Too bad too, becasue intelligent design (ID) is solid, nails creation, and is based on Romans 1:20. The "age of rocks" debate, as in the 1925 Scopes trial, is misguided and irrelevant to ID and creation. Nobody know how many zillions of years ago the earth was formed. The Bible simply says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). Genesis 1:2 begins what we call "creation" which is really a re-creation which can be traced to around 6000 years.
It's too bad because ID so easily wins the debate over Darwinism. The "age of rocks" debate is a rabbit hole and irrelevant.
I had NO idea there were people who REALLY thought that the earth was only 6000 years!!! OMG!! How dumb and UNTHINKING can you get?? Is it because the Jewish religion is about 6000 yrs. old???
Ken Ham has been around for decades. Were he getting only fifteen minutes, how would anyone at Salon even remember who he is?
ALL rocks are the same age unless they are volcanic ones or meteor based.
But it is NOT a rabbit hole.
Cause we wouldn’t want a well-known Christian saying wacky things and bringing disrepute and embarrassment upon other Christians.
Wait a minute...
“1925 Scopes trial, is misguided and irrelevant to ID and creation.”
As in the Scopes trail, the media managed to make the loser the winner and so Solon is trying to do the same thing. Nye didn’t win anything. And yes there is solid evidence for a 6000 year old earth, strange as that may seem to people pickled in Darwin from birth.
Robertson seems to forget his scripture in favor of appearing “intellectual” to the World...
Matt 19:26
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
But, if Pat Robertson had actually watched the debate, he would have learned a whole bunch from Mr. Ham as he refuted every wild claim by the Mr. Nye.
To the most important question, Mr. Nye had to admit that he was not there and could not observe the Creation.
Nye was paid $70,000 for this debate which is a farce. The proposal should have been, come to defend evolution for free. We are giving you a good platform for this
$70,000 is Nye’s standard speaking fee
Sorry but the 6,000 year earth thing is just hogwash, it has no basis in anything. The debate between Nye and Ham was not a debate over ID or Darwin, it was at best a debate over young earth theory, which is a non starter.
A debate on ID/Evolution would have been interesting, instead we got a diatribe about a 6000 year old earth that doesn’t relate even to the written history of man. Let alone the actual history of the earth.
It was honestly a waste of about 3 hours of everyone’s time.
Who won the debate?
OK, I'm joking, because it does not matter one bit because, God wins in the end.
The Bible is not a science book, nor is it even a history book.
It is a book of Gods own plan to reconcile Man to Himself, by His own choice and by His own way despite our sinful condition and by His own merciful way. JESUS CHRIST.
Its about our relationship to Him, despite our evil, God, even in his pure unquestionable Holiness, desires that we be reconciled to Him at completion.
The beginning is explained to “mankind” in its childhood, the end only understood in the in the very presence of God.
The issue is not creation, it is completion.
The real issue is, what will Man do in regards to his son?
There is no time line in the Bible, God doesn't do what is pointless.
I count the biblical text of Genesis as evidence for a relatively young earth - older than 6,000 years, but not by leaps and bounds. The “millions and billions of years” scenario is a recent, arbitrary attempt to muddy the waters. It finds a welcome hearing amidst those who, unlike this country’s founding fathers, reject accountability to a higher authority. Quantum mechanics is already pointing to a reality that far exceeds the vapid assumption that natural processes evolved and had their effect over a period of billions of years.
I also count the presence of order and function as evidences for intelligent design, for it is the essence of intelligence to create and arrange order. The presence of an ordered universe is ubiquitous enough to be in accord with what is written in the biblical texts. I have yet to encounter any firm evidence contrary to all that is written therein.
So basically, we have two guys, Robertson and Ham, arguing over how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin? Brilliant!
The bottom line is that modern young-earthism was developed when some people felt that there was no other way to disprove evolution. If the Bible says Earth is young, it is reasoned, then evolution is wrong. However, this is entirely contingent on whether or not old age is a necessary component of evolution. If it is not, then a “young-earth” would be hard, if not impossible, to prove and biblical interpretations would be contradictory and inconsistent.
