Age

A physician who has made a complete examination of a person without having been told his age could probably make an accurate estimate of it because of his knowledge of how the aging process works. But what would happen if he were to travel back in time and examine Adam and Eve immediately after they were created and was then asked to estimate their age? If he didn’t know they had been created directly he would assume they had been born as babies and base his estimate on how long it would take for them to reach their present state if they had undergone the normal aging process. The result would be that his estimate would be much higher than their actual age.

Scientists who try to discover the age of the earth usually begin by assuming that the natural processes which are occurring now have been going on since the formation of the world and that there has never been any kind of divine intervention. They have come to the conclusion that the earth is billions of years old because that is how long it would take for these processes to bring about the conditions we see existing today.

But what if the Biblical account of creation is true? Then scientists who try to measure the earth’s age are in the same position as the doctor who tried to estimate the age of Adam and Eve. Their age estimates are off because they have a false idea of how the earth came into existence.

If the doctor who examined Adam and Eve were observant enough he would notice that they didn’t have navels. This would show that they hadn’t begun their existence inside their mothers’ wombs and so weren’t born the way other people are. Since they didn’t come into existence the way other people did then the usual methods of estimating age wouldn’t apply to them.

There is also evidence that the earth isn’t as old as most people believe. One example is finding soft tissue in the bones of dinosaurs that supposedly lived millions of years ago. This is from an article titled “Soft Tissue in Fossils” in the October 2012 issue of Answers magazine.

Ask the average layperson how he or she knows that the earth is millions or billions of years old, and that person will probably mention the dinosaurs, which nearly everybody “knows” died off 65 million years ago. A recent discovery by Dr. Mary Schweitzer, however, has given reason for all but committed evolutionists to question this assumption.

Bone slices from the fossilized thigh bone (femur) of a Tyrannosaurus rex found in the Hell Creek formation of Montana were studied under the microscope by Schweitzer. To her amazement, the bone showed what appeared to be blood vessels of the type seen in bone and marrow, and these contained what appeared to be red blood cells with nuclei, typical of reptiles and birds (but not mammals). The vessels even appeared to be lined with specialized endothelial cells found in all blood vessels.

Amazingly, the bone marrow contained what appeared to be flexible tissue. Initially, some skeptical scientists suggested that bacterial biofilms (dead bacteria aggregated in a slime) formed what only appear to be blood vessels and bone cells. Recently Schweitzer and coworkers found biochemical evidence for intact fragments of the protein collagen, which is the building block of connective tissue. This is important because collagen is a highly distinctive protein not made by bacteria. (See Schweitzer’s review article in Scientific American [December 2010, pp. 62–69] titled “Blood from Stone.”)

Soft tissue couldn’t have survived for such a long time so this is evidence that previous age estimates of the world must be wrong. Much more evidence of this kind can be found on answersingenesis.org and scienceagainstevolution.info.

The fact that Adam and Eve lacked navels would indicate that they had been created directly by God but what would happen if the doctor who examined them was an atheist? Would the evidence convince him that God existed or would he try to find some explanation for their existence that didn’t force him to abandon his beliefs? A look at how scientists have reacted to the discovery of soft dinosaur tissue shows that the second response is the most likely one. Here is more of the article quoted above.

Some evolutionists have strongly criticized Schweitzer’s conclusions because they are understandably reluctant to concede the existence of blood vessels, cells with nuclei, tissue elasticity, and intact protein fragments in a dinosaur bone dated at 68 million years old. Other evolutionists, who find Schweitzer’s evidence too compelling to ignore, simply conclude that there is some previously unrecognized form of fossilization that preserves cells and protein fragments over tens of millions of years. Needless to say, no evolutionist has publically considered the possibility that dinosaur fossils are not millions of years old.

If there is evidence that the earth is much younger than most people believe, why do most people believe it is much older? The answer is found in the article “The 10 Best Evidences from Science that Confirm a Young Earth” in the same issue of Answers.

In the rush to examine all these amazing scientific “evidences,” it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. Such a mountain of scientific evidence, accumulated by researchers, seems to obviously contradict the supposed billions of years, so why don’t more people rush to accept the truth of a young earth based on the Bible?

The problem is, as we consider the topic of origins, all so-called “evidences” must be interpreted. Facts don’t speak for themselves. Interpreting the facts of the present becomes especially difficult when reconstructing the historical events that produced those present-day facts, because no humans have always been present to observe all the evidence and to record how all the evidence was produced.

Forensic scientists must make multiple assumptions about things they cannot observe. How was the original setting different? Were different processes in play? Was the scene later contaminated? Just one wrong assumption or one tiny piece of missing evidence could totally change how they reconstruct the past events that led to the present-day evidence.

That’s why, when discussing the age of the earth, Christians must be ready to explain the importance of starting points and assumptions. Reaching the correct conclusions requires the right starting point.

