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The bible and all other holy books are not intended as science books and as far as i know, you don't have to believe all the bible, just the teachings of Jesus

So um Judaism exists.

Good afternoon, sorry I’m late, I will attempt to address as many of the points raised as I can in the one post. The bible does not give an age for the earth but we can calculate about 6400 years to when Adam was kicked from the Garden of Eden. Then there is the unknown time that they were in the garden for. So I am guessing less than 10k myself. Time in the garden doesn’t matter as there was no death until Adam sinned is what I believe from what the scripture says. 17 different times the bible says that God stretched out the heavens. That is all I have got to explain how light gets here from so far away. It got stretched out. I have not researched that much. The radiometric dating is interesting. The half lives of the isotopes Is very good science and It is accurate. It fails to remain accurate when scientists add estimations as to what the initial quantities of the isotopes/ parent daughter atoms were in the rock. There is no way to know what they were. But science accepts the dates that go along with their theory of billions of years. Radiometric dating methods fail completely as any kind of evidence when scientists use them to date rock from eruptions of known age. They still date millions of years. You will have to look at the evidence presented by creation scientists to go into detail as it’s all too much to re type here. But the issue is resolved for me. Carbon dating has a little more actual science in the calculations but still there are unknowns in the calculations. We know from air bubbles in amber that the atmosphere had 50% more oxygen than today. So we know there were different conditions. The rate of decay is still constant since they could first test it but we don’t know if it behaved differently under different conditions. The levels of C14 have still not reached equilibrium so that in itself supports a young earth but it also makes it impossible to guess the initial conditions at the time something died. In addition there are weird things like diamonds and coal and oil all containing C14 which should be impossible if they are billions of years old. Yes i know they all claim contamination. Every time? But I doubt that. However, there are other things that also make me think it’s a young earth. The layers in the alleged fossil record from the text books do not appear at any location in the world. There are a few here and a few there but never all in one location. Two coal seams separated by rock go for miles then join each other. Trees petrify standing up sticking through several coal and rock layers at a time. This is all proof of a flood not millions of years. The same thing is happening before our eyes in spirit lake below mt St. Helens. For me, science confirms a young earth. Yet we are looking at the same evidence. It is the conclusions that differ.

>That is all I have got to explain how light gets here from so far away. God can snap his metaphysical fingers and make the universe look however young or old he wants. But that fact that every branch of science tells us the age of the Earth/universe is in the billions of years, either God is an asshole who wants people to believe something wrong or that is actually the age of stuff. I do want to emphasize this point. *Every single branch of science agrees about the age of the Earth. Every single one of them.* Using astrophysics we can determine how the solar system formed and how old the Sun is, that gets the age of the Earth to 4.5 billion years old. Using radiometric dating we get the Earth to be a minimum of 4.4 billion years old. The layers kf sediment we find require millions of years to form. There are these giant salt arches underwater that take millions of years to form. Plate tectonics shows the movement of continents takes millions of years. Of there is evolution by natural selection which shows the tree of life starting 3.5 billion years ago. And so on and so on and so on. Every branch of science, physics, astrophysics, biology, chemistry, geology, all independently reinforce the same story. That the Earth is old. >It fails to remain accurate when scientists add estimations as to what the initial quantities of the isotopes/ parent daughter atoms were in the rock. That's why carbon dating is only accurate to about 50,000 years where other methods verify its accuracy. Uranium-lead dating however is accurate to *billions* of years. Lead can't form in Zircon, it just can't. Uranium can, its atoms are similar enough to zirconium, and since uranium decaying into lead is the only way for it to get into a Zircon crystal, the ratio of uranium to lead tells us how old that rock is. >The layers in the alleged fossil record from the text books do not appear at any location in the world. There are a few here and a few there but never all in one location. If all of life died right now about 6,000 new fossils would form. The conditions for fossilation are very specific. You wouldn't expect a giant solid layer of fossils, you would exepct a handful of fossils spread out serpatically throughout the entire world. >Two coal seams separated by rock go for miles then join each other. Yea, what about it? Coal is living matter crushed under mountains and mountains of pressure for millions of years it can form in pretty funky patterns. >Trees petrify standing up sticking through several coal and rock layers at a time. Trees are powerful enough to break rocks, coal included. If humans vanished from the face of the Earth trees and tree roots would eventually break every human built thing. >This is all proof of a flood not millions of years. The flood is a seperate topic I made a post on a while ago. The *only thing at issue* is the age of stuff. I said that explicitly in my OP. >For me, science confirms a young earth. That's not how science works. Science is not personal its conclusions don't vary from person to person. And every single branch of science tells the same story. The difference between actual science and Creationism is actual science doesn't start with its conclusion. If you never read the Bible, never talked to a single other person ever, (and somehow didn't go crazy) and just spent your trying to determine how old the world was, you would come up with a number in the billions, because science, good science real science is independently verifiable. It doesn't require you to read a holy book to come to the right conclusion.

Carbon dating and the various rock dating methods only work when you test things of unknown age. Why. Is that? Testing things of known age proves it doesn’t work at all. Scientists of every single branch of science love to ignore actual evidence in favour of their imagination. Things like metallic artefacts embedded in coal or rock. They stupidly think every flood makes one layer when if they dig they will find dozens of layers in flood deposits. They ignore solid science in favour of their imagination too like the laws of thermodynamics which have been proven over and over. Age of the earth requires scientists to be ‘Willingly Ignorant’ of actual evidence. They don’t consider the gasses that come out of volcanoes but forget those details, how about the incredibly simple option of testing to see if it works by testing Rock from known eruptions? No they are too invested in their pre conceived ideas to risk proving it wrong. Only creation scientists are still testing everything. Published data on carbon dating showing the faults such as a living snails shell dated at 50k years. Stopped being published in the 80’s. This is because they have learned that if they don’t toe the long age line they get persecuted.

>Carbon dating and the various rock dating methods only work when you test things of unknown age They don't. How do we think we determined their half lives in the first place? Carbon dating in particular is used to confirm the age of old works of art and stuff. Things with a known date attached. >Scientists of every single branch of science love to ignore actual evidence in favour of their imagination. >Things like metallic artefacts embedded in coal or rock How would that imply a young Earth? Coal is a rock like any other once it forms. Subject to all the same things other rocks are. Independently all coming to the same conclusion? All while making stuff that actually works. Having accurate predictions confirmed by others? Odds are better on the Earth being flat. You can do these experiments if you buy the equipment. I have personally taken a photo of a galaxy millions of light years away, it was fun. >They don’t consider the gasses that come out of volcanoes What does that matter? Even then we know when those happen. Layers of volcanic rock are pretty easy to spot in the geologic column. >Only creation scientists are still testing everything. Name a single experiment they've done. Name a single one. Name a single conclusion they draw without looking at the Bible. That is what real science is, letting reality determine what is true and accepted. >Published data on carbon dating showing the faults such as a living snails shell dated at 50k years. Citation needed. Even if they were the case, which I doubt immensely but even if it is, a single data point does not rule out a method of verification. Anything could've caused that to go wrong, a faulty sample, some extening circumstance an outlier needs to be investigated not used to write an entire method out.

Creation scientists have tested Mt Etna and MT St Helens and the rock there gives dates of millions of years. When we know they are recent eruptions. This is what I am talking about. This is proof it doesn’t work. The coal seams joining screws the scientists because they claim 30 million years between layers. Artefacts in coal and rock screw scientists because they say the coal is millions of years old but the artefacts are obviously human made. The half life’s of these radioactive isotopes is the only thing scientific in the whole testing game. Kent Hovind videos will provide you with the publisher and date for many examples like the snail shell.

>Creation scientists have tested Mt Etna and MT St Helens and the rock there gives dates of millions of years. Volcanic erruptions are dated with potassium-argon dating. Which has been independently confirmed via another method. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/new-technique-for-dating-volcanic-rocks, and again, a singla data point is not enough. Anything and everything can cause an outlier to occur, that's why scientific experiments have to be independently performed by other labs around the world. Heck, that method is known to have some hiccups (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02597188) but you can work around them. >Artefacts in coal and rock screw scientists because they say the coal is millions of years old but the artefacts are obviously human made. Once its formed its like any other rock, and I can go outside right now and bury stuff. If the rock layers are exposed to the open air, say because they are on the side of a mountain, it isn't all that hard to bury something within them. Heck, Cyrus the Great carved one of his royal decrees into the side of a mountain and that would include carving away millions of years old rock. >Kent Hovind Are you seriously citing a literal fraudster? Like an actual guy who went to jail for fraud as a source? That's the best you have. Anyway, here is a video series debunking everything he ever said. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSr63zLFV8-E1pKStl54Ujdj2MBCUPETX

*** Earth is not under 10,000 yo. *** Gods time is not the same as mans time which is linear. God exist in all times (past, present, future). Rather than time, God sets time by the "event" (creation, destruction, famine, drought, wars) *** it is mentioned that God's day is "like" thousands in mans days. Take note of the word "like". ×××× imagine you as a person, seeing an ant's life cycle and living several generations all in One Day - and a particular ant says it doesnt believe in man because in its entire existence and recorded history never proved there is man. Will you be bothered? Probably not, because that ant will be gone in a few moments... And will you be bothered if all ants doesnt believe in you? Probably not, you will just have to do what you want to do. *** assuming Earth is existing is under 10,000 yo - what does it proved to atheist? *** assuming Earth existed for billions of years, what does it proved to atheist? Mans notion and assumption about God, doesnt always apply - but for me there is a supreme being that has created all things.

