Universe's 6,000th birthday ...

Guardian ^ | 22 October 2004 | Radford, Tim

[Publius Valerius]

Universe's 6,000th birthday ...

Tim Radford Friday October 22, 2004 The Guardian

Britain's geologists are about to celebrate the fact that the universe is exactly 6,000 years old.

At 6pm tonight at the Geological Society of London, scientists will raise their glasses to James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh (below), who in 1650 used the chronology of the Bible to calculate the precise date and moment of creation.

Working from the book of Genesis, and risking some speculation on the Hebrew calendar, he calculated that it began at 6pm on Saturday October 22, 4004 BC.

Actually, he put the date at October 23, and then pedantically realised that time must have begun the night before, because the Bible said that "the evening and the morning were the first day."

The geologists selected the anniversary for a day-long conference on some of the fakes, frauds and hoaxes that have plagued geological and palaeontological research for centuries. "It's not that we think Archbishop Ussher's date was a fraud," said Ted Nield, the society's communications officer. "It's just that it was spectacularly wrong."

Dr Nield conceded, too, that in toasting the archbishop's calculations the geologists were committing another error. More than 6,000 years have passed since 4004 BC. The symmetry is only apparent. The date is a mere numerological reflection. The real anniversary passed unnoticed, in 1997.

[Acrobat]

Add a little to this: God is light, his point of reference is quite a bit different than ours...

Time is relative, is it not? (See the twin studies by Einstein)

So to say the earth is one time or another is irrelevant, really.

One more thing: All scientists ASSUME that the speed of light is constant, and has been since the beginning of the universe. I'm not saying it isn't, only that science makes some pretty interesting assumptions that often turn out to be false. (See the static universe arguments before "discovery" of the Big Bang: that the universe had a discrete moment in the past of origin.

Finally, there is the possibility of the "gap" between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2 (the earth was formless and void) as contrasted with Isaiah who records that God did not originally make it that way....

[RadioAstronomer]

I am in the lab and cannot respond to this now. I will try to answer some of these question when I get out of here later tonight.

[Diamond]

The article says that he calculated that it began at 6pm on Saturday October 22, 4004 BC. I did not intend to make a distinction between "began" and "started", because the terms are fairly synonymous. It's Ussher's use of "Saturday" that threw me off. Perhaps Ussher was just calculating in present calendar terms even though at the beginning there wasn't any Saturday. I was just wondering if Ussher started counting before or after God started on the project (since it took God 6 days to finish it) and that delineation might make Ussher's calculation of the beginning off by about 6 days. We might have six days left before the anniversary.

Cordially,

[DannyTN]

"False. These fossils would only fall back to the background level of C14."

As I understand it, using a Tandem Accelerator Mass Spectrometer effectively eliminates the background radiation that use to cause detection problems and allows an actual count of the C-14 atoms in a sample.

In the absence of contamination, C-14 in the fossil itself would fall to zero. Therefore the only background possible is from contamination. While there are several sources of possible contamination, (Contact with air, ground water, and gamma radiation, none are thought to be able to contaminate a sample sufficient to cause the level of C-14 observed in the fossils.

And if that level of contamination does exist, it validates creationist's concerns about contamination effects on many of the other radiometric dating methods.

[beezdotcom]

Watch it, Buddy!"

[orionblamblam]

> No one has ever seen evolution happen. It makes no predictions.

WOW!!!!


Way to be *completely* wrong. Rather than argue with you about this, I'll just suggest that you actually dooa little research on this. Here's a hint: evolutionary biologists and paleontologists have made a LOT of predictions. Many ahve been borne out.

> It seems to me that its main usefulness has been as a battering ram against the Bible.

Only by Christians. There is *nothing* in evolution or physics that speaks to the existence or non-existence of God, Allah, Zeus, elves, fairies or the Incredible Hulk. The only group of people who regularly make the claim that evolution and religion are incompatible are religionists.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

If you would like, it really should be converted from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar before setting an anniversary. The Julian Calendar loses around a month between BC 4004 and the Council of Nicea. (from whence the 10 day correction was applied in 1582)

BTW, 1997 did not go by "unnoticed" by me ;-)

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Rather than argue with you about this, I'll just suggest that you actually dooa little research on this. Here's a hint: evolutionary biologists and paleontologists have made a LOT of predictions. Many ahve been borne out.

If you can't answer, that's okay. But you should just say "I don't really know of any in particular."

There is *nothing* in evolution or physics that speaks to the existence or non-existence of God, Allah, Zeus, elves, fairies or the Incredible Hulk. The only group of people who regularly make the claim that evolution and religion are incompatible are religionists.

If you limit the issue in that way, then I don't disagree with you. But the Devil is in the details. And the details of TOE and those religions differ in many particulars. But one would not expect one who discounts religion out of hand to be aware of or sensitive to them.

[longshadow]

You forgot there is no year zero.

Now you've done it; the "Zero Anti-Discrimination League" is going to file a protest with the EEOC.

[Christian Conservative]

I did not repeat myself in the way that you imply. I stated how the passage that you used to refute my argument, actually supports it more fully.

