“Ham is a young-Earth creationist. That means he believes the world is only seven thousand years old or so, because if you look at the Bible in the most literal way possible, that’s the timeline. God literally created the world in seven, 24-hour days, and so on from there.”
The science of evolution may have its faults, errors and weaknesses, but even without the science of evolution the scientific view of the age of the earth as more than just a few thousand years is more defensible, more defensible than a young earth.
There was even a post here on FreeRep by a scientist with knowledge of phsyics and a lot of its math who explored the “six days” of creation from an orthodox science view. It was so detailed I cannot do justice to it in this space. But, in the final analysis he was saying that if you take the “day” to mean not “one earth day” but a “G-d day” from a perspective beginning at the point science refers to as the “big bang”, and understanding what Eisteins theories say about time, and the “traveling at the speed of light” altering of the perspective of time, to those travelling or looking back over great distances, which is NOT the same as from a point of refersence at the beginning of it all that never changed, he found he could mathematically break down the time since the big bang to the early earth era into six distinct periods that are represented by different “earth years” each, but from G-d’s perspective - from that point in creation just preceding the big bang - would be each just one of six “G-d days”. That is a VERY rough idea of what he produced.
The problem with the “young earth” theory is not its objections to evolution, but its lack of ability to refute the much older earth-theories in science that do not need evolution to substantiate them.
I have no problem with the “days” in the Bible, regarding creation, NOT referring to “earth days” in the litteral since. It is enough for me that I don’t have to understand HOW G-d created the universe, whether in any number of litteral days or any number of virtual days, it will always be beyond the undersstanding of humans to fully comprehend. I can take THAT on faith, without an “old earth” shattering my faith in G-d.
I have study many arguments between old earth an young.
One thought that seems to have taken hold is “ Just because it happened a long time ago, doesn’t mean it took a long time to happen”.
can you post that discussion ... i would be interested in seeing his math
read Genesis again then, if the days are time periods, read genesis and tell me how long plants lived before the sun was made on day 4
Amen to your #33. The young-earth theory is broken, and cannot be fixed.
The name of the book & author you’re thinking of is:
The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom by Gerald L. Schroeder.
I read the book over Christmas break. The author is a theistic evolutionist. He believes that God guided evolution. He presents some interesting math & interpretations based on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
However, squeezing billions of years into the 1st chapter of Genesis introduces major conflicts theologically. In particular with Adam & Eve’s sin. There was no recorded death until they sinned when God provided a garment of skin (Gen 3:21). Theistic evolution says that there’s millions of years of death leading up to Adam & Eve arrival.
I’ve got lots of other issues but I don’t have the time to lay it all out. Oh well...