Note the following from the Wikipedia

All of the dating methods used by naturalists are based on assumptions about past conditions that they are unable to prove. I used the C14 dating as an example because it is so easy to illustrate. Some call this pseudo-science, others call it historical science because it does not involve observable processes that can be repeated like operational science, which deals with the present, does. I could go right down the list and discuss the assumptions involved with each dating method and the differences in philosophy between naturalists and creationists but I don't have the time of patience to bother with it - at least not now. It isn't top secret information. Anyone that subscribes to creationist journals, including Adventist ones, probably already knows what I am referring to.

Few creationists consider the idea of God creating rocks with both parent and daughter elements in them as making the Earth look old. It is not God's fault that naturalists one day would come up with the idea that they could date His creation by the quantities of parent and daughter elements in rocks. God didn't come up with the dating methods - imperfect man did. So when imperfect man's methods of dating produce errornous results, man cannot blame God for somehow fooling him by making things look old. Now if God would have told us how to date rocks, we follow His instructions and still get errornous results, then yes, we could blame God. But that is not the case.



Creationists are not stupid. They have PhDs too. They understand the issues involved. They simply do not accept the naturalist assumptions. Which is actually healthy for academics. More schools should be teaching philosophy of religion and science so that students are taught HOW to think and not WHAT to think.

Now it is true that naturalists believe that we need millions of years for evolution and the creationist believes we only need thousands. Again, they are operating off from different assumptions. The creationist, for example, believe that all the different types of dogs we see today all had a common ancestor - two of which went onto the ark. The descendants of those dogs had multiple mutations which produced the vast variety we see today.

So what assumptions are different? The creationist believes that all the genetic information for all these different breads of dogs was already in the common ancestors' genes. It was only a matter of the decedents' mutations to occur to enable it to adapt to a given environment. If the genetic information was already there, it doesn't take millions of years.

The naturalist believes that mutations have happened that actually added genetic information. It may take millions of years or perhaps be completely impossible for a panda to develop a thumb if it doesn't already have the genetic information in its DNA. However it wouldn't take that long for the panda to develop a thumb and his distant cousin a different feature if that information had been in their common ancestor's DNA.

Different assumptions, different conclusions, different philosophies.

I actually agree with Shane on this point. The point that one of the philosophies better meets Occam's Razor than the other is probably where bevin's perspective diverges.

William of Ockham

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

And the earth appeared flat until more information was discovered. If the Word of God had been believed from the beginning, the lack of evidence wouldn't have reached the point where wrong appeared to be right.

"It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" Isaiah 40:22 KJV

"Your kindness to the wicked does not make them do good. Although others do right, the wicked keep doing wrong and take no notice of the Lord’s majesty." Isaiah 26:10
NLT
Regards!!

[quote=bevin]

And the Person Who has been there the longest and witnessed the most ought to be believed.

"The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them." Deut 33:27 KJV

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.... And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament.... And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. " Gen 1:1,5,7,8
ASV etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
Regards!!

I coudn't pursue the link this evening because of the ISP I'm using, but having seen it a couple of days ago I'm satisfied the person who created it was trying to praise God for Who He is. It appears some others have totally missed the point and choose to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

TRUTH is and all the explanations for or against won't change the reality. Hope you keep Him in your eyesight, Pam, and don't allow the human propensity to make what is simple, difficult to see, become a problem for seeing the TRUTH.

"Jesus said to him, "I am the....truth,...no one comes to the Father but through Me." John 14:4 NASB

"He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day." John 12:48 NKJV
Blessings!!

Agreed. But that is not the important issue.

The important issue is that widely different methods that depend of very independent assumptions agree with each other.

C14, thermoluminesence, ice cores, tree rings, and astronomy ALL provide ways of dating back around 10,000 years. Why did God make a world where these dates clearly contradict a literal reading of the Bible?

Radiological, continental drift, genetic drift (fossils) and meteor impacts ALL provide ways of dating back millions of years and show a world with large animals in it way back then. Why did God make a world where these dates clearly contradict a literal reading of the Bible?

Short-Age Creationists require God to have created a huge deception.

/Bevin

Thanks! That was terrific!

I was watching the news yesterday, it a segment of it was on the anniversary of the American landing on the moon. One of those astronauts who saw the immensity and complexity of the universe from the moon that came to the conclusion that there must be a Designer somewhere.

Common sense tells me, no way that what I see came to be by themselves out of nothing.

Gerry

Common sense tells us lots of things that aren't true

It has taken science hundreds of years to correct lots of common sense "facts"

/Bevin