I forgot to address Genesis in my last post. I can only go on the English translation because I do not know what the original Hebrew says. God did not lie. It is against His nature. I believe that He was speaking of an instant spiritual seperation from Himself, and of an eventual physical seperation from Adam's body. The spiritual seperation is seen in that Adam was driven out of the Garden of Eden, and was no longer allowed to talk directly to God. The physical seperation is seen in that eventually Adam, and all of his descendants, with the exceptions of Enoch and Elijah, ALL died physically. This can be seen if you read through the genealogies in the book of Genesis.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[stands2reason]

Who said that?

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

I did not repeat myself in the way that you imply. I stated how the passage that you used to refute my argument, actually supports it more fully.

I didn't cite Ps.90:4 to refute you, only to show the OT basis for 2Peter. I cited Gen.2:17 to refute your denial of a literal meaning.

I forgot to address Genesis in my last post. I can only go on the English translation because I do not know what the original Hebrew says. God did not lie. It is against His nature. I believe that He was speaking of an instant spiritual seperation from Himself, and of an eventual physical seperation from Adam's body...

Why do you have to resort to a rather nebulous metaphor when a literal interpretation is sufficient? Nevertheless, I'll grant also the validity of the metaphor of being spiritually dead. But then physical death is redundant. Death the same day in all senses is true with a literal interpretation of Ps.90:4/2Pet.3:8.

[Christian Conservative]

I never denied a literal meaning of any passage of scripture. I actually believe that all of the Bible should be interpreted literally. That includes figures of speech and metaphors. When I say literally I mean that it should be read as the original writer intended, and the way the original readers would have understood it. If you believe that Ps. 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:18 are to be interpreted "literally" (meaning that every time the Bible mentions a day it really means 1,000 years, and everytime it mentions 1,000 years it means a day) you completely change the structure of the Bible and its dating system. For example, if you believe what you say, you have to believe that the 6 "days" of creation are actually 6,000 years. You have to believe when God told the Israelites in Joshua 6:3 "You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days." that He meant one march around Jericho every 1,000 years. You have to believe that when Jonah was in the belly of the great fish that he was there for 3,000 years. On the other side of the analogy, you have to believe that the future kingdom promised to Israel will only last one day because 1,000 years is as a day. It just gets too ridiculous, if you apply that to the whole Bible. It should be interpreted as a figure of speech demonstrating how God is not bound by time in the way that we are.

I did not provide a nebulous metaphor. Adam "died" the day he partook of the fruit. His final state was sealed. He would die. This was not fulfilled until later in his life. Again, it matters what the original word that we translate "day" is. When someone who speaks english says "day", I know that they mean a 24-hour rotation of the earth, generally beginning at Midnight. But there can be other meanings in Hebrew. Joel chapter one talks about the coming judment on Israel for her sins as the "day of the Lord". I don't think anyone would seriously interpret that to mean there will be 24 hours of punishment on the nation of Israel, and then all is hunky-dory. It was an indefinite period of time that was not defined in the text by a certain number of hours or days or cycles of the moon. That is the problem when we assume that the words we read in the English translations of the Bible are the original words and meanings of the text.

Have you every tried to read the instructions for a product that was made in a foreign country. Sometimes that translation of the instructions into English is less than desirable. That is why it is critical to look at the original words, not just the English translations of them.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

You are inconsistent. On the one hand you say, "When someone who speaks english says "day", I know that they mean a 24-hour rotation of the earth, generally beginning at Midnight. But there can be other meanings in Hebrew." But on the other hand you tell me that a "day" cannot mean a 1000-year period despite two Bible verses that explicitly say it can and one verse where it must in order to be literally true. Whether the 6 days of Creation are 144 hours, 6000 years or 6 eons (supported by your indeterminate metaphorical interpretation) is not relevant or determinable from the text, although science argues it is 13.7 billion years.

[Terriergal]

Modern day scientists are never wrong?

Of course not... (rolling eyes)

The Case for a Creator

[Terriergal]

Whether the 6 days of Creation are 144 hours, 6000 years or 6 eons (supported by your indeterminate metaphorical interpretation) is not relevant

It *is* relevant, because if old earth theory (or evolution at all for that matter) is correct, it invalidates the rest of the Bible, with death being the result of Mankind's sin, and our redemption from it coming from God.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

I regard the "Old Earth Theory" and Evolution as two separate issues that are often conflated. An "old earth" is necessary for Evolution but it does not imply evolution. Admitting that the earth is old therefore grants nothing to evolutionists.

But denying that the earth is old if in fact it is would be the same error that those who clung to the Ptolemaic system of the Sun revolving around the earth made. First, it would be the mistake of forcing scriptural text to stand or fall based on a particular falsifiable interpretation of that scripture that is not warranted by its context. And second, it would be analogous to the Ptolemaic proponents placing dogmatic significance to the earth's physical centrality in the universe when no such thing is required.

I cannot see the difference to your salvation whether God took six of your days or 13.7 billion years that He looked on as six of His days?

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Actually, I've thought, 'Why wouldn't God create the universe and enjoy it for awhile, say 13.7 billion years, before mucking it up with Man?' :-)

[Doctor Stochastic]

Any book that claims that Hawkins is wrong because of the use of imaginary numbers to describe quantum phenomona doesn't rise to the level of eight grade mathematics. A favorable review seems to agree with this. It's not that the author (and his interviewees) don't understand physics (or biology or geology or chemistry or astronomy), they don't get even simple arithmetic. However, if denial of imaginary numbers is a tenet of Creationism, so be it.