young earth christians and non young earth christians - have you ever debated with each other over earth's age

Question

if so, what was the outcome. did you raise valid points that made the other side say "oh, you might be on to something there" if so, what were those points?

Answer 1

One tried to argue with me and gave some wrongly interpreted theory about helium production in the atmosphere, and even wrongly interpreted, the earth would be nearly a million years old rather than 6000.

Answer 2

Yes there is definitely a debate, I have argued both sides but mainly the young earth side, I haven't actually argued with an 'old earth' christian but I have argued with many evolutionists - phew that's out of the way.
Old earth might argue: the light from certain stars has taken maybe millions of years to reach us, therefore the stars are millions of years old so the earth is likely of a similar age.
6 Day creation but we don't know how long a day is? It could be a thousand maybe a million years?
The order of creation outlined in the bible i.e sun & moon then plants then animals matches the evolutionary order if we take timescale out of the equation with man as the last creation (the pinnacle of evolution they might argue)
But God is all powerful so He could have created everything in a literal 6 days.
That would make sense as an example of work a 6 day week and rest on the 7th day.
Distant stars could have just been put there to seem as if they had been around forever.
The main point is that evolution demands much death and suffering along the way until eventual improvements in an organism are arrived at.
This is at odds with the Genesis account because death only entered God's perfect creation once sin had entered and sin entered after everthing - note everything had been made.
God never intended us to sin, but he foresaw it as the inevitable result of our free-will, if he hadn't given us free-will then we would be robots. He wanted to create us.

Answer 3

I've never debated the subject but would be interested in knowing a forum for doing so.I happen to be of the "non young earth" variety and would enjoy the opportunity to have an indepth discussion about it.I believe that I have found some interesting and valid points in my studies that are very relevant for a true understanding of our world and our Father's word.I have no doubts and no problem saying that the Earth is millions of years old and from my studies know that this does not contradict the Biblical account.

Answer 4

I have only had a few conversations with an old earth believer or two. We did not change each others mind in that one conversation. I have to point out that the old earth'ers way to use scripture is to often not use the immediate context of it and use an interpretation and not really just accept the basic meaning of words and passages which if they did to the rest of the Bible there wouldn't be much left to believe. "yes it does say that but that's not what it means" is a common saying with old earth'ers. Not good hermeneutics at all.

Answer 5

Strangely enough, I have never actually debated over that issue.

However, I have read that the earth was created with the appearance of age, just as Adam was not created an infant, but was created an adult - ie, when he was brand spanking new, he had the appearance of age (and the intelligence that comes with it, as though he actually had lived that long.)

Carbon dating? That is accurate to within about 6,000 to 8,000 years. One example of the folly of using carbon dating was an incident in which a LIVING mullusk - not one that had been dug up, but still alive - was carbon dated to about a million years!

Another way of looking at this:
We all know that the rate of age is greatest at the onset (look at a baby, for instance).

An experiment was done to determine the average age of a high school student. You can try this yourself. You'll be amused at the results.

The average height of a high school student was recorded (I believe it was recorded as being about 55 inches tall?), and over 4 years in high school, the rate of growth was recorded (something like 1.5 inches per year, I believe?). When calculated with those figures, it was concluded that the average high school student was about 82 years old!!!

They were concerned about the results, so they took a different approach, and used the weight and weight gain as measurements. Surprisingly, they, again, calculated that the average high school student was in their early 80's!

Now, if you take the current rate of carbon decay in an object, or by whatever other means you use to calculate the age of the earth, you will discover (like the studies done on the high school students), that the age of the earth is rather old!

If you take into account that the greatest growth is at the beginning, and the rate of growth decreases with time, and you include those factors in your calculations, you will see that the average high school student is much younger. So is the earth.

Answer 6

Gee, I just got finished visiting the Young Earth Creationist site and I want to say that one piece of pottery does not make man existing with dinosaurs theory right! The potter is clean and easy to see around the area of the man fighting with the dinosaur, which is washed out by light and very hard to define. So as proof goes... this is a very bad example.
Plus why isn't there more written evidence in the Bible to support this "idea"? Something like, "today we hunted and we brought back a T-Rex and it tasted like chicken!"

Sorry, this leap of faith is too far and it doesn't rest on strong empirical data!

Answer 7

I usually avoid the subject, simply because I'll be the first to say I'm not all that knowledgeable about it. I can point to the scientific answer but don't have much basis to defend it. Usually if I see a young earth creationist on here that I can't argue with, I'll argue from a biblical perspective and then email one of my more scientific contacts and tell them to go answer it scientifically.

Answer 8

That sort of debate seems to put people into two camps: those who take the Bible literally and those who take it seriously. Probably right that young people would get more out of it than those more hardened in their perspectives.

Macro-evolution can never be scientifically proven; that's why it's a theory and not a law. But it's a widely accepted theory and as close to truth as we're likely to get. (Actually, I suppose God could scientifically prove macro-evolution. That'd be ironic.)

Answer 9

I was in the same room as a young earth christian girl. We didn't discuss this issue for more than a minute alone together in the room before starting to f...

Answer 10

- non young earth...

I put them on the rack and that ended the debate... Sorry, it's Friday and I feel ornery. ;-)

I never really had the chance to debate anyone about it. I've gotten into discussions on literal versus non-literal approaches to the bible but it never really got anywhere.