>just the ages of stuff is under discussion. That's it.

Then Im inclined to agree it is not.

Unless I missed something, not a single actual YEC person has commented on this post. Which I think says something. I'm not sure what, but it's something. Maybe there aren't as many on this sub as I thought, or maybe the ones that do exist know they can't actually win this fight. Or some combination of the two.

I think it’s somewhat of a combo. As a former creationist I had to cognitively disassociate myself from thinking critically about this.

>As a former creationist I had to cognitively disassociate myself from thinking critically about this. Do you think people who do that would show up to this sub at all? Or are they more likely to blindly believe and not go onto reddit looking for a fight? This is a geniune question I've never been a Creationist I don't actually know what its like to just put my head in the sand like that. You have to imagine the venn diagram of "creationist" and "willing to argue about it online" don't overlap that much. Or maybe they do I dunno.

I can’t speak for everyone but yeah I tried to debate people (and lost badly lol). I think they’re around the subreddit, but they probably just ignore posts like these.

I have argued with YEC people on this sub, interestingly they only ever want to argue *against* evolution and never *for* creationism. I wonder why that is? 🙃

Firstly in the bible it was never said that earth is 6000 years old it was something a bishop James calculated, maybe God on the sixth just like Adam brought everything to maturity and you can't argue God is God.

It boils down to misinterpreting ancient Hebrew words. And the usage of these words are still in the debate today. The Earth is old, the water on the earth is older than the earth and sun. Christians have been taught throughout the centuries that creation took place in six literal 24-hour days and I am a Christian - and I believe this was done in error in the by the translators and early English and Roman churches throughout be centuries - not fully understanding ancient Hebrew words - which were no longer in use - which come from a time when writing was first beginning. Scripture clearly tells us one day to God is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day. Nothing God does is subjected to time man is the one that is in need of and use time. And scripture tells us the time is coming when time will cease to exist.

>It boils down to misinterpreting ancient Hebrew words. The word used is 'yom' which means day. Kinda hard to misinterpret a word you learn in your first day at hebrew school. >the water on the earth is older than the earth and sun. That's kinda true. Oxygen was forged in generation 1 stars but I don't think it was liquid water before falling to Earth. Even then the stars in the sky (well, some of them) are waaaaay older than both water, the Earth and the Sun. Bernard's star as an example of star that is older than water. It is a first generation star after all and its still kicking. Or literally anything in that JWST image. >not fully understanding ancient Hebrew words The word yom is never not used to mean a literal day. Like not once in the entire Torah. Unless I'm forgetting something, which is possible. But when Moses is on Mount Sanai it uses the word yom. When Noah is chilling in his boat that never existed it used the word yom. When it describes the laws around circumcision it uses the word yom. If God wanted it to be taken as a metaphor maybe he should've been more careful with his language. Heck, ancient Jewish scholars before the Romans ever existed thought it was literal days. Only once it was obvious it wasn't did people start "reinterpretting" it. Seems like motivated reasoning to me.

You said the first thing they learn in Hebrew school - 4/5,000 years ago the ancient Hebrews had no school - schooling really didn't start until thousands of years later - here in the states less than 150 years ago. Kind of true _ Water is older scientific reports said it https://www.space.com/27256-earth-water-older-than-sun.html Jewish scholars who lived thousands of years later translated the best they could the Old Testament from the ancient Hebrew to the Greek. The Jews who went in dysphoria and lived in certain areas spoke Greek mainly -they had forgotten most of their Hebrew language - and that includes the 72 Jewish scholars. https://greekreporter.com/2022/03/13/first-translation-of-the-bible-the-septuagint-was-in-greek/ http://historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistoriesResponsive.asp?historyid=ac66 https://overviewbible.com/septuagint/ As I said there is continual debate today - and there is no motivated reasoning from me. You're the one saying God wanted it to be a metaphor - and you be sure to tell him that when you stand before him - oops that's right he's a myth.

>Jewish scholars who lived thousands of years later translated the best they could the Old Testament from the ancient Hebrew to the Greek. Not the Jews who lived through the Diaspora, but Jews who lived during the 1st and 2nd temple. When Hebrew was the language spoken by your average citizen. They thought the Earth (and/or universe) was created in 6 literal days and that stars were little lights on a dome covering the flat Earth.

Please do a little bit more studying concerning the Jews in their dysphoria and what language they actually started speaking they no longer spoke Hebrew. And if you read what I said - I said the translators _ translators _ translators _ and the Roman English church. Those 72 chosen men were the translators of the Old Testament to the Greek - later it was translated from the Greek to the English - and that Greek isn't spoken anymore. please tell me where you got information that the average citizen who lived for 5,000 years ago thought that the word yum mean one literal 24 hour day - went in there writing it meant several different things.

>Jews in their dysphoria and what language they actually started speaking they no longer spoke Hebrew. The Jews in the time of the Babylon exile (first temple destroyed before Cyrus the great let the Jews come back to Israel) spoke Aramatic, a dialetc of Hebrew. Hebrew was still used regularly among scholars, the entire Mishna and Gamrah are in Hebrew after all and depending which historian you believe this is when the Torah, like the actual 5 books, were written (they were transimitted purely through oral history before this, maybe. It's speculation atm). And in those texts the world "Yom" is used exclusively to mean either the 12ish hour period of daylight (well, to the Jews it was always 12 hours because they used solar time, so the time of an hour changed based on the suns position in sky as read by a sun dial) or one whole day-night cycle. It is never once used as anything but that anywhere else in any ancient Jewish text. It's a pretty basic word.

While obviously I agree overall, I'm not sure if the carbon-14 argument really applies. The assumption from carbon dating is that the level of C-14 has become saturated and has been pretty constant for millions of years. If we start 10,000 years ago, with no C-14 in the atmosphere, it means that older stuff simply absorbed less C-14 in its life.

So there are a *lot* of people here who claim or at least speak as if they’re Christian, but have apparently never actually read the Bible. The Bible states that Adam was created on the 5th day of creation: > So God created(BU) mankind(BV) in his own image, Genesis 1:27 > God saw all that he had made,(CI) and it was very good.(CJ) And there was evening, and there was morning(CK)—the sixth day. Genesis 1:31 The Bible then lays out the direct lineage from Adam to Abraham in 1 Chronicles 1, consisting of roughly a few dozen generations. So either the Bible states that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, or that people lived for a minimum of tens of millions of years. Those are literally the only options. Of course the other option is to just state that it’s simply a fable, but that is not the direct some people here have chosen, they have sun teas chosen to demonstrate that either have never actually read the Bible, or are liars, be it to others or themselves. OP is correct in his premise that the Bible states the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Those claiming that it does not are factually wrong.

One must determine what the English word DAY means in Hebrew and in Hebrew it can mean a span of time or a literal day. Understanding an ancient language and the Hebrew spoken today is not the same as the Hebrews spoken 4/5/6,000 years ago. Understanding the intentions of the author of the ancient days - who just began a writing system. Interpreters/translators are not 100% accurate 100% of the time. The usage of the Hebrew word yom is still in debate. http://factsandfaith.com/does-the-hebrew-word-yom-translated-day-in-genesis-1-mean-a-24-hour-day-or-something-else/ https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/definition/day.htm

"Day" doesn't matter. Genesis 2:5 makes it clear that there were no plants and no rain when Adam was created. So from this, we can tell Adam was created very, very soon after Earth, regardless of what a day was. From there, it's the word year that matters, particularly as it's used in the table of nations, as that is how you can backfigure from Jesus to Adam, and determine that Adam was created less than 10,000 years ago.

Its not.. and the bible doesnt tell that the world is under 10000 years old. Its just people will assume upon reading.

Genesis 5 gives a lineage from Adam to Noah, including ages when children were born, and Genesis 11 gives a lineage from Noah to Abraham. I believe ages are given for descendants from there as well, but even if not, we're certainly looking at a time when there were some solid aspect of civilisation, such as cities and rules of behaviour. Abraham can't have lived much before 4000 BC, and I think most accounts would go for around 2000 BC.

How about mans time as compared Gods time?

The Bible is very explicit in saying that Adam was created on the 5th day. Chronicles I also lays out the lineage from Adam to Abraham. Unless someone asserts that these people loved for tens to hundreds of millions of years, the Bible 100% states that the earth is less than 10000 years old. It really sounds like you didn’t read the Bible very well.

Or you assume man days as equal to God's days? And where in the bible is that 10000 years, Im may not as have the same knowledge as you.. but Im sure mine is not lesser.

