Where did the idea of “millions of years” come from?

AiG ^ | Terry Mortenson

[GodGunsGuts]

Where did the idea of “millions of years” come from?

All of our media outlets push evolution and “millions of years” ideas on the public. Even children’s cartoons reflect evolutionary philosophy! In an episode of the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, entitled “SpongeBob B.C.,” the narrator begins: “Ah, dawn breaks over the primordial sea. It is here that millions of years ago, life began taking its first clumsy steps out of the darkness, opening its newly formed eyeballs to stare into the blinding light of intelligence.” Unfortunately, large segments of the church have swallowed the millions-of-years evolutionary history hook, line, and sinker. But it was not always this way. In this chapter, we will discover where the idea of millions of years came from and why the church went along with it. We will see that science does not require it, but rather it is a necessity of uniformitarian geology and evolutionary theory...

[onedoug]

relativity

[Alkhin]

That extrapolation alone tells me you have no respect for the scientific method.

[Retired Greyhound]

BINGO!

[CottShop]

[[If the universe is only 14.7 billion years old, how can you possibly see objects that are located tens of billions of light years from the earth?]]

Shhhh. Don’t confuse em with hte dirty little secrets that plague their hypothesis. This is a problem old earthers are ‘looking into’ but isn’t it amusing that they wave a hand of dismissal for problems liek htis when they turn right around and say things liek “If the earth is only 6000 years old, how did ‘ancient’ starlight reach the earth’? The SAME ‘Problem’ that faces Young earth also plagues htem, but it’s fine for htem because their hypothesis is ‘scientificy’

[dirtboy]

You’re missing the key point. Because, after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, geologists learned that a specific extrusive volcanic process related to Stratavolcanoes could happen faster than they had envisioned, it allows the Young Earthers to post a picture of a 25-foot deep formation, and then jam their fingers in their ears and go ‘nyah, nyah nyah’ when asked to explain the extremely varied 6,000 foot geological column of the Grand Canyon with a Young Earth model. They will simply say the flood could have cut it without any kind of rational explaination of the formations that compose it.

[Retired Greyhound]

“overwhelming and irrefutable”

Were you there 4 1/2 billion years ago?

How do you know that God didn’t create the world so that it would appear to be 4 billion years old?

The point: nobody knows for certain.

[mysterio]

Ventura county, according to the website.

[dirtboy]

How do you know that God didn’t create the world so that it would appear to be 4 billion years old?

Ah, so all those fossils and widely varied geological formations are just one big practical joke.

[Wolfstar]

Speaking as a life-long Republican, I am absolutely stone-cold embarrassed by the anti-science stuff coming from religious fundamentalists who claim to be "real" political conservatives. Believe what you want to believe, but stop trying to force others to believe as you do. You give the political conservative movement a bad name.

Many of our nation's greatest Founders embraced the scientific advances of their day. They were men of the Enlightenment who were widely read in an astonishingly wide range of subjects. A single example: Benjamin Franklin was our nation's first international superstar. Why? Because of his scientific experiments with electricity, and because of his many inventions.

Advances in science have given us so much, from medicine to the computer you use to post your anti-science drivel. If you just open your eyes and observe the world around you, perhaps you'll grasp the fact that human beings have, indeed, evolved. We were once a species that lived in caves, eaking out a living through a hunter-gather lifestyle. Thanks to our inquiring, creative minds, we have evolved into a species that can go to the local supermarket for our food. Instead of living in caves or out on some savannah, we live in comfortable homes, heated in winter and often air-conditioned in summer. Advances in medical science allow us to live free from the fear of all the many diseases that used to sweep through human populations like waves of wildfire. Our food and water are safer thanks to scientific advances.

We traverse long distances in a few hours thanks to the machines advances in science have enabled us to build. We can speak with business associates around the world on little phones we carry in our pockets. We can entertain ourselves with moving images on screens and music on little devices. I, a 21st century human, can hit "post" and instantly send this message to you, a Dark Ages troglodyte. If that isn't evolution, what is?

[mysterio]

That actually appears as though it formed quite rapidly, don’t you think?

No.

[Retired Greyhound]

Ah, so all those fossils and widely varied geological formations are just one big practical joke.

Maybe. Why not? Neither of us were there.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The idea of millions of years comes from the Catholic Church, from Origen of Alexandria (185-254 AD);

Combining the Stoic doctrine of a universe without beginning with the Biblical doctrine of the beginning and the end of the world, he conceived of the visible world as the stages of an eternal cosmic process, affording also an explanation of the diversity of human fortunes, rewards, and punishments.

[dirtboy]

Maybe. Why not? Neither of us were there.

And this is why reasoned debate is impossible. You basiclly fall back on the notion that the geological history of the world is a Divine joke.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

[[If the universe is only 14.7 billion years old, how can you possibly see objects that are located tens of billions of light years from the earth?]]

Maybe you could provide the names of your objects that are tens of billions of light years away from the earth.

There are no such objects in the scientific literature.

[jimmyray]

See post 45, which states "How do “young earth” creationists explain the existence of objects in space, such as quasars, that are located tens of billions of light years from the earth?"

Simply responding to a stement made. However, we both know the current theory does not assert such, I was just pointing out the mistake. :-)

[Uri’el-2012]

Then again, some folks don't believe in the speed of light.

Some have empirically demonstrated that it has slowed.

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach Adonai

[<1/1,000,000th%]

See my post #74.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Sorry. I missed that one.

[CottShop]

http://www.angelfire.com/az/BIGBANGisWRONG/index.html

[calex59]

Ok, I am NOT an evolutionists, nor am I a creationists, in fact I usually argue against most evo ideas. I have a theory about the origin of life, the universe and everything, but that is neither here nor there. I will say that anyone who actually believes the earth is only 6,000 years old has rocks in their heads. If we hold strictly to creationism, several questions beg to be answered. 1.)Why is there no mention of Dinos in the bible? Huge animals capable of swallowing a human in one gulp would surely rate a mention. Man, and all animals were supposedly created together, so why doesn't man have a record of these huge creatures? The answer is simple, we didn't exist when they did, period. 2.)The record of man, real records, goes back more than 6,000 years. All you have to do is go back to the actual written records, which can easily be traced back to about 4,000 years ago, then look at the artifacts of Humans who lived before that, 6,000 years easily, and more. Earth may not be billions of years old, but is a damn site older than 6,000.

Creationists need to get over the idea that evolution, in some form not Darwinism(Darwin was wrong and has been proved to be to anyone not brainwashed to believe in his theory), is not incompatible with creation. Also, please quote me chapter and verse where the bible actually says that the earth is only 6,000 years old.