The Hebrew word day in Genesis 1 can be literally translated more than one way. So one must look at the various contextual elements of Genesis 1 before declaring what is the literal truth and what is not. Young-earthism is not based on sound science or biblical scholarship, but on preconceived beliefs fit onto science and the Bible. Based on the fallacy that old age equals evolution and that 24-hour days are the literal interpretation, creationists have claimed Earth is young
Isn’t this the same crackpot Pat Robertson that said that he had a miracle protein shake and that he could leg-press 2,000 pounds?
I think that Robertson needs to stuff a sock (or two) in his own mouth. And I do believe that he has had a few whoppers beyond those, too...
Pat Robertson is a goon!
Everything about him is fake.
The creation really was 6013 years ago, and it was definitely no “re-creation.”
Intelligent Design is an empty cop-out for those that want to straddle a non-existent fence.
Let the evo-loonies keep on wishing for some evidence, none of which they have or will ever produce.
If there were a shred of evidence you can be sure that it would be plastered on every billboard in the world.
The Grand Canyon is perfect evidence for the Biblical account, since there is no way that such a broad cut could have been made unless a large volume of water were released while all the layers were still wet. The dry cut that proves this is at the very bottom of the canyon, and is very shallow and narrow.
Look...THE BIBLE! DOES NOT SAY THE EARTH IS 6000 YEARS OLD ...PERIOD...so do not claim that as a biblical point..the 6000 years is one mans weak interpretation..if you want to accept that interpretation fine..but if I do not im not doubting God or the Bible..im doubting a fallible man
There are a lot of interesting things to consider, but at the creation, for man to be able to survive, some things had to be created with age: trees, rocks, MAN, etc. Had man been BORN during creation, who would’ve nursed and cared for him? Is it not possible for God to have made them any way he wanted? Scripture says that each living thing was born with the seed to reproduce after its kind. As man was not an infant upon his “arrival”, so trees, rocks, etc. were also “aged”. I see no problem with that.
While I am a follower of Rapture Ready and I’m sure that others who aren’t either might dismiss it; this article actually does a pretty good job of listing out a lot of the scientific evidence across multiple scientific disciplines for an old Earth and not one of them has anything to do with evolution.
http://www.raptureready.com/rr-planet.html
Mega Meteor Impacts - Researchers have found dozens of meteor-impact craters that are so large they would have profoundly affected the earth's climate. One crater in Northern Canada is around 60 miles wide. A giant meteor that struck the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula is blamed for causing one of the largest mass extinctions of dinosaurs. It's inconceivable that the biblical writers could have missed reporting an event that would have blanketed the globe with a choking blizzard of ash.
Super Volcanoes - Several of the earth's volcanoes periodically have erupted with a force so massive in scale, they would dwarf any eruption that modern man has ever witnessed. The Toba Caldera on the island of Sumatra once exploded with a force that released a volume of ash 3,000 times greater than the amount produced by the 1980 Mount St. Helen's eruption. Core samples taken 2,000 miles away from Toba have measured ash layers as deep as 36 inches. Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is the home of one of these super volcanoes. If it were to erupt, much of North America would be devastated by the blast.
Mount Everest - Ages ago, the Eurasian and Indian continents collided spectacularly to form the Himalayan mountain range. Geological movement continues to take place today as India is gradually pushed beneath China and Nepal at a rate of about 3 inches per year. Going by the current rate of upwelling, it has taken Mount Everest at least 100,000 years to rise to its 29,035-foot elevation. Before the great collision, the bedrock that makes up the Himalayan range was once at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The top 1,500 feet of Mount Everest is comprised of limestone. This type of rock is slowly formed by the deposition and consolidation of the skeletons of marine invertebrates. Because these creatures are minuscule, it would take a very long time to accumulate these limestone layers.
Coral Reefs -Coral is made up of the skeletons and calcium deposits of tiny animals that live in warm, shallow seas. It takes an estimated 100 years to produce a few centimeters of coral growth. One coral atoll has been measured at 3,900 feet in depth.