All of us have a desire to live our lives as we want without having to account to any higher authority for our actions. If we believe that the earth was created only a few thousand years ago we will be forced to believe that there is a God who intervenes in the affairs of the universe and who therefore cares about how we live. This is the reason most people, including scientists, subconsciously ignore evidence of God’s work and try to find alternate explanations for why we exist.

The belief that earth is billions of years old has become such an integral part of our culture that even some Christians who believe the Bible is true accept the prevailing beliefs and interpret the creation account in Genesis to make it conform to those beliefs.

The issue of Answers containing the articles I quoted from has much more scientific evidence that shows that the earth is younger than most people believe. You can read it online here:

www.answersingenesis.org...

reply to post by theophilus40


Explanation: S&F!

Great thinking!

But please think a bit further .. you need to reach a logical conclusion by going to the Nth degree ok.

Here is why ...

But what if the Biblical account of creation is true?

Then Facts don't matter at all ... ONLY FAITH COUNTS!

Facts KILL Faith!

So make a choice ok!

Do you want to know the facts and be damned to hell like I am ... or would you rather have faith and a chance at getting into heaven [Note: It is not garanteed unlike facts are ..and so this is indeed a gamble and that is the point of faith ... you just don't KNOW and must rely ONLY on God whome you have faith in!]

Personal Disclosure: Since I KNOW God exists I also know where I am headed to [Hades] and I have no issues with that ok!

I hope this helps resolve your crisis of faith ok.

reply to post by theophilus40

All of us have a desire to live our lives as we want without having to account to any higher authority for our actions. If we believe that the earth was created only a few thousand years ago we will be forced to believe that there is a God who intervenes in the affairs of the universe and who therefore cares about how we live. This is the reason most people, including scientists, subconsciously ignore evidence of God’s work and try to find alternate explanations for why we exist.

This part seems to really encase the point of your thread. Lets assume for a moment that the hypothesis of a young Earth is correct. Lets even go a step further, and assume that creation is correct.

How does this automatically equate to "there is a god who intervenes in the affairs of the universe, and therefore cares about how we live"?

How do the same assumptions automatically equate to "This is the reason most people, including scientists, subconsciously ignore evidence of God’s work and try to find alternate explanations for why we exist."

I'm not saying it can't equate to those things. I'm asking why it is an automatic assumption. The scenario's that could have played out in the beginning are infinite. Scientists, and others, look for evidence of more than just one kind. They look for a body of evidence that observably gives a high probability of being true.

You yourself have ancestors that lived before the bible, before organized religion. Do THEM a favor and realize that the bible is a book of words created by humankind. Today we take people that call themselves prophets and lock them up for child molestation. See Warren Jeffs. I don't hate churchgoers, but they are among the most ardent supporters of ignorance.

The fact that Adam and Eve lacked navels

It's a fact? Is Adam's/Eve's/the talking snake's existence also a fact?

Did Adam have nipples?

I like the dinosaur data, had forgotten about this. No navels? Then what did Adam and Eve gaze at? Did Eve have private parts, or was she like Barbie? And if they were born full-grown (I thought that Eve popped into existence from Adam's rib, I'd like to see that video on Youtube) did they know how to talk and find food, or were they like infants even though dressed in an adults body - with no navel. What did they think when they had a baby and it had this navel thing, with a huge cord sticking out of it? Did Adam run away when he saw that?

These are my question three.

I can assume there is no God from the simplicity of reasoning that if there was one he wouldn't have made his followers the cause of all war, the reason mankind and the human condition suffers, the hold back of progress and enlightenment and the greatest source of intolerance within his creation.

reply to post by theophilus40

There is also evidence that the earth isn’t as old as most people believe. One example is finding soft tissue in the bones of dinosaurs that supposedly lived millions of years ago. This is from an article titled “Soft Tissue in Fossils” in the October 2012 issue of Answers magazine.

Since the thesis you present in your post relies heavily on Schweitzer's research and the reaction to it in "mainstream science", I have only one question for you -- since her research and findings are publicly available online for anyone to read, have you actually sought them out and read them for yourself to see what evidence she presents and what conclusions she draws, or are you just taking the summarization of the AiG crew as "gospel", so to speak?

reply to post by theophilus40


The point of this thread is excellent. Explained perfectly and written so a child could understand it. You're going to be flamed to hell too.
Maybe not. SnF

In order for the age of the earth model in science to be wrong, hundreds, no thousands of processes would have had to have changed their rate at the same time, in the same frequency when most of them are not even directly related. That is an utterly absurd notion. If you wish to suggest something like that you need evidence beyond, "what if they went back to adam and eve?" Well considering the human population never dipped below 2000 based on our genome, adam and eve is a myth. Evolution is a proven fact. The evidence for old earth is massive. None of the supernatural events in the bible can be verified. You can't prove there was ever an adam or eve. Why does it really matter to you how old the earth is that you'd believe unscientific lies and conjecture to justify what a book written by man says?

If we had time machines, just imagine how fun would it be to scare the bejesus out of bible literalists by setting the destination to 20,000 BC or older and going back with them.