Evolution???

Question

Does anyone here believe that the universe is not billions of years old because of what the bible says?

Do you therefore believe that the earth is in the center of the universe and the sun and planets revolve around it because the bible says that to?

I am a Christian, Steven Hawking fan, and doing a Galileo project. Thats why I'm asking.

The bible says that it was 24 hours (or a day and night). And it doesnt make sense to accept 7 days as a metaphor and not the creation story.

Please realize that i DO accept the creation story as a metaphor and DO believe the universe is billions of years old!

Answer 1

I agree with your train of thought. I am a devout Christian, but also a believer in rational thought. Evolution did and is occuring. But, I believe that all of this has been guided by the hand of God.

Answer 2

No. I have to maintain the belief that man's fall caused the fall of the world (in our lingo, universe), and that all the universe has suffered futility for this. This is biblical doctrine, and without it, the whole edifice of Christianity falls in on itself.

However, I also have to acknowledge what I see. We have light from stars that traveled millions of years to get here. There is the uniform background radiation in the universe lending credence to the billions of years old argument. I also know that life has been here for a long time (some of our trees older than the biblical age of things).

In the end, I have to reconcile the two poles, but I have no easy way. One thing that does comfort me is that when we talk about the age of the universe as being a certain age, we may be talking nonsense. We know that time is affected by speed and gravity; it can be slowed down. We may well have different parts of the universe with radically different ages.

Then there's the unknowns. We may have a complete false model. There's a lot of things we guess at or "know" that we don't really know. For instance, I have a giant "?" over how soft tissue could survive in a dinosaur bone all these years. That seems flat-out implausible.

Lastly, there's the fact that the biblical account mixes literal and allegorical elements, and thus, it is very flexible.

In the end, I believe in a very real Garden, Adam and Eve, and Fall. I do believe this infected the universe, but I also know that the laws of nature we have we don't understand, so we can't understand what we can't test. It's possible that time progressed at different states and when they were banished, time had passed at different intervals.

This, obviously, paves the way for extinctions. Evolution, OTOH, is even more sticky, because of its philosophical implications (it blurs the line in what God had created as classifications). However, if it occurred, it was not natural, but God taking one thing and making it another. Organisms cannot naturally transform into one another without all sorts of road blocks in the way (a benefit from the ID arguments is their irreducible complexity).

Now, mind you, I haven't studied science per se, just philosophy and religion. I could be wrong on a number of things, but I also have to caution that science presupposes a lot in our models. How much of the evidence are we looking at? And given that, how reliable are our postulates? It's a difficult issue, one that isn't easy to resolve :(.

Answer 3

The Bible says it took God a week ( 6 days and one to rest...) to build the Universe. Ok, sure, but how long is a week for a god? It's got to be billions of years for us mere mortals! So yes I believe that the universe is billions of years old, but I also believe it was created by God.... I believe in Evolution as Scientific fact, I just think that a higher power probably a hand in it.

Answer 4

I thought we got past that before the turn of the 20th century... The universe has PROOF of being billions of years old. The thing is, it is not merely theoretical proof, but instead, it is CONCRETE proof. The bible says that the earth and man were created in six days, but people need to understand that most of the things that were written in the bible were not concrete literal meanings. By the 21st century, we should already be past this stuff. There are other things that people have differences in when the subject comes to personal beliefs that are much more relevant.

Answer 5

In fact, about 10% of the intelligent design people also believe the world is flat.

That really is okay if you think about it. Most people are not impacted on a daily basis by a round Earth. You can fight over trivia when you feel salvation is life or death and science is not really important at the moment. They fail to make the connection between the impact on drug development and so forth and teaching falsehoods though ones they believe are true.

Answer 6

I hope you mention in your Galileo project how poor old Galileo was tortured when he was an old man by the Christian church until he actually recanted his theory that the earth was round-- not flat ,immovable and standing on pillars as it states in the Bible(1 Samuel 2:8)

Answer 7

The world was created in 7 days, yet these 7 days did not last 24 hour each but muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch longer.
Due to relativity concept, I am always the center of MY Universe.

Answer 8

First, evolution is a theory, a lousy one at that.So, I will tell you my theory. The bible says that "a day is like unto a thousand years to the Lord". Meaning to me, that He can do a thousand years worth of work in one day. I believe He created everything in its adult form,like Adam and Eve. If I created a man just now, how old is he? Teens? Twentys? See what I mean? What about a tree or a mountain? Couldn't I just create a big old mountain and it be a billion years old when I create it? I believe the bible is a hundred percent accurate, that it can be supported by science,archeology, history and most surprising...prophesy, where it has never erred in predicting the future. Trust it,trust God...the rest we will find out later.

Answer 9

LOL ! can you tell us what evolution has to do with the age of the Earth and the universe ?

Answer 10

well im an atheist who believes the world is around 4.5 billion years old, and the universe is much, much older.