See! We CAN tie ourselves in biblical knots,,,

GAry 7

1. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that the Earth is 6,000 years old. This number was invented by scholars who estimated the lifetimes of each generation mentioned in the Bible, adding, before that, 7 days to create the universe.

It didn’t require much estimation, the “begats” (so-and-so begat so-and-so), along with lifespans, are fairly complete in the bible.

2. The Bible does however mention that time is relative. Which is impressive for a book written 2,000 years before Einstein:

“A day is as a thousand years, a thousand years is as a day.”

So the Bible itself tells you not to take the time listed in the Bible literally.

Except it refers to there being “day and night”, and besides even 17,000 years is still orders of magnitude off from what it should be.

3. Why must every generation have been written in the Bible? Is God really that verbose?

Apparently he is. It explicitly states that a certain person is the child of another person, and how long those people lived.

I was thinking about how people could possibly believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, when geologic evidence (irrefutable evidence collected for centuries) points to 4.5 billion years for the Earth, and astronomy has shown that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old.

If the universe and everything in it were only 6,000 years old, we would be unable to see any stars further away than 6,000 lightyears, because the light would not have reached us yet. This is clearly not the case.

If the Earth itself were only 6,000 years old, it would still be molten lava from the giant impact that formed the moon. Obviously this is not the case.

In any case, let’s ignore the evidence for a second and just apply some logic to the Bible.

1. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that the Earth is 6,000 years old. This number was invented by scholars who estimated the lifetimes of each generation mentioned in the Bible, adding, before that, 7 days to create the universe.

2. The Bible does however mention that time is relative. Which is impressive for a book written 2,000 years before Einstein:

“A day is as a thousand years, a thousand years is as a day.”

So the Bible itself tells you not to take the time listed in the Bible literally.

3. Why must every generation have been written in the Bible? Is God really that verbose?

Even an amateur author knows that there are times when it is wise to skip ahead in the plot. Has every generation of humans that ever lived done something worth mentioning? Isn’t it logical to assume that sometimes there was simply nothing worth mentioning, so God (or the writers who transcribed the Bible) simply skipped ahead?

Saying that the Earth is 6,000 years old is ultimately a sign of a lack of faith, not a confirmation of it. You are limiting your God to being a poor writer who blabs all day about irrelevancies. I doubt He appreciates the sentiment.

So the next time you see someone bring up the “the Earth is only 6,000 years old” crap, direct them to this post.

There is no gravity. The universe sucks.

BTW, Phil, why does clicking on an external link in the main story no longer open a new tab in Firefox?

The bird argument was pretty funny; and add that dead birds always fall while live birds choose, and you will have a humdinger argument for Intelligent Falling/Motion™.

@ The Tim:

Nuts

Still, it was pretty good. And the hilarious “Pet Owner Hierarchy” made up for any differences, before the Loon commenters did.

Madge! That made me spit my tea out. LOL

Birds? Really? Was that second article real or a joke. I read that and thought, ‘ok this has to be a joke because no one can be that uninformed.’

Are they kidding?????? They should burn aerospace engineers at the stake for witchcraft. Do they really think that magic or god is responsible for airplanes going from one place to another? This stuff is funny at first, then I just get angry. It is absolutely insane to want to teach our kids this garbage. I know they have their freedoms and that is great, but deep down I really wish we could prevent these people from reproducing. I am not a violent person at all, but if someone said to me ” If god is not controlling gravity then how do birds not fall of the sky when they are trying to fly?” I swear I might punch them right in the face. I’m sorry but I just had to get that out.

As a religious person myself, the notion that my sacred texts contain all truth is borderline laughable. To me, religion is about accepting truth no matter what the source of it is. Coincidentally that’s the same goal of science. So, I see no conflict between science and religion simply by understanding that my sacred texts are not the source of all truth.

True; I’ve already heard many a creationist say ““The theory of evolution doesn’t explain where the Big Bang comes from!”

Nuts, I even tried to search The Onion to see if they had already done a similar article, but that one didn’t come up in my search. Oh well.