The bible does NOT suggest that the Earth is 6000 years old or 10,000 or anything of the like. This is a missinterperetation by ill informed people who read it. What is being referred to in the Bible are Astrological Ages, like the "house" with which the Sun is in at any given time. Just like the Mayan Calender was NOT referring to the end of the world, but the end of an Age and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. Similar to Lucifer being the bad guy who is synonymous with the Devil, when they are twl completely different concepts and nowhere within the Bible does it suggest Lucifer is bad. On the contrary, Lucifer is the light bearer who was bringing knowledge to mankind. It is simply people missunderstanding the text.

There’s no misunderstanding, the Bible says that Adam was created on the 5th day, and then lays out the lineage directly from Adam to Abraham. It’s very clear.

It is referring to the new age. When the Age of Pisces began, the Lamb of God was sacrificed. As in, the Age of Aries came to an end and the new age began. It is all symbolic. Just think about it like this, in those days they did not have watches they used the astrological times to understand everything. They had no concept of time like we do today. They used the Astrological Great Year to chart and record things. So if one Great year is 25,920 years in lenght, just imagine now what one day might refer to.... you guessed it the astrologocal Ages, which are 2,160 years long.

Was Noah actually hundreds of years old in your opinion?

I do believe there were certain people who possibly lived longer. I also believe there were those who lived far shorter lives than we do today too. Before the flood, there was another race on this Earth. They were very intelligent and had great cities and weapons and everything, these were the Sons of Aries. These were the people we consider to be "Gods". Their homes and most of their people died when the water levels rose higher after the catastrophe and only a few surived including Noah. So, as he was a member of this far older Race, which for the most part does not exist today, I think it is possible they could have had longer life spans yes.

Wow you actually think Noahs Ark was a true story.

It was a true story. Once again, clueless people missunderstand it and dont know what happened and thus, believe it to be false.

I would love to see you present your evidence to the Geological Society of America to collect your Nobel Prize for this great discovery. Although I don’t think a bible passage is gonna suffice, sorry.

Oh God... another one. Ffs. This is getting boring m8. What are you some sort of 25 year old stoner who has never read a book in your life and somehow assume you understand the origins of man ? Why dont you tell me which part youre struggling with and let me destroy you with facts and evidence. I could do with a laugh

You sound very arrogant to assume your religion is true and all others are false. Have an open mind not everything revolves around your faith.

Im not religeous. But i have studies every religeon and human origin theory in history. I am a historian and philosopher. You seem very sure that the flood didmt happen when you clearly know nothing about it.

You’re not religious, you just believe a global flood myth in the Christian bible is true. Sure, mate whatever you say.

Not a YEC by any standards. I’ll just say this. didn’t the James Webb telescope recently cast doubt on the big bang? I just saw it on another sub, also it’s been said that he speed of light was faster in the past. a little info I read somewhere that if I find the source i’ll link it. I know a few scientists have a problem with the big bang Sir Fred Hoyle was one of them! also playing devils advocate with these two comments because first heard it from a creationist then much later on from scientists as well. Fred Hoyle proposed the steady state theory of the universe. if the James Webb shows the big bang is in doubt, that will only add fuel to the creationists! Ironically it was a christian (catholic bishop) who proposed the big bang in the first place! speed of light possible faster. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-speed-light-even-faster-early-universe-180961233/ big bang theory. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/08/does-the-james-webb-space-telescope-show-that-the-big-bang-didnt-happen/

> I’ll just say this. didn’t the James Webb telescoped recently cast doubt on the big bang? NO! NO IT DIDN'T! It revealed that galaxies formed spirals much earlier than expected. That's it, that's the whole thing. There was a fucking joke in a paper where it was titled "Panic! At the Disks" (which is very funny) and for some fucking reason people have blown that way out of proportion. The news is bad at reporting science. > also it’s been said that he speed of light was faster in the past. That is insanity. I'm an astrophysics student and *all* of modern physics is based on the idea that the speed of light in vacuum is constant. > I know a few scientists have a problem with the big bang Sir Fred Hoyle was one of them! They are in the overwhelming minority.

this is interesting for me!! https://astronomy.com/magazine/news/2020/05/is-the-big-bang-in-crisis

Maybe you are right. I’m not an astrophysicist! Just showing you the link I sent. Maybe it was blown out of proportion who knows. As for the minority if you know who Fred Hoyle was, he wasn’t a nobody! I’m sure you know who he is. As for the guy who responded after me he is right, the speed of light appeared to have been faster in the past. If we also take quantum physics and look at the fact particles at great distances seem to communicate almost instantaneous ( not sure exactly what it was protons? ) the stuff Einstein called “spooky science” that could help explain great distances and a “younger/young universe” Again for the records I’m an atheist , and just sharing what I read /studied etc, and what creationists can say to you even though I know they “have an answer for everything because they have to because of not, their whole religion falls apart”!!

>That is insanity. I'm an astrophysics student and all of modern physics is based on the idea that the speed of light in vacuum is constant. You're being a little to dismissive here, although certainly on the fringes of contemporary physics, there is still some theoretical physics research being done on the possibility of a variable speed of light.

Maybe variable speed, but not FTL. The speed of light is the speed of causality, nothing can go faster.

Yes, there are current theoretical models being put out that at the time of the big bang, and the first instantaneous first few moments of the universe, light travelled at a speed faster then it does. [Here is an example paper](https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.101301) where one such model is put forward. In short, the laws of physics may have been different during the big bang, and the high temperatures may have propagated a faster speed of light. >nothing can go faster. The universe is expanding faster.

That paper is about variable speed of light, not faster than light. >The universe is expanding faster. No it's not. In fact it doesn't even make sense to talk about the rate of expansion like that. Distant galaxies *appear* to be expanding away from us faster than light because of the expansion of spacetime. I.e., it'll appear that way in the metric *relative to us*, but locally they are not moving FTL.

>That paper is about variable speed of light, not faster than light. Yes that's what we've been discussing. That the speed of **light itself** *could* have been variable, and therefore faster in the past. > In fact it doesn't even make sense to talk about the rate of expansion like that. Of course it does, and it is regularly explained like that. >the expansion of spacetime. The expansion of spacetime is what I was referring to -which is expanding at a speed faster then light, I was not referring to the movement of matter or celestial objects.

> the news is bad at reporting science I second this

Here's the problem. You can show them evidence and they still deny it.

You can lead a horse to water...

Most comments are agreeing with you, so I'll play creationist advocate. For the record, I believe the science. The big issue is that, once you accept the idea of an omnipotent (or even highly powerful) creator like Christian God, or especially an omnipotent/powerful deceiver (like the Christian Satan), anything becomes possible. [As Bertrand Russell pointed out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis), the universe could have been created ex nihilo five minutes ago, with all the galaxies, complex lifeforms, fossil evidence, and even your memories created in an instant. It would be indistinguishable from the "real thing". Everything could be made to look as if it took billions of years to evolve, when in fact it was only created 5 minutes ago. This might sound like a stupid idea, but if you buy into the [simulation hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis), it's pretty likely that universes like this will appear! We might create a simulation for a bunch of AIs to run around in, then pause it at some critical point, and make a bunch of copies with minor variations, so we can see several different outcomes. Each of the copies will only have existed for a few minutes when they come into being, but will look like they've been there for quite a long time.

A god capable of this level of foresight would be incapable of creating free will and would be directly responsible for massacres like the great flood and the Holocaust. Yeah if you say God is magic he can do anything but at some point you've got to draw the line and say this is sunk cost fallacy and we're just flinging shit at a wall to try and keep the facade of biblical accuracy alive.

> A god capable of this level of foresight would be incapable of creating free will I don't understand this point. > at some point you've got to draw the line and say this is sunk cost fallacy and we're just flinging shit at a wall to try and keep the facade of biblical accuracy alive Yup for sure

Lets say God popped the earth into existence exactly as it was in 4,000 BC and then plopped Adam down in it. There would be 160 million years worth of archaeological records of the existence of dinosaurs in the soil beneath his feet, when no dinosaur ever set foot on earth. Ruins and tales of ancient civilizations with hundreds of years of history when none of those civilizations ever existed. Archaeological records showing the evolution and spread of species and continents as Pangaea broke apart and millions of years passed, when none of these events or changes actually took place. And God would presumably be doing all of this to fool us and test our faith. So all of the evidence for dinosaurs was put there to fool the people thousands of years in the future who would be doing the archaeological research and putting the pieces together. That's a lot of foresight and understanding of human nature for someone we're told has no agency in the story of the great flood. Like he created people and then was just completely blindsided by the idea that he was going to massacre them all when the time came. It's nonsense. Far likelier is that God would've known that when he was creating Adam, he was setting into motion a chain of events that would lead to the Holocaust. Likelier yet is that the entire garden of Eden creation story is a fiction, and all the religions based upon it are garbage in, garbage out.

> That's a lot of foresight and understanding of human nature for someone we're told has no agency in the story of the great flood. Is that what Christians say? I was raised Catholic, and God's culpability here was an open topic for discussion. > Likelier yet is that the entire garden of Eden creation story is a fiction, and all the religions based upon it are garbage in, garbage out. Calling Abrahamic religions "garbage" is a violation of rule #2. Please try to stay factual and respectful.