Light and Cosmic Events - The sun is one of countless numbers of stars in the Milky Way. Our little galaxy is over 100,000 light years across. This means that light from some stars in our galaxy has taken many tens of thousands of years to reach earth. A common explanation for our ability to see stars that are millions of light years away is that God created the light from these distant stars already in transit. The problem with the light-in-motion claim is that as light travels through the universe, forces it encounters alter its properties, giving us a travel log of its journey. Many of the cosmic events we see in the universe take millions of years to occur. It doesn't seem logical for God to have constructed such a multifaceted, elaborate hoax.
Bristlecone Pine Trees - The annual growth rings of trees are among the most reliable measures of time. Some Bristlecone pine trees in the White-Inyo mountain range of California date back beyond 6000 BC.
Algae Growth Cycle - During the springtime, tiny, one-celled algae bloom in Lake Suigetsu, Japan. They die and sink to the bottom of the lake, where they create a thin, white layer. During the rest of the year, dark clay sediments settle to the bottom. The results are alternating dark and light annual layers -- much like the annual growth rings on a tree. Scientists have counted about 45,000 layers.
Moon Dust - Measurements by sensors attached to satellites show that space dust accumulates on the moon at the rate of about 2 nanograms per square centimeter each year. (A nanogram is one thousandth of a millionth of a gram.) This rate would require 4.5 billion years to reach a depth of 1.5 inches, which is approximately the depth experienced by the astronauts who walked on the moon.
Cosmic Rays - The Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a method of measuring the length of time that surface rocks have been exposed to cosmic rays. Cosmic rays stream into the atmosphere from all directions in outer space and break neutrons free when they collide with air molecules. When these neutrons hit rocks on the ground, they sometimes react with a tiny number of mineral atoms that create radioactive isotopes. At sea level, a few hundred modified atoms are created each year in a gram of quartz near the surface of the ground. New measuring techniques can detect very small numbers of these atoms and thus estimate the number of years that the rocks have been exposed. Scientists have found ages of about 8,500 years for "recent" glacial moraines in Newfoundland and 830,000 years for extinct volcanoes in Nevada.
Radioactive Decay -The "nuclide" argument is one of the best proofs of an old earth. Nuclides are forms of matter that are radioactive. Each nuclide decays into another form of matter at a certain rate. After an interval of time equal to its half-life, only half of the original material is left. Scientists have found that every nuclide with a half-life of over 80 million years can be found naturally occurring on earth. All nuclides with a half-life under 80 million years do not exist naturally at detectable levels.
Ice Ages - In North America, more than 20 glacial advances and retreats have occurred during the last 2 million years. It takes a foot of snowfall to produce an inch of glacial ice. Since some of the ice is thousands of feet thick, it takes centuries of snow to produce each ice age event. These glaciers would have had to move across the land like freight trains to fit into the 6,000-year model.
Hawaiian Island Chain - If we could remove all of the water in the Pacific Ocean, we would find that the Hawaiian Islands are peaks on a 10,000-foot-high ridge that extends 3,000 miles to the northwest. The Hawaiian chain gets progressively older and becomes more eroded farther beyond the volcanically active region of the "Big Island" of Hawaii. All three factors - the movement of the ocean crust, the building of volcanic islands, and the erosion - are time-consuming geological processes.
Seating capacity - A lot of creationists try to defend the narrow timeline of the young earth view by arguing that Noah brought all the animals that ever existed onto the ark with him. They fail to realize that many of these prehistoric creatures were huge; some beasts weighed as much as 100 tons. However, getting all those bulky dinosaurs onto the ark would have been the least of Noah's problems. Scientists estimate that a total of 10 million species have existed on the earth. Because Noah never could have crammed that many animals into the ark, when the rains came, it would appear that most of them were left standing at the dock. It is interesting to note that scientists have calculated that Noah could have fit all of the 16,000 species of land animals currently living on the earth into the ark.
