence at the time of writing. If that's true, then God didn't write the Bible.

Zip

EDIT: I hesitated to add this, but I figure, ah, what the hell: that passage in Genesis9:2 states that all creatures of the earth and birds in the sky were instilled with fear and dread of humans. This, of course, is not at all true. *Petting dog.* What's going on? The Bible mentions "dogs" plenty of times... Were the Bible authors forgetful or imperfect? How does that relate to the contention that God wrote the Bible?

Speaking of dogs in the Bible, here are some weird quotes:


What were they feeding these dogs?

EDIT 2: For those who would argue that dogs fear humans, how about those megalodon sharks we were talkin about? Polar bears? They don't appear to fear humans in the slightest - not even when being shot at.

[edit on 6/30/2005 by Zipdot]

I won't go into Bible quotes but if you believe God created Earth, do you think he created a flat, boring Earth?

I would believe he created mountains, craters, oceans, and rock formations to entertain us. If flat land is boring to us, it most certainly would be boring to God.

I seem to remember that animals were vegetarians in the Garden of Eden. The lion sat with the sheep or something. Then Satan tricked 'em, the big sword came down over the entrance, and animals gererally lost respect for humans. Not that the Serpent had a lot to begin with.

This does explain however why there are so many retards out there, as Eve's children would have had to do each other, and we've all seen the results of incest.

Those who haven't figured out that the Bible is written in parables and striclty follow it's word(recorded by humans) are damn near literally sheep as they'd like to be. How 'bout this, If God created man in His image, why would God be a sheep led by ____?

The people who say the Earth was created 5000 years ago are the same ones who say the Bible doesn't contradict itself.

So do you just opt to believe a god created our planet opposed to it creating itself just because it is 'less boring'?



[edit on 30-6-2005 by riley]

Yes, flood waters helped carve it. But not a flood. Millions of floods over millions of years......

btw the reason for people once believing the Earth was created in 4004BC is that it was supposed to have existed for 4,000 years before Christ, and 4,000 years after him. And Christ was believed to have been born in 4BC

Which of course means that the world will end in 3,996AD

Actually it came from the Jewish calendar in which the year is 5765. I dont remember if it counts from the begining of creation or the end. If it is the end then it could make sense. Who is to say how long 6 days were?

[edit on 30-6-2005 by eslag90]

It was a thursday, right? Not last thursdayism, but they actually tried to pin down to a specific day of the week.

And of course they're also completely and utterly wrong. Their ideas are absolutely bogus.

You are thinking of the fall, not the flood no?

Extremely doubtful, everyone that I've known that accepted evolution did so because it was an excellent explanation of the evidence. Ie, becuase it made sense.

How do you explain the fossils with other organisms found inside them, and corprolites with fossilized meat in them? Or are those ones from after the event and the other ones not?
I mean, thats a pretty blank way to go about it no? 'The story is ridiculous if there were meat eaters, therefore everything ate plants', kinda equally silly no? And how did these animals get all the nutrients that they needed from plants? They wouldn't survive without specialized systems. Or would you just insert another miraculous intervention from god to explain that, and any, evidence away? I mean, all well and fair to have faith, but to seriously pretend that its 'science' or rational?

And he also created the fossils that are found in the grand canyon layers too? And created it in such a way that it appears to have been created by the erosional effect of a river? Why the deception?


On the calender, Bishop Ussher used the counts of generations from the bible to get a chronology out. So he could say 'jesus was in such and such year, and there are X numbers of generations listed in the long lists of generations in the bible before that, these ones were this long, those ones were that long, abracadabra, the earth was formed in 4004 BC.'.

Genesis 1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.