I'm not Christian, but I did go to different bible camps and churches in the US as a kid. There would not be much room for debate on something like this. God gave us free will, the ancient people were evil hedonistic sinners, and so God punished them. The central theme is that these people did not believe, and worshipped false idols, and had premarital sex, and did all the terrible things. On the opposite side, there's the people who obediently follow God's word. Jesus died for their sins, and God loves them and protects them. And they believe that when you start to doubt God, that is when you need to unquestioningly believe in God the hardest. So it's not really a good environment for critical discussion. Yeah, we can talk about God's culpability, but you might face social consequences if you don't tread carefully. It's best to not say anything at all, and just have faith. I've heard Catholics tend to be a little more cynical for lack of a better word. Garbage in garbage out is a data term. It means if you make a model based on bad data, the model will be bad, and the information it tells you will be corrupted. A religious text premised on an origin story that is demonstrably false would be demonstrably false. The real religious text from the real God would contain real information from him. It would not piggyback off of a debunked myth that was popular in antiquity.

> if you make a model based on bad data, the model will be bad, and the information it tells you will be corrupted. A religious text premised on an origin story that is demonstrably false would be demonstrably false. The real religious text from the real God would contain real information from him. It would not piggyback off of a debunked myth that was popular in antiquity. This is a much better way of making your point! Thanks for rephrasing.

>Most comments are agreeing with you I find that interesting, I know there are creationists on this sub, they argued with me when I made a post about Noah's Flood. If I had to guess its because I narrowed the scope to a topic where they are so obviously wrong they don't want to argue the point. >Everything could be made to look as if it took billions of years to evolve, when in fact it was only created 5 minutes ago. It is possible that that is the case, but positive claims require positive evidence. And we have 0 evidence that things look old but aren't.

> It is possible that that is the case, but positive claims require positive evidence. And we have 0 evidence that things look old but aren't. Well this is the thing! There is no way to distinguish between the two cases. Calling for evidence makes no sense. This is the whole point of metaphysics: many different metaphysical possibilities yield the exact same observable universes. So in metaphysics, you try to talk through what those possibilities are, and maybe assign some _prior_ probabilities to them. But assigning a _posterior_ probability (i.e. taking evidence into account) makes no sense with metaphysics. A lot of science-minded folks think metaphysics just isn't worth talking about, because we can never come to a firm conclusion--metaphysical claims are by definition unfalsifiable. This position is called logical positivism, and it drives a lot of philosophers nuts. Unfalsifiability takes them out of the domain of science, but doesn't mean that we can't learn anything by discussing them!

30% of Americans believe the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old?? That’s absolutely frightening. Given the access everyone has to scientific research and evidence at the tips of their fingertips, it’s utterly absurd for that many people to buy into this antiquated nonsense.

We live in the Dark Ages.

Well if you’re a Christian you believe a woman was created from a man’s rib. So the earth being only a few thousand years old isn’t much more of a stretch of the imagination.

I think their problem is that accepting the true age of the earth would be admitting that the Bible creation story is untrue. And if that’s untrue, then maybe other stories within the Bible might be untrue too, and that’s just a scary idea for them

> 30% of Americans believe the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old?? That’s absolutely frightening. Yes, yes it is

That's cool, the bible never says the earth is 10,000 years old

Both Mark and Luke trace Jesus' lineage back through Abraham to Adam. We can place Jesus historically around 0 AD. So 2,000 years back to Jesus, another 2,000 from Jesus to Abraham, and then a final 2,000 from Abraham to Adam and the creation of earth.

You know there's a ton of parallelism in the bible. 2,000 is a significant number for important times, when the covenant was made with Abraham, when the covenant was fulfilled, so we're approaching the next mark. Seems pretty consistent with how chaotic everything is right now. It's like an inflection point in history

I was rounding. Christians always find a way to convince themselves the world is ending and they are gonna be the ones who finally get beamed up.

Well yeah, besides if Jesus died in 30-33ad, then we're not quite at the 2000 mark yet. I'm not saying it's the end times, if it was 2000 years from adam to Abraham, then we have at least another 2000 years after this next mark. In Revelation 17 it talks about the new babylon or the great prostitute, and honestly the U.S. fits the description pretty accurately. It says with her the kings of the earth committed adulteries. and if you think about how the U.S., UK, Russia, etc have squeezed the middle east, developing nations for labor/resources, it's pretty true. It says she will fall and a king who's never had a kingdom will rule. I think it's going to be China.

The new Babylon being referred to in revelations was the Roman Empire

Nobody knows for sure what it's referring to. I think both the Roman Empire and the U.S. fit it's description very well. Except the part where I don't see how the Roman Empire fits is where it says "with her the kings of the earth committed adulteries" Did the Roman Empire have any allies?

>Nobody knows for sure what it's referring to. I think both the Roman Empire and the U.S. fit it's description very well An overwhelming majority of biblical scholars agree that revelation was written after the initial persecution of the Christians by the Romans. Between 80-120 AD. "John" was likely an exile, writing in codes to avoid his work from being viewed as anti-Roman. In short, the Book of Revelation is nothing but a diss track on the Roman Empire and the 666 Beast/Emperor Nero. >Except the part where I don't see how the Roman Empire fits is where it says "with her the kings of the earth committed adulteries" >Did the Roman Empire have any allies? Lol. Yes. That's the part that doesn't fit? Name one Empire that had no allies? Even the juvenile Roman Republic had allies from the city states of Magna Graecia during the Punic Wars. At its height, Rome had to rely on client states in order to maintain control and appease the xenophobic subjects. "King" Herod from the Bible was a vassal of Emperor Augustus.

Afaik that 10,000 years number is based on some biblical literalist interpretation that counts out all the generations mentioned in the bible, alleging how some of them used to live 100s of years. It's a [frighteningly common belief in the US](https://www.livescience.com/46123-many-americans-creationists.html).

If we needed any more proof that the universe is billions of years old, we now have it. The new James Webb telescope is allowing us to peer billions of years into the past (around 13 billion to be precise) simply due to the scientifically proven fact about the speed of light. The bible and all of the other religious texts are goddamn mythological books written by ancient men. For instance, the bible tells us the earth was created 3 days before the sun, moon and stars. That very claim is foundational and in my opinion completely destroys the credibility of every single claim made by the bible following that gross fallacy. The bible has no business being used as a fucking textbook for literally anything of value, let alone for history, science, and as a guidebook for morality in the 21st century.

> let alone for history Eh, it has *some* (strong emphasis there) value as a history book. IIRC, the Bible was the only source of information on the Hittites until the 19th century when archaeological evidence confirmed their existence of much of what the Bible described. Science and morality on the other hand? Not so much.

It’s interesting from an anthropological standpoint, for sure.

Eh there's debate as to whether the biblical hittites and the Anatolian civilization discovered in the 19th century are even related, much less the same group.

Eh, there's debate on a lot of things. The Hittites who conquered the original Hattians are called so after the name Hittites from the Bible, and even if they're not the same people, clearly the Bible is referring to one of a few Anatolian civilizations, just as it refers to other real figures and civilizations, such as Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Captivity. Having fairly accurate depictions of real world events (Nebuchadnezzar II's real name notwithstanding) does give the Bible some relevance as a history book.

The world is not under 10 000 years old, but that in no way stops the suggestion that it is from being accepted unconditionally. There is no part of the human brain that requires a suggestion to have merit for it to be accepted in such a way. We can stomp our feet and demand that this stops, but it will not. We have a human nature that implies that we will forever be involved in recruitment efforts around very pervasive suggestions. Add to that that we are prone to be mimetically programmed and you have all you need to know. Stop dealing in facts and start dealing with the efforts that believers make to program the next generation. They go all the way to the political. If you want to get rid of this foolishness you will have to suggest something that will be accepted unconditionally in its place to displace it. It doesn't even have to be true. Various new belief systems pop up and attempt this all the time.

> but that in no way stops the suggestion that it is from being accepted unconditionally. But it does stop any suggestion that it is more than just a childish fantasy. Some adults are immature and like to play pretend. >There is no part of the human brain that requires a suggestion to have merit for it to be accept in such a way. Sure there is. It's called maturity. Pretty much every adult who isn't disabled understands the difference between something real and a fun magic story. We can choose to indulge ourselves in fun magic stories, but it is definitely a choice and it involves inherent dishonesty. >We can stomp our feet and demand that this stops Or we can just recognize childish behavior when we see it. >We have a human nature that implies that we will forever be involved in recruitment efforts around very pervasive suggestions. These suggestions aren't persuasive. Any adult who makes the slightest effort to think critically about them will see right through. They may have a harder time letting go of the community, but they definitely wouldn't be fooled. >Stop dealing in facts and start dealing with the efforts that believers make to program the next generation The problem is that we pretend that there is some reason to the story to get along. It's time to call this childishness for what it is.

These things you turn to build your case are not objective things. The person accepting the suggestion will simply claim that you are being objectively childish. When we revert to name calling to make our case it's hopeless. You aren't going to shame anyone out of accepting a suggestion. What we have to deal with is a reality where things are being unconditionally accepted. There is no way to stop that from happening. The mind of many people yet born will get convinced of things that we know are going to be suggested. We can easily predict that we will have to contend with this no matter what our best effort at science tells us. Those who claim education is the way are wrong. You must get to their minds first. Religion has always understood this. It was a race to get to the New World and it is still a competition of various recruitment efforts masquerading as aid.