Coal - The Great Flood is frequently cited as the instantaneous creator of many fossil records. Geologists tell us that coal took millions of years to build up, and creationists point to the Flood as the source. The claim is made that when the Flood transpired, it buried all the earth's vegetation, creating the coal we mine today. The problem with this theory is that the available amount of plant material could not account for coal layers that are hundreds of feet thick. It would have taken several feet of organic material like ferns, grasses, and a few bugs just to produce a few inches of coal.
Salt Deposits - In the state of Utah, there is a huge, underground deposit of salt created by the continual evaporation of a shallow sea that once covered the land. The dome is nearly 5,000 feet deep and it was pushed to the surface by volcanic forces. Noah's flood cannot account for such a vast quantity of salt being deposited in a compact location and in such short stretch of time. A steady stream of water over millions of years is the only plausible solution.
Grand Canyon I - Young earth proponents like to disprove popular belief that the Grand Canyon is the result of millions of years of erosion by saying the Great Flood carved out the steep canyon walls in a few days. There are several problems with this simple explanation for the formation of the Grand Canyon. The Canyon is not the product of flooding. It was formed by the uplifting of a plateau by mountain-building events. The narrow inner gorge of the Grand Canyon and its many tributaries are the antithesis of the erosion that would be found as part of a broad floodplain.
Grand Canyon II - The Grand Canyon example is a two-parter in order to also account for all those thousands of layers of sedimentary rock that give the Grand Canyon its beauty. Creationists often say the Great Flood laid down the layers and in its aftermath, the receding waters dug out the gorge. One of the more prominent formations in the Grand Canyon is the Coconino Sandstone. This layer is found only a few hundred feet below the rim. Geologists have described this sandstone as originating from an ancient desert. Remnants of sand dunes can be seen in many outcrops of the formation in a phenomenon called cross bedding. Many footprints in this sandstone have been recognized as those of lizards scurrying across the desert. It's ridiculous to think there could be a sandy desert formation wedged between a series of layers that were all formed by the same flood event.
The Earth's Magnetic Field - Over the past 150 years, there has been a measured decrease in the earth's magnetic field. The decrease is hailed as positive proof that the planet was created around 6,000 years ago. The argument is made that if we went back in time a million years, the earth's magnetic field would be too strong for life to exist. It's baffling that some folks can assume the decline in the magnetic field has been a continuous event. It is common knowledge that our planet's magnetic field has frequently shifted between the North Pole and the South Pole. When volcanic lava erupts onto the surface and cools, the iron molecules embedded in the rock retain a record of the earth's magnetic field. A detailed examination of core drillings retrieved from the ocean floor has found the magnetic polarity of the poles has changed several times.
The Gulf of Mexico - Several creationist books argue that the earth must be relatively young because the Gulf of Mexico would have filled up with sediment from the Mississippi River had the process been going on for millions of years. True, a large amount of the sediment--some 500 million tons annually--is carried to the Gulf each year. However, it is incorrect to assume that the Gulf Coast region has always been as we see it today. Many moons ago, a shallow sea once reached all the way up to the central Midwest. At one time, the mouth of the Mississippi River would have been located in southern Iowa.
The Movement of Celestial Bodies - Young earth creationists frequently cite the movements and gyrations of heavenly bodies to support their views. They point to data showing that the sun is shrinking as solid evidence that the earth can only be a few thousand years old. They claim that if time were to be reversed by millions of years, the sun would become too large and hot for life to exist on earth. They also cite reports that show that the moon is pulling away from the earth at a rate of 2 inches per year, adding that this, too, could not be a process millions of years old. People who use these types of proofs clearly lack the most basic understanding of the movements of the sun and moon. All celestial bodies wobble and oscillate as they travel through space. Gaseous bodies like our sun have the added feature of being able to pulsate. Years down the road, we might find the sun expanding and the moon slowly orbiting closer to the earth.
Those who adopt this line of thinking usually believe in what's called the "Gap Theory." They believe, you pointed out, that the earth can really be millions of years old and that the current earth age is only 6,000 years old.
This theory is just that, a theory. Most learned theologians have debunked that line of thinking as pure speculation.