Do you believe that the world is only a few thousand years old?

[TotallyBS]

A long time ago I saw the episode of Friends where Ross tried to convince Pheobe that dinosaurs walked on the earth milions of years ago and that the world was not created a few thousand years ago like it says in the Bible.

I thought nothing of it until recently where I saw videos of the US elections.. Basically, you had evangelical Republicans standing up and saying that the world is a few thousand years old. One politician was chairman of some science committee.

This is a genuine. question (I bet they all say that :) ) if this is what you believe then how does dinosaurs and cavemen bones fit into your beliefs?

I have a couple of books by AiG, which I bought after I was kicked off an HE email group for suggesting that the story of Adam and Eve might be allegorical rather than literal truth. it's actually very, very scary. All the writers are, apparently, qualified scientists from various disciplines and they present things in a whole load of scientific language complete with diagrams, graphs, charts, the whole kit and caboodle.

The really scary thing is that it is all so persuasive and believable and you could quite easily be swayed by it. The question of diamonds is actually addressed in one of the books. They talk about bubbles of helium (I think, but can't remember exactly) being trapped inside the crystals and being able to use that to date them as being only a few thousand years old.

I showed the book to my son, who is a materials chemist. his opinion was that it is a load of pseudo-science and psychobabble designed to draw in people who don't really understand actual science.

In a Gallup poll from 2012 46% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

That's scary.

I'm all for educating creationsists, but radiocarbon dating can not date things much older than about 50,000 years so it is not used to date dinosaur fossils.

Yes I do, but I happen to also believe that there was an old earth mentioned in the Bible which to me explains fossils, diamonds and dinosaurs

It's amazing what people will believe in the face of such evidence. Personally I think it is bananas to think the world is only a few thousand years old.

I am a Christian but don't believe the Earth is just a few thousand years old. I heard Prof Brian Cox interviewed on radio yesterday and he said that there was, in his view, no conflict between faith and science. He said that the laws of physics were so beautiful that it was not at all unreasonable to believe in a Creator being responsible for them. He did acknowledge that this is not his personal belief, though, but pointed out that a great many eminent scientists were also people of faith.

"carbon dating doesn't work for items since industrialistion."

That is not strictly true. It still works, but measurements need to be calibrated.

No. Because I am not stupid.

I thank you.

"but radiocarbon dating can not date things much older than about 50,000 years so it is not used to date dinosaur fossils"

You are right, the correct terminology is radiometric dating.

Still, the point is that there are elements whose half-lives are long enough that they can be used to determine time around the million-years range. And many dinosaur fossils and the rocks above and below them have been shown to be over a million years old. Not several thousand.

... which brings me to Sonatensatz's post:

"Yes I believe that the world is only a few thousand years old. Dinosaurs would have been created along with all the other animals and became extinct sometime in the post flood era."

And when was this post-flood era? Was it over a million years ago? Because that is how old many dinosaur bones we found are.

Can you tell us how you reconcile that with your belief that the world is only a few thousand years old?

Nope, it's an utterly bonkers notion.

And you can use uranium isotope dating for the really old stuff. It's jolly clever stuff.

No, I don't believe the world is a few thousand years old. No reason to.

But....to put the cat among the pigeons.....is it really so bad if people do think this? What harm can be done(except if they are scientists working in relevant fields)? What is actually 'scary' about the Gallup poll? Or is it more that this is an indicator of a wider worldview, or a wider way of reading the Bible? This may strike some of you as a bizarre question, but I'm interested in why this is such a big issue. What's at stake, do you think?

No, and I'm fairly religious.

DH is a creationist but not a young earth sort.

If the world really is only a few thousand years old then the Sumerians must've been incredibly clever to be writing cuneiform on clay tablets before they even existed. Same for the ancient Egyptians and hieroglyphs, of course.

Snorts- you have failed The God Club Membership Test!

holoferneshead- it is incredibly bad for humanity in general for people to accept anything uncritically,

I lol every time someone autocorrects Snorbs to Snorts...

I believe!!!!

Dinosaurs are Jesus ponies!

I find it scary because it demonstrates that large numbers of people are willing to put faith in front of fact, belief in front of knowledge, "what they feel in their heart" in front of evidence.

This mindset leads to a fundamental distrust of "science" as a whole. Science may well be an imperfect process but it's by far the best way we have so far come up with for understanding the world around us and the univese we inhabit.

Radiocarbon dating isn't something some scientist pulled out of his/her butt, there are good reasons for why it's believed to be accurate and is backed up by other evidence such as sedimentary records. Even if no-one came up with evolution as an idea in the 19th century, it would have inescapably revealed itself in the DNA analysis that became possible in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

How can you respect someone who so willingly ignores all that in favour of their own interpretation of a rag-tag collection of bronze- and iron-age documents of debateable origin and uncertain translation?

Essentially, how can you reason with someone who so willingly turns their back on reason?

"is it really so bad if people do think this (that earth is only a 1000s of years old)? What harm can be done?"

It is very bad and the harm is huge.

Possibly more so than anything else, this shows that these people are actually blinded by their religious dogma, to such an extent that they literally can't think properly.

If you know for a fact that there are fossils in the ground that are older than a million years, then you must understand that the Earth can't be just a few thousand years old. This is simple logic.

I don't really care which God people pray to and why, but this sort of thing shows that religion can be a big problem, literally preventing people from logical thought.