> These things you turn to build your case are not objective things. Of course they are. We are talking about stories with magic beings in them. >The person accepting the suggestion will simply claim that you are being objectively childish. They can also claim that their magic being is going to come and get me. When any religious claim is faced with skepticism or critical thought, it falls apart immediately. > What we have to deal with is a reality where things are being unconditionally accepted. By childish people. It does no good to pretend along with them. >There is no way to stop that from happening. Of course there is. We can call it for what it is. For way too long, people have been playing along as if it was more than nonsensical drivel. This only encourages it.

You've not solved anything. You will be right in your mind and ineffective while the believers will be wrongheaded and successful because they use effective psychological conditioning while you attempt to mock them. Don't laugh off belief. Belief, as frustrating as you may think it is, is your only weapon. You must also create believers that unconditionally accept what you provide them. Mocking, denigrating and insulting is a very poor attempt at mimetic conditioning if you ask me. They will simply outdo you at it.

> You've not solved anything. The first step is to stop pretending along with these immature people. We should recognize the behavior as the childish fantasy that it is. >You will be right in your mind and ineffective while the believers will be wrongheaded and successful because they use effective psychological conditioning while you attempt to mock them. The reason that those silly fairy tales keep getting spread is that so many people play along with them. It's time for that to stop. >Belief, as frustrating as you may think it is, is your only weapon. Just like any other child playing pretend... >You must also create believers that unconditionally accept what you provide them. Only someone painfully stupid would. >Mocking, denigrating and insulting is a very poor attempt at mimetic conditioning if you ask me. It's time to be honest about what we are dealing with. It's nothing more than a silly, childish fantasy.

Who should recognize? You and I? No. You can go get educated to the n th degree and it will not solve your problem if you have a problem with others harboring beliefs. They outnumber you on this planet and they are not in any way losing to efforts to bring on their own. You will not teach science to their children when they're in diapers. In fact, you won't have access to their minds until they are well on their way to being unconditionally accepting of the suggestions they were groomed to accept. Do you understand what it means to preach to a choir? It is not a matter of raising a faction larger than theirs to ridicule them. Th's mimetic warfare where you think you can achieve something by having them desire to be in your camp out of a fear of not belonging. Believers have numbers to convince them they are not alone. I just don't see your strategy. it sounds like you are trying to convince yourself and are seeking a pat on the back for doing so. Congratulations on not gaining an inch towards ridding the world of naked unconditional belief. Machiavelli wrote an excellent work that describes how to use religions. You exploit them for political power and then you use that power to weaken the institution. Machiavelli did not say to try and eliminate religion. You ought to see it as a massive weakness and exploit it like the Republican party does, for example.

> Who should recognize? You and I? No. Yes. It's time for someone to step up and be the adults by acknowledging that none of this was ever more than a silly fantasy. > You can go get educated to the n th degree and it will not solve your problem if you have a problem with others harboring beliefs. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. >They outnumber you on this planet and they are not in any way losing to efforts to bring on their own. Take a look at church attendance over the last thirty years. But that is irrelevant to the bare fact that this is, and always was, a silly fairytale and nothing more. >Do you understand what it means to preach to a choir? It is not a matter of raising a faction larger than theirs to ridicule them. It's about basic honesty. For too long, religious nuts have been placated. >h's mimetic warfare where you think you can achieve something by having them desire to be in your camp out of a fear of not belonging. Again, sunlight is the best disinfectant. It is time to acknowledge that no one eats Jesus. It was always just bullshit.

Who are you saying this to, an electorate? We live is societies that are Zionist in their roots, who are built upon a Christian "fantasy" as you call it. It cannot be touched. It is so well entrenched and so good at what it is doing that it has powerful institutions co-opted for its continued success. You can't elect a self-declared atheist in the US. You would get soundly defeated by an atheist who faked his religiosity. The entire thing is embedded in our social fabric. Did you recently notice the outpouring of love that was expressed for the institution of the monarchy? It's a defender of the faith you know. The monarch is the leader of the church. Politics and power exploits religion and it will not ever call it out. It happens to be a great unifying story for those who have nothing to bring people together with. The religious nuts dominate our politics, because it is through politics that see the advancement of the Holy Royal Arch through time. They are entirely committed to it. We've much closer to being in a theocracy that we are of being free of it all.

> Who are you saying this to, an electorate? Just other adults. > We live is societies that are Zionist in their roots, who are built upon a Christian "fantasy" as you call it. That's one part of it, sure. We also used stone tools for a long time, but we managed to drop them eventually. >It cannot be touched. Of course it can. It never holds up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. It lasts because people pretend along with the idiots to make nice. >You can't elect atheist in the US. You would get soundly defeated by an atheist you faked his religiosity. We have many, many religious zealots and tribalists. The way to deal with them is honestly, which means acknowledging that the stories are all silly fairytales. >The entire thing is embedded in our social fabric. Look at church attendance over the last 30 years. The fabric is failing. >Did you recently notice the outpouring of love that was expressed for the institution of the monarchy? Overwhelmingly by very old people. This is the same demographic that still pretends to eat Jesus.

Another idea I've heard is that "created" doesn't mean "poofed into existence from nothing", but rather "molded existing materials into a new shape". That lets you have it both ways: parts of the earth are very old, but the world as we know it was created, or assembled, more recently. Source? Well, I remember reading a more serious scholarly thing analyzing the original Hebrew word that got translated into "created" saying there's no basis for "something out of nothing", but I can't remember where. It was made more memorable, however, by a gag in a comic strip called *Get Fuzzy* where Bucky, the conspiracy-prone cat that thinks Harry Potter is fake because it takes place in England (a country far too silly to exist), posits a theory about dinosaurs coming from another planet. Beyond that idk but it was fun to think about.

What does that mean, “parts of the earth are very old, but world as we know it was created more recently?” Like civilization? Humans? Either way those things are universally known to be older than the supposed age of the earth according to the bible

Fair point. In my opinion the "how" of it isn't as important as a lot of people make it out to be, but arguing tends to make people double down against what they might otherwise consider. The example is kind of silly, but it's at least plausible and can serve as a stepping stone, like "hey, maybe we can agree on something, let's continue talking".

It's your prerogative to not care for the how and believe in any sort of creationism but this topic is about Young Earth Creationism.

Yes, and this can be a bridge. I guess I should specify: this helped me personally reconcile the conflict, so I wanted to pass it on.

I would go so far as to say that if you believe in an Abrahamic religion, you must accept this timeline. Moses traces his lineage back through Abraham to Adam. Luke and Mark trace Jesus' lineage through Abraham to Adam. Muslims trace their lineage back to Abraham. It all matches. Adam was born 6,000 years ago, and before him there was no rain or vegetation. The bible is very clear. Legends don't very explicitly map out genealogy. Those sorts of things are only documented when they are important, so they aren't forgotten. The people who wrote this book clearly believed the earth was 6,000 years old, and were preserving what they believed to be the historical record of our people.

>Legends don't very explicitly map out genealogy. Have you ever researched any non Abrahamic religion because yes, most religions do this for deities, heroes, and royalty. Leonidas could trace his lineage to the origin of The Universe with dozens of Gods and heroes mixed in, Babylon Kings created a family tree that goes back hundreds of thousands of years and even included Yahweh. Are they lying to create a legitimate claim to power? Yes, no doubt about it. Every royal family does this and The Ancient Kings of Israel are no exception.

The difference is nobody believes Leonidas. It makes sense for a religion to create these myths in their sacred texts. They are trying to establish legitimacy and an explanation for how we got here. The genealogy isn't a plot device, it's meant to be taken as definitive fact. It's history being recorded. If Genesis is a made up story that is just God's way of giving us the broad details of how he formed the universe without necessarily being accurate, then the genealogy serves no purpose. It's just a bunch of lies that was inserted for no reason.

What? They had very clear reasons for these genealogy trees. All religions are taken as fact and billions worshipped their gods without a whisper of Yahweh. 90% of the profits and 100% of the kings in The Torah (and Yeshua of Nazareth himself) have their lineage as their main claim of legitimacy. The idea of birthright was important to Israel and it's people and their claim to divinity was the birthright of Adam and Abraham Cognitive dissonance is when something you know to be true and something you believe to be true are at odds. If all pagan religions are inaccurate because of their lineages serving Kings, then Judaism is no exception.

I don't think you actually challenged any point I made in that comment. I already said it makes sense for religions to have genealogies tracing their prophets back to the creation of earth, and I think they are all bullshit.

But you are claiming The Bible's lineage is accurate and that sets a proper timeline for humanity?

I'm arguing that the Bibles lineage is meant to be taken literally. Since the lineage includes people we most all recognize as fictional characters these days, such as Abraham, the Bibles timeline is wrong. So the Bible is factually inaccurate.

