Christianity continued....

I agree that people will find loop holes and will go as far as to make them up. But I also feel that I am knowledgeable enough with the questions that I have answered, so that if someone were to "make up" something and present it, I would be able to defend what I am saying and show the flaws in their argument. 

If I stick true to what the Bible says, and base my answers on the Bible and what God/Jesus said/did, then I am not worried about people trying to find something to prove me wrong; because the Bible is all truth.

You have most definitely not discouraged me at all. And I will even say that you have helped me in the fact that if nobody said what you have said, then I would not know why barely anybody posts in here haha so I appreciate your comments.

Very confusing.  All you asked for was a measurement of time.  I would like to hear the answer as well.

I am actually going to mention my stance on dinosaurs first, as it will provide a decent segway into talking about my stance on the age of the earth.

The topic of dinosaurs in the Bible is actually part of a larger ongoing debate within the Christian community over the age of the earth, the proper interpretation of Genesis, and how to interpret the physical evidences we find all around us. Those who believe in an older age for the earth tend to agree that the Bible does not mention dinosaurs, because, according to their paradigm, dinosaurs died out millions of years before the first man ever walked the earth.

Those who believe in a younger age for the earth tend to agree that the Bible does mention dinosaurs, though it never actually uses the word "dinosaur." Instead, it uses the Hebrew word tanniyn, which is translated a few different ways ("sea-monster" or "serpent"). These creatures are mentioned nearly thirty times in the Old Testament and were found both on land and in the water.

Nearly every ancient civilization has some sort of art depicting giant reptilian creatures. In addition to the substantial amount of anthropic and historical evidences for the coexistence of dinosaurs and man (I could give examples, but im trying to shorten my answer haha), there are physical evidences, which I also have examples of, but will stop here unless you would like some examples.

So, are there dinosaurs in the Bible? The matter is far from settled. It depends on how you interpret the available evidences and how you view the world around you. I personally believe that dinosaurs existed, but ultimately, it neither benefits nor hinders my belief as a Christian.

There are 2 primary sides to this question:

1) Young earth proponents (Biblical age of the earth and universe of about 6000 years).

2) Old earth proponents (secular age of the earth of about 4.5 billion years and a universe about 14 billion years old).

I am going to give a little history of where these two basic views came from and which worldview is more reasonable.

Simply put, it came from the Bible. Of course, the Bible doesn't specifically say the earth is 6000 years old. Good thing it doesn't; otherwise it would be out of date the following year haha. But we wouldn't expect an all-knowing God to make that kind of mistake, would we.

God gave us something better. In essence, He gave us a "birth certificate." For example, using my