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These discoverers, inventors, and philosophers would have found the exact same thing regardless of the use of religion or God as an axiom.-me

I'll challenge you. Back this up.

I admit, I made a claim that I cannot back up. However, I find it hard to believe, as I am sure you do as well, that Western culture would never have discovered America (Columbus), that nobody would have theorized about gravity (Newton), etc. etc, without using God as an axiom for their pursuits. Good point though, I cannot back up what I said...

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? That question has been continuously asked of g3k since post 1081, and in response we get nothing but tap-dancing. Observe this post, truly a classic. One howler after another:

Actually it is atheits [sic] that cannot disprove God by scientific means:¹ abiogenesis has been proven scientifically impossible,² the Universe has been shown to be intelligently designed,³ the development of a human from conception to birth is not random but a program which cannot be stochastically changed.⁴ It is you and your fellow atheists that have to disprove God⁵ and you have nothing but lame rhetoric to do it with.
1241 posted on 12/28/2002 11:49 PM EST by gore3000

Footnotes:
1. That was in response to a point I made to Tribune7, about whether the "God hypothesis" was essential to scientific work, and I said that Trib7 had the burden of proof. He does; and g3k doesn't understand this.
2. This nonsense keeps getting repeated even after I've posted links to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, showing that ol' Louis Pasteur was merely working on the problem of food spoilation, and he showed that food had to be exposed to airborne bacteria in order to develop mold. Certain cretaionists have blown this into a fantasy proof of one of their fantasy dogmas.
3. Nonsense.
4. Who said it was random?
5. Another clear demonstration of ignorance regarding the burden of proof. And a "wildly elliptical" assumption that I'm an atheist.

Now then, that was an amusing post to deal with. But it's all quite beside the point. Do not be distracted. Don't be tempted into any flame wars which will provide an excuse to get this thread pulled. Permit no diversions! Stay the course! We want an answer: HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?

However, I find it hard to believe, as I am sure you do as well, that Western culture would never have discovered America (Columbus), that nobody would have theorized about gravity (Newton), etc. etc, without using God as an axiom for their pursuits.

But remember what my initial point was way, way back: It is perfectly fine to presume (God's existence) in science or anything else. It is rational. There is evidence for it. It's been done before and has worked quite well. Those examples -- the most important were actually Blackstone and Bacon, our laws and literally science itself is founded on the assumption of God's existence -- were examples of how presuming God's existence had worked well.

Now, would Western culture have made those discoveries without treating God's existence as axiomatic? Well Western culture -- especially during the age of discovery -- is a Christian culture. So, you'd have to ask if a pagan culture is capable of doing this. I don't think so, and there is no evidence for it. That concept, however, is the basis of much science fiction and can be argued indefinitely without coming to an absolute proof. All that can be said definitively is that a pagan culture never made these discoveries or developed the scientific method.