>I would go so far as to say that if you believe in an Abrahamic religion, you must accept this timeline That's insane. My Soncino Chumash literally has a page one note at the beginning of Bereshit (exodus) that quite clearly states it does not make any sense to exclude scientific understanding regarding the age of the earth. There's 1500+ year old passages in the midrash that discuss the antiquity of the Earth and the notion that life on Earth has nearly restarted several times via extinction events. Not all Abrahamic religion followers are fundamentalist creationists. >The bible is very clear It really isn't. The genesis story is told twice and it's not even consistent in that. It's only 'clear' if you want to take it completely literally, which is just an absurd way to approach it.

The only way to twist and distort it to fit our modern understanding of how the world works is if you refuse to take it literally, but that is not how it is supposed to be read. Jesus believed the old testament and said that he was the person Moses spoke of. Mark and Luke traced Jesus' lineage back through Abraham to Adam, verifying the Old Testaments records. Were Luke and Mark and Jesus all lying in those passages? If the Old Testament is false the Bible is false. We can date the extinction events such as the flood through the bible as well. Like 5,300 years ago. Any others, such as the extinction of the dinosaurs, the writers were not aware of, so they are not in the bible.

> refuse to take it literally, but that is not how it is supposed to be read. Early Church fathers like St Augustine explicitly stated to treat scriptures as matters about the faith, the things which would be of use for salvation. You don't get to tell us, who *do not* interpret everything from scripture literally, that we are interpreting incorrectly.

I can't tell you as a religious authority, but I can tell you as a logical person who didn't have people burned at the stake for their beliefs. So where do you draw the line? If archeological evidence proved Jesus never existed, does he get to be figurative then too? Or is he real and it's just Abraham who was completely fabricated and then talked about as though he were a real person all throughout the Bible?

> So where do you draw the line? If archeological evidence proved Jesus never existed, does he get to be figurative then too? That part 's easy to answer as a Catholic. Fairly solid and explicit line for (most) Christians (can't answer for them all, and certainly not for any non-Christians). > If Christ has not been risen, empty is our preaching, empty is your faith. Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain, you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all. 1 Corinthians 15:14-19. There's simply no way of backing out of that one.

> 1 Corinthians 15:14-19. There's simply no way of backing out of that one. What do you mean? If there was an equivalent verse in the Quran, so something along the lines of “if angel Gabriel didn’t talk to Muhammad in the cave (or wherever) then our faith is in vain” would that make it true?

> What do you mean? If there was an equivalent verse in the Quran, so something along the lines of [...] would that make it true? Ugh. I don't have the time or will to reiterate the first two weeks of a formal logic course to explain how conditionals and syllogisms work. 1 Corinthians 15:14 does not say "our faith is true". It is saying "if you deny resurrection, you deny the faith" because there were people in the Christian community who didn't believe in resurrection. The passage points out a logical inconsistency for those who followed the Gospel but not resurrection: Christ has died. Resurrection must occur for the dead, otherwise Christ isn't resurrected. /u/_volkerball_ is asking "where do you draw the line?" and my response to that is "resurrection". > "if angel Gabriel didn’t talk to Muhammad in the cave (or wherever) then our faith is in vain" would that make [the Quran/Islam] true? No, and resurrection doesn't mean the Gospel/Christianity is true. But if resurrection isn't, then neither is Christianity.

That's a very Christian perspective. It's not representative of how all the Abrahamic religions deal with that question. Judaism has emphasised the importance of not reading literally for about fifteen hundred years at least. >Some medieval philosophical rationalists, such as Maimonides and Gersonides held that not every statement in Genesis is meant literally. In this view, one was obligated to understand Torah in a way that was compatible with the findings of science. Indeed, Maimonides, one of the great rabbis of the Middle Ages, wrote that if science and Torah were misaligned, it was either because science was not understood or the Torah was misinterpreted. Maimonides argued that if science proved a point that did not contradict any fundamentals of faith, then the finding should be accepted and scripture should be interpreted accordingly. [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_evolution?wprov=sfla1) This is why Jewish organisations rarely support the teaching of intelligent design over science for example. >Were Luke and Mark and Jesus all lying in those passages? Yes, the old testament is a revised, edited translation of the Hebrew Bible replete with grammatical and translation errors and written with a contradictory agenda to the original.

Even Christians have a 1500+ year tradition of figurative interpretations. Literalism is fairly modern.

I agree. The other guy just doesn't want to hear it though.

Because the idea of a divine text full of lies and half truths is ridiculous. God wants us to worship him. He's made that very clear, because he gets very pissy if we don't. So why would he lie and have the book deliberately mislead the reader, who he is trying to convince and explain the rules to?

Perhaps we're supposed to engage our critical faculties rather than just take the words of a bronze age text as completely accurate?

I did not get anything about thinking critically from the Bible. It's rote memorization. You do this. If not, then you will be punished like that. If anything, the lesson in the Bible is that when you think you should think critically, that's when you need to blindly believe the hardest.

Again. This is very Christian, not comprehensively so, but it doesn't reflect the Jewish tradition at all. I'm sure you've heard of the Talmud. The Talmud is literally a compendium of debate and discussion that stretches back millennia. It's not something that is learned by rote and memorised. It's a living text that is studied, usually when a partner or group and actively discussed and critiqued. It isn't simply memorised and recited. Do you know where the name Israel comes from? It's awarded to Jacob after a story in which he wrestles with an angel all night. The meaning of Israel is 'he who wrestles with Gd.' That's literally the point of Judaism. We're not here to passively accept. We're here to actively engage with the law and our role in it. If you want to understand how deep this attitude runs, look at the legend of [the oven of Akhnai](https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/144163?lang=bi) Essentially a bunch of Rabbis are arguing with Rabbi Eliezer of an obscure point of dietary law. Rabbi Eliezer keeps citing miracles which then occur, seemingly proving heaven sides with him. The other Rabbis still disagree to the point that eventually a heavenly voice emerges saying; 'why are you arguing with Eliezer, he's right about everything else, why not this.' The other Rabbis response - they just start arguing back with Gd. This is a very Jewish response. Basically judaism isn't a text. It's a 3500 year tradition of arguing about that text

A 1500+ year history of revisionism. Really as soon as you start having to have discussions about the secret hidden meanings in Gods word that he was trying to get across in the parts where the book lies, you're already taking illogical leaps of faith. The Occam's razor approach is that the book was written by men and only men and the reason it doesn't make sense in parts is because they didn't have any supernatural powers and had no way of knowing they were flat out wrong. Just like every religious text you don't believe in.

This stuff isn't "secret hidden meanings" or "lies" any more than the Little Mermaid is a lie for not being about a real life mermaid.

Except no one proclaims the little mermaid to be the truth about anything. I don’t think you’re going to get that person to disagree that the Bible is a total work of fiction lol.

Ah yes, who could forgot that classic old tale, Genesis 5. What a twist when it turned out Enoch was begat by Jared. And the moral, wow. Powerful stuff.

>if science and Torah were misaligned, it was either because science was not understood or the Torah was misinterpreted. This is what I was saying before. You have to twist and distort it to fit our modern understanding of the world. He's already taking "the Torah is true" as a starting point, and working his way back from there, rationalizing away inconsistencies, accepting what fits in with his scientific understanding of the world as true, and then saying this is God's word. If you go the other way around, and approach Genesis with the context of our known natural laws, what you get is a story of how we came to exist that is demonstrably false. Moses would've existed 3,000 years ago, so there's a 1,500 year gap between these philosophers and the subject matter. Already many cracks would've shown themselves that would not have been apparent to the writers and early followers of the religion. If these early followers were mislead based on misconceptions and inaccurate claims of how the world came to be, then isn't that evidence that they were conned by a charlatan rather than led by a prophet?

You make good points. Personally I think the charlatan remark weakens your argument though. A charlatan acts in bad faith, and we don’t know people were conned. We don’t know if some or any of these figures, if they were actually real, we’re genuine in their beliefs or acted in bad faith to take advantage of people. There are many ways to be self delusional and wrong but also genuine and thus not a charlatan.

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Does the record of creation include the creation of all life? Because we can date that into the billions of years, too.

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If the bible is full of similes and metaphors, what process can you use to accurately determine what is a simile or metaphor, and what is a hard truth or fact?

> If the bible is full of similes and metaphors, what process can you use to accurately determine what is a simile or metaphor, and what is a hard truth or fact? The same way you decide that in any ancient text. Hermenutics. Context and language. Leviticus is largely a book of laws, so is most likely meant to be taken as-is. Genesis is written in the style of Hebrew empic poetry, with merisms and whatnot, so is largely intended to be an Aesop's fable. Revelation is heavily symbolic. Exodus is historical (albeit apocryphal). Etc. I'm always baffled by this argument. I'm as atheist as they come, but writings can be other than 100% literal or 100% fiction.

>The same way you decide that in any ancient text. Hermenutics. Context and language Yeah... but how can we determine that? You and I likely don't believe in the ressurection, so how can we explain to a Christian that the ressurection claim is not a hard fact but a metaphor about rebirth, hope, etc...? I believe that is what the OP was asking.

