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Young or Old Earth?11-20>>   261-269>|


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emortis9Jan 23, 2007 10:11am
As Christians, which do you believe?

I guess it all depends if you take the Genesis literally of if you think it's a metaphor for evolution.

Inertial-MassJan 23, 2007 11:16am
Any theory that could in principle be ruled out by future scientific observations is a scientific theory and as such is not a proper object of belief.

Every falsifiable young-universe theory that I have seen is ruled out by observation, and the only currently viable cosmological theories are old-universe theories.

Even though I don't know of any viable, falsifiable young-universe cosmology, I do not believe in an old universe because no physical theory---young universe or old universe---should ever be believed as the true description of nature.

Your guess is not far from the mark. I believe that the Holy Spirit does not reveal truths that are subject to scientific testing. So I am not a literalist.

The scriptures no doubt contain many assertions amenable to scientific testing. Some of them have been discovered to be false assertions. None of them is part of what has been revealed. The metaphysical relationships among God, the physical universe, and man are revealed by the Holy Spirit in Genesis. So too are the truths about, good, evil, and free will. Every literal meaning, however, is important to understand in order to get to other meanings, and sometimes the literal meaning is the revelation itself---such as when Christ said, "Take this and eat it. This is my body, which will be given up for you. Do this in memory of me."---but not when the literal meaning is subject to falsification by scientific observation.

d-monkJan 23, 2007 1:32pm
It doesn't matter. What meaning does young or old have apart from someone who can observe it? We can talk about the earth being thousands of years old, millions of years old, or billions of years old, but those distinctions are meaningless when no subjective entities were here to observe and experience that time.

Time, like the earth itself, is created. God is not within or restricted by time and our journey within time is itself limited. It is one of the variables which helps define our created existence, but is meaningless apart from us.

The earth is as it was created to be. It was created for us and serves our experience of time.

Inertial-MassJan 23, 2007 1:52pm
3: d-monk wrote:
It doesn't matter. What meaning does young or old have apart from someone who can observe it? We can talk about the earth being thousands of years old, millions of years old, or billions of years old, but those distinctions are meaningless when no subjective entities were here to observe and experience that time.

There is a sense in which it doesn't matter. Moral problems face us in the present, not in the past.

But I should not go so far as you suggest. If one considers not just the earth, but the entire physical universe, then there may be a real sense in which we observe the past directly. For example, when you look at a star in the night sky, do you see the star as it is now or as it was when the light now hitting your eye left the surface of the star? How old is the image that you see? On a summer night in the northern hemisphere, one can see with the unaided eye a fuzzy patch, the Andromeda galaxy. Observations of variable stars in Andromeda suggest that Andromeda is more than a million light years away. The simplest interpretation of the scientific facts is that one sees Andromeda as it was more than a million years ago. Using a big telescope, it seems as though one can directly look at things that were taking place more than a billion years ago.

Granted, one cannot so directly look at the earth a billion years ago, but the earth is an integral part of the physical universe created by God.

d-monkJan 23, 2007 2:25pm
An interesting set of questions you raise I-M!

My point, in general, was that it would not seem to matter whether the earth and universe is young or old since, in my mind, no one has been around to observe it.

But you ask about that which we CAN observe, i.e., light from stars and galaxies millions or billions of light years away. This changes the import of what I said earlier. For now it would seem that my comment attempts to cast doubt on the science which claims that the light we are observing in our massive telescopes is indeed that old.

And another interesting question: What if some other observer exists in the universe right now who can observe light which travelled to its point of observation some million or billion light years away from earth? Now is the reality of an old earth suddenly more important?

Here is one of those confusing nodes where faith and science intersect. At this point, I believe that we are the only intelligent, self-conscious creatures in the universe. Yes, this is an extremely chauvenistic claim, but it is not inconsistent with my faith (Christian) and, to date, it is not inconsistent with scientific observation.

So, for now, it makes no difference to me whether the universe is old, or whether it is young but created to appear old (i.e., everything was set in place with light already having travelled most of the way to earth so that today's scientific observations would be what they are).

Does this make any sense? Or has my mind wandered over the edge and into absurdity?

Inertial-MassJan 23, 2007 2:45pm
5: Although I don't agree with everything that you suggest, you make a good deal of sense to me. Loads of sense, in fact. Most of my time recently, I've been the lone Christian in discussions in the Philosophy forum and in the Atheist/Agnostic forum. Much of that discussion is just hateful derision and ridicule of my views.

I certainly hope that humans are the only beings with spiritual souls in the universe, but I have to admit the (unfortunate) possibility that we are not alone. I can go into my reasoning on this, if you wish.

Anyway, no scientific theory can ever be proved true, but the only theories that haven't been ruled out suggest that the universe is billions of years old. Moreover, Christianity presents no obstacle to entertaining the idea of an old universe (with an old earth in it). Christianity doesn't even present an obstacle to the idea that the human body is the product of evolution, so long as we firmly recognize that the human soul could not have evolved.

d-monkJan 23, 2007 3:08pm
I-M:

I agree with what you say. As a younger Christian, I used to hold tightly to the idea of literal creationism. But I have come to understand that such an understanding of the world is not necessary. I can embrace evolution, but only so far as it acknowledges the Creator's design or "hand in the process."

I also love science--especially physics. And I am definitely able to accept the premise that the universe may be very old indeed. But the philosopher/theologian in me also questions whether that incredible passage of time has any real meaning absent an intelligent observer. What does time mean if no one is there to experience it?

Thanks for your thoughts and comments! It is fun to find areas of agreement on these boards once in a while.
634055Jan 23, 2007 7:00pm
For as a Christian - God created everything that is seen and unseen.

An account is given as to how that possibly happened throughout the Bible (mainly from Genesis, but later scriptures can also find out how God created the universe).

For a Christian - we should all understand that God did indeed create the universe and everything as we know now, and will know later.

I have not studied Genesis much, and I should do later - to gain a futher understanding of creation, like all Bible study you must consider several things - ie who wrote it, when, for what purpose (and several others which were either indirectly related or directly related to the scripture).

To our understanding, creation would be fairly accurate at a glance, but I believe that it is something much more complex than what our simple definition of creation limits it to - and I believe that with other things, we will never come to a full understanding of things such as creation until we meet the Creator (God) himself.

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TS-guyJan 23, 2007 8:56pm
leave religion to religion and science to science. science can not determine good or evil, moral or not. religion can not determine the age of the universe.

d-monkJan 24, 2007 5:39am
9 - Perhaps science cannot be informed by religion (due to the limitations of its methods), but there is no reason for religion not to be informed by science. After all, religion is one of the paths human persons use to seek out truth.


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