Old Earth Debate: Need Arguments and Resources

[loseyourname]

Someone posted a link to that site from one of these forums. I can't remember which one. Kenneth Miller suggests that quantum indeterminacy is necessary for free will as well as for the freedom of natural events (for example, to keep evolution from being pre-determined). He also tried to argue for the existence of God using fundamental mass and force constants that he says are perfectly calibrated so as to create a universe that would eventually result in the arising of intelligent life.

It's all in Finding Darwin's God. It's still a lot of logical fallacy and wishful thinking, but it's a lot better than all the creationist literature and at least he understands science - well, biology anyway.

 

[Phobos]

His discussions on evolution seem excellent. And in his frequent public debates with Creationists, he doesn't discuss his evidences for God (at least, as far as I have seen from what is available in his book & on the internet).

I'd say that Kenneth Miller is a good scientist...as opposed to Hugh Ross who has a decent understanding of scientific ideas but then inserts many leaps of faith. (Which is fine for a personal philosophy, but not for scientific theories.)

 

[Janitor]

There was a brief item in the paper a day or two ago about a stone tool and a piece of homonid (terminology?) skull that have been found. I can't remember for sure the age that they are believed to be, but it may have been 900,000 years. Does anybody know more about this?

 

[loseyourname]

I'd say that Kenneth Miller is a good scientist...as opposed to Hugh Ross who has a decent understanding of scientific ideas but then inserts many leaps of faith. (Which is fine for a personal philosophy, but not for scientific theories.)

Miller is an excellent scientist. He keeps his religious beliefs where they belong. Ross and Behe and Eden and guys like that are a completely different story.

 

[Loren Booda]

Does the Gaia hypothesis fit between the old and new Earth theories?

 

[Janitor]

I tuned into Christian radio for a few minutes this morning. The program was Hank Hanegraaff, "The Bible Answer Man," who is president of the Christian Research Institute (CRI)... The Moon is just the right mass to form some tides on Earth, but not to make really huge tides. Only a caring God could have arranged this...

... Why a creationist should be so concerned with tides, I don't know, and Hank did not say why. Isn't it evolutionists who suggest tidal pools as a good environment for getting life started? ...

Well, I stumbled upon this website

http://www.sivanandadlshq.org/messages/sciblgod.htm

which contains this:

... If our moon were, say, only 50,000 miles away instead of its actual distance, our tides might be so enormous that twice a day all continents would be submerged; even the mountains could soon be eroded away...

So that must have been what Hanegraaff was referring to.

My response would be to point out that there likely are places in the universe where tides do in fact create enough havoc for a few hundred million years to prevent terrestrial life from making an appearance. Would Mr. Hanegraaff blame his deity for making some places in the universe unnecessarily harsh, I wonder?

 

[Andre]

Well, since the moon is receding about something like an inch a year, the distance between Earth and moon may have been reduced quite a bit 20-30% ROM in the past, I would say according to my old envellope. Tides may have been double the size of now.

But we need the moon to keep the Earth stable. If Venus had had a moon like Earth it may also have had life.

Reading that paper I realize that there are two worlds. A created Earth and a "evolved" Earth. I don't think it is doable to merge them together into one world. We just have to live with that.

 

[Kakarot]

Well I like debating this subject and I came up with an argument in support for an old universe/earth. If the universe/earth is a mere 6000 years old then how is it possible for us to see galaxies millions of light years away with telescopes? We couldn't, they would be invisible to us because their light would take longer than the age of the universe to reach us! A creationist might argue that god willed it to be this way, or that this is a deception from satan.

 

[Andre]

Actually there are two worlds, one of 4,6 billion years old and another one of 6000 years. The first world is sure of this because they have a dozen independent techniques to calculate that age. The 6000 years old world is sure of it too, because somebody who can know it, says so.

Somehow those two worlds got merged, I don't know, a peculiar worm hole or so. Now we are ended up with intermingled people of two worlds whose main objective seems to be to convince the others of their truth.

This is tragical, since none of those parties will ever succeed because there are two worlds.

 

[Kakarot]

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Actually there are two worlds, one of 4,6 billion years old and another one of 6000 years. The first world is sure of this because they have a dozen independent techniques to calculate that age. The 6000 years old world is sure of it too, because somebody who can know it, says so.

Somehow those two worlds got merged, I don't know, a peculiar worm hole or so. Now we are ended up with intermingled people of two worlds whose main objective seems to be to convince the others of their truth.

This is tragical, since none of those parties will ever succeed because there are two worlds.

perfectly stated.

 

[lnx990]

well, there is another aspect to this. somewhere in the bible there is a story about Jesus turning water into wine, not just wine but good wine. This implies that it is old, so the argument would be something to the general effect of "well, obviously if God can create good/old wine why couldent he create an earth/universe that appears old?" scientifically there is a flaw in this argument. if you subscribe to that you must also believe that man, at one point, walked with dinosaurs. Some creationists would explain that God simply created the world with fossils already in it. The problem is that death didnt come until the fall of man, that is there was no death up until that point. Thus there was no such thing as death, fossils, natural resources, etc...

...just something to think about...