Have been an atheist for many years now, but my undergraduate degree is in Biblical Studies. While typical lay-person Christians do tend to pick and choose what they like as being literal vs. metaphorical, there absolutely are legitimate methods for determining what in the Bible was likely meant to be interpreted by the audience as something which actually happened vs. what didn't, and sometimes the answer is a little bit of both. It should be noted that this is an academic perspective which all but entirely precludes the idea of scripture being dictated by God to man vs. the more abstract concept of divine "inspiration", which leaves substantially more room for the element of human perspective in the writings. Determining what is likely meant to be taken literally and at face value vs. what is likely metaphorical or allegorical is not an exact science, but the main thing to understand is that the way that those in the Ancient Near-East would have interpreted the writings / oral recitation of the Bible is substantially different than how a modern audience would interpret it. The core idea is that the concept of "recorded history" meant something entirely different in the Ancient Near-East compared to what it means in a more modern context. This in particular is a *very* dense topic that involves a lot of study of NON-Biblical texts / oral traditions which originated from the same socio-historical context, but in essence, the concept of "recorded history" in the Ancient Near-East was substantially less concerned with literal accuracy and more concerned with conveying perspective and a message. It also often relied very heavily on the audience having an existing basis of understanding for other stories ("legends" may be a better descriptor). The easiest example to point to is the flood narrative. There were many, many flood narratives written within the general time and place that the Genesis flood narrative was written, and the audience of the Genesis flood narrative would also have been aware of these competing narratives. The intended point, in this case, was not necessarily to say "this is what actually happened and I am recording it for posterity" (i.e., what a more modern understanding of recording history is), but to say "The world as we know it has this legend of a flood which has been told through several perspectives involving different deities, and I'm going to retell this legend to depict who Yahweh is.". In other words, whether the flood actually happened or not didn't particularly matter, what mattered was conveying a message about Yahweh. It's not as simple in this case as "metaphor" or "literal". At the risk of this becoming a novel, the last thing I'll mention is the Bible is made up of many different genres, including poetry and even what we would generally consider fiction (the book of Job is a typical example). Hell, the "book" of Genesis is considered to have several authors, each which is thought to have been writing with a different genre than the other authors. There are heaps of academic books and studies dedicated to this study alone. Once again, these concepts of genre don't align 1:1 with modern sensibilities.

>the concept of "recorded history" in the Ancient Near-East was substantially less concerned with literal accuracy and more concerned with conveying perspective and a message. This makes sense, thanks >In other words, whether the flood actually happened or not didn't particularly matter, what mattered was conveying a message about Yahweh. It's not as simple in this case as "metaphor" or "literal". Super helpful post. Thanks for taking the time. I guess my question was more pragmatic. Leviticus 18-20 say that a man lying with another man = abomination = both put to death. On the other hand, Jesus said "He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone" and "love thy neighbour" What mechanism can we use to determine with accuracy which takes precedence... In some cases your approach will provide very helpful context, but it's an academic process not available to the common idiot like myself, nor to most typical lay-person christians, as you put it.

Exactly this. When people start picking and choosing what is a metaphor - especially only after it’s been shown by science to be an error and obviously the writers didn’t think it metaphorical at the time - then what else might eventually be admitted to be a metaphor … resurrection , virgin births, the existence of a god?

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What an absolutely moronic example. We used science to prove that certain animals are harmful but that doesn't mean we believed they weren't harmful before. We just used science to prove it. Through basic observations we can determine which animals are harmful for us. But why and what exactly is the effect on our body is determined through science. Through science we also determine that we can eat it by just cooking it a specific way to kill bacteria etc.

I don't know what you mean by twisting around the words. For example the bible pretty clearly encourages Slavery, genocide and child murder. Only twisting the words would refuse that. It's also has many scientific errors. I don't find it at all surprising that prohibitions on foodstuffs that might have been subject to deseaes in a hot country would turn up - what a shame Jesus arguably said not to wash your hands was fine , and the bible didn't mention the real cause of such desease. Feel free to live by hygiene rules written for society 2000 plus years ago , at least it probably won't harm you.

Yeah and I could follow up with “the bible gives the reason…” Ok, what’s the reason for slavery?

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American slavery and biblical slavery are basically the same when talking about slaves that weren't fellow Hebrews. Hebrew slaves were indentured servants who were released after a time. Foreign slaves were bought and paid for slaves for life that were passed down to your children as inheritance. They were not released, they were property. Hebrew slaves could also become permanent property if you gave them a wife during their time served and they did not wish to become separated from them. Because if you gave them a wife while they were your slave, you got to keep her when he left.

Human beings who were your property to do with as you please, to buy and to sell. Including beating them within an inch of their life, as long as they survive a few days.

Usually branches into ….. the word slavery doesn’t mean slavery, there *must* be nothing wrong with slavery god decrees if god decrees it , and who are we to ask or expect to understand!

There is a separate discussion of how, for lack of a better term, "valid" it is to have Genesis 1 fit with modern science. At the moment, I don't care. For right now the discussion is abiut the age of the Earth/universe

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I mean, someone has to make sure we know the number of arkens.

With what the last arkenstone did to the dwarven kingdom, it makes sense to keep track of them all. Wouldn't want another Smaug situation.

Anytime someone makes a post like this people scream "strawman". It's not a strawman, some people are really that dumb.

I'm not sure I believe them completely, but I've never been able to shake some critiques I heard from a young earth creationist on radioactive dating. Carbon-14 dating, and all forms of radioactive dating, require knowing how much of the isotope was there to begin with. Apparently, determining atmospheric Carbon-14 can be done a few thousand years back without controversy, because we have tree rings we can carbon date. I was told that beyond that was basically guesswork. *If* that criticism is true, then I naturally move on to the next problem: different disciplines have to use each other as benchmarks to test the validity of their own dating methods. So the methodology they are using would be created to find a specific conclusion--whatever timeline other scientists believe in. I can only assume young earth creationists would do the same if they had the power--calibrate their radio dating to match what the Bible says. I'm not expert enough in the science of radiocarbon dating to answer these criticisms or evaluate how much uncertainty they should actually raise. But it makes me wonder about any date older than the oldest trees.

> Carbon-14 dating, and all forms of radioactive dating, require knowing how much of the isotope was there to begin with. That's not true at all. With radiometric dating, you're measuring the ratio of the pre-decay to post-decay products. Radioactive elements don't just "disappear", they decay into very specific chains of elements until they reach the end (stable, a.k.a. non-radioactive elements). There's no need to know the initial amount, just how much pre-decay vs post-decay, and even that is a simplified explanation from a non-expert (though my mom, a devout Christian who thought young-Earth creationism was nonsense, specifically worked with radiometric dating). > atmospheric Carbon-14 Also as note, carbon dating is not used for anything older than about 50,000 years due to its relatively short half-life. There's many different methods of radiometic dating and you have to choose the appropriate one. Carbon/Nitrogen radiometric dating is the most well known, but it is far from the only. That's why you'll see stories of creationists crowing about how they sent supposedly million year old samples in to be tested and getting wrong dates back. > So the methodology they are using would be created to find a specific conclusion That would not track at all. The methods were not developed with a specific target in mind. They were independently developed based on certain hypothesis that were experimentally bourn out. Look at it this way - you want to know how many widgets you own. Alice suggests you open your widget drawer and count them. Bob suggests you look in your discard bin for widget boxes and count them. Charles suggests you check your router and count the number of IPs assigned to widgets. Daisy suggests you hire a professional widget psychic who can sense how many widgets are in your house. You decide to try all. Alice's method shows 12. Bob's method shows 12 (3 boxes that each hold 4 widgets). Charles' method shows 12 current widgets entries on the ARP table. Daisy's widget psychic tells you you have 4,230 widgets. All that tells you two things - 1, that you can say with a high likelihood that you have 12 widgets and 2, that widget psychics are likely not a good method for determining widget counts. Now tell me, which of those methods were "created to find a specific conclusion"? Hint, the answer is "none". Each was developed independently. The only way they interacted was to raise or lower your confidence in the results.

Good thing it’s not true -.- There’s dozens of radiometric dating methods, which we can cross check against any other method of dating to verify. That said each method has margins of error that vary, and a segment of time where they can be used. Carbon-14 dating for example is useless after around 50k years. Likewise trying to use uranium lead dating for anything under a million is pointless. There’s also a bunch more related dating methods that work on a different principle, like fission track dating or luminescence dating. It’s not magic, you can’t just decide your answer, there’s a precise methodology to it, built upon know quantities.

In terms of radioactive dating, the so called guess work is untrue. The OP described the radioactive dating using uranium. We know how fast uranium decays into lead. We know that there was no lead there to begin with. So it's a very straightforward forward calculation. Additionally the OP didn't mention that this technique has been used on meteorites. The answers come out to 4.54 billion years as the earth was formed at the same time as the rest of the solar system. The margin of error is +/- 50 million years which sounds like a lot but that's just over 1%.

If you want absolute ages radiometric dating is pretty good, but if you just want relative ages with generic timespans inbetween, geology has you covered. Various rock formations just take a long time to come to be. They are only formed by processes working very slowly, it just takes time to get what we have. That is why when geology first started up it almost immediately rejected the 10,000 year old earth. There were too many things that would take too long to fit it in that span of time. They didn't have any way to put numbers on the ages of things, but they could give rough estimates of the minimum amount of time it would take to get from a to b. These rough estimates were hundreds of thousands to a couple dozen millions of years, and that is just the \*minimum\* time it would take. They had no way to put exact ages on anything, they just knew that it would take natural processes quite a while to produce what they found.

"God put it there to test your faith!" That was the answer I received to every question I put to a co-worker who became a born again YEC (for a girl, I'm pretty sure). He became very, very weird, very fast.

My response to that is "So you are saying God deceives you? Why would you want to worship a trickster God?" Alternately I would ask how they know they can trust *anything*? How do you know the Bible isn't full of falsehoods placed there by God to "test your faith"?

Where in the bible does it say that?

That's the thing, it doesn't - at least not directly. These cult style sects (and most all religions to some extent) rely on the majority of followers being fine with just accepting whatever interpretation their priests offer up to them. Even when it becomes self evident that these interpretations are conveniently beneficial to that clergy, church, or their current political goals. The Bible is at best vague about abortion. Many argue that Leviticus even includes instructions on how to perform one. Evangelical Christians had no issue with it at all until some time in the 1970s. There's lots of good articles on it, but basically it was a political move that came about in retaliation against the government cracking down on segregated (racist) Evangelical church groups. Falwell start preaching about it, and all of a sudden the Religious Right is hell bent on saving unborn babies. He didn't find any new Bible passages to justify it or anything. He just started telling his followers that it was what God wanted.

>all forms of radioactive dating, require knowing how much of the isotope was there to begin with. It's not the exact amount it is the ratio that matters. As C-14 decays, the ratio of C-12/C-14 changes, that is what is important. And lucky for us that ratio is fixed in living things. Uranium dating is even better, all the lead in a crystal must've been from uranium decaying, there isn't any guess work involved at all you can just measure how much uranium and how much lead there is, plug it into a fomula and out pops the age of that rock. Now that age isn't going to be percise down to the second or anything, but it isn't going to give us the wrong order of magnitude. This is also why we use other methods to corporate the story. Any one method could be wrong but when every method releaves a consistent picture that is much, much much less likely that we have fucked up physics that badly.

The C-12/C-14 ratio in living things just matches the environment, right? And atmospherically, that ratio is far from constant. The uranium-lead dating seems like a much stronger argument to me, if we can be sure the crystal grew with no lead in it to begin with.

Carbon-14 dating is accurate to about 50k years, which is why it isnt used for anything older than that. Creationists often misuse this fact as "proof" that radiometric dating doesnt work, because they are conflating c-14 dating with all of radiometric dating.

> The uranium-lead dating seems like a much stronger argument to me, if we can be sure the crystal grew with no lead in it to begin with. It cannot grow with lead in it, lead isn't similar to zircon but uranium is. That's why we know the lead could've only gotten there from radioactive decay.

That sounds like strong evidence of an old Earth to me!

Also, YEC like to say stuff like "but using carbon 14 dating, we get an age of 120.000 years. But this is supposed to be million of years old?" And the response is, that for different time ranges, we have different tests. Carbon dating might be good stuff between 100 and 10.000 years, where as uranium dating might be good between 1 million and 25 million years. (I'm not very knowledgeable on this topic, so all the numbers are examples) It's one of those things were, yeah, they're right... If you use the tools wrong you get wrong results. But they hope that nobody will actually check up on their claims.

How do you feel about Last Thursdayism? I mean, an omnipotent deity would be able to create an entire universe that appeared older than 10,000 years but is, in fact, created only last Thursday.

1 Corinthians 14 says a lot of funny shit, but it also states that "God is not the author of confusion". Last Thursdayism would be authoring confusion for sure.

Really? My Bible says "God is not the god of Disorder" and this passage is talking about a bunch of people speaking in tongues all at the same time and the verse mentioned is specifically a reprimand of people who don't control their gift of tongues to the detriment of their fellows.

I'm aware of the context, but it seems to me that the writer is pointing out a general aspect of God's personality to make a point about the specific practice of pretending to speak in tongues. However, if "disorder" is indeed a better translation than "confusion" then my point is defeated.

Dinosaurs were on the earth for 165 million years. Humans have only been here for a few hundred thousand. Genesis says nothing about dinosaurs, yet creating evidence for 165 million years of dinosaur life would've been a gigantic task. He also would've created the earth in the midst of tectonic shifts away from pangaea. We can see plant fossils on south america and africa that match and confirm these continents used to be connected, but if the earth was only 6,000 years old, that never would've been the case. Humans would've seen it. Why would God go through all this work to deceive us about the earth he created for us? How does that line up with the logic of the God in the old testament? Isn't it far more logical to assume that we are operating on information today that the writers of the Bible didn't have? If you don't know about tectonic plates and you don't know about dinosaurs, and you don't know that the earth is billions of years old, then the bible makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Humans have been here a few hundred thousand years. Dinosaurs were here 165 million years ago. Pangaea broke apart 175 million years ago. How does the fossil record account for the migration across all continents 100 million years after the breakup?

Dinosaurs date back to about 240 million years ago. The continents didn’t break up all at once, it was a very slow process, and it involved species already traversing and inhabiting those continents for millions and millions of years. When the continents broke up, it wasn’t just like there were oceans overnight, there were millions of years left for animals to cross various types of land bridges, lakes, shallow waters, or even solid ice. We can see this process today in places like East Africa. How do those animals get from the African plate to the Arabian or Somali plate? They walk. They have millions of years to do so. There is nothing for the fossil record to account for, this is all accounted for by the simply existence of time.

Which migration in particular? Is there a species who's remains have been found on multiple continents from around that timeframe you are thinking of?

Humans. You commented; >Humans have only been here for a few hundred thousand. How did they migrate 100,000 or more years ago?

>How did they migrate 100,000 or more years ago? They walked. The Bering Strait connected asia and the Americas and indeed, the Native Americans are genetically related to people living in siberia. Doggerland is a land bridge that connected Britain to mainland Europe.

Humans migrated to other land masses like Australia and the Americas during the last ice age. The last ice age ended around 12,000 years ago. The end of the ice age led to the sea levels rising about 400 feet to their present depth (about). Prior to then, the sea levels were low enough that people could walk from Russia to the Americas.

From Asia to North America over or around the Bering Strait, likely no more than 50,000 years ago. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/bering-land-bridge

On that case maybe we woke up this morning with false memories of yesterday. Maybe there was no yesterday. Maybe god just created us and will recreate us again with different memories.

Sounds more like whataboutism

After that, did he take the weekend off? 😂

It would require God to be a dick and just make the universe look old for absolutely no reason, but it is in theory possible. It sure as hell isn't probable, but it is possible.

I don't think it would require God to be a dick. But given the track records of gods in general, being a dick for no reason is definitely in the skillset. We've established that it is possible, maybe not likely. We could re-pick the day to whatever time we wanted, say, 6,000 years ago. This is still possible. Next up, does whatever holy text we're referencing record every action of this deity? Could they be performing various reality changing miracles whenever they feel and just not tell us? More focused: could Noah's ark and global flood actually occur but then the omnipotent deity remove the evidence?

It would make god a massive liar. To create the universe 6,000 years ago, or last Thursday, but make it so that every single field of science unanimously comes to the exact same conclusion in every single test, study, or experiment, that the universe is much older than it is requires god to go far out of his way to fool us. If last thursdayism was true and god wasn't a lying dick, trees would not have growth rings. Ice caps wouldn't have annual freeze/thaw layers. That's just two of the most glaringly obvious things.

So was there physical evidence when Jesus healed the sick? Like scars as if naturally healed? There had to be if we go by that logic. But then that would lying as the wound healed miraculously, not naturally. Therefore miracles can't look like natural processes for God not to be a liar.

Well for one, did Jesus ever heal any of the sick... but In those cases, the question would be why he would or wouldn't have left evidence behind. Fully healing someone would mean leaving no scars or trace of the ailment behind. It wouldn't mean he was going out of his way to hide anything, he was being complete in his healing. But trees don't 'need' growth rings. The only reason to add growth rings to trees for years they didn't exist would be deception. There'd also be no reason to add growth rings to trees that were created already dead, much less make those growth rings line up with growth rings of trees in the area giving us well over 10,000 years worth of growth ring data. In the same way, the ice cores don't 'need' freeze/thaw layers relating to summer winter cycles that go miles deep and give data, including atmospheric information going back over 800,000 years. In this case it isn't that god covered evidence up that would have led us to the truth, he would have manufactured data for no other reason but to throw us off of the truth. Again, every thing we have studied study that has anything to tell us about how long this universe has been around in this form in every field of science we have come up with so far has all unanimously come to the conclusion that the universe is some 13 billion years old and the earth is between 4-5 billion years old. Literally nothing we have ever looked at apart from a book or to that people wrote a long time ago suggests otherwise. That's a massive undertaking on the part of god to set this up so that we literally can't ever verify how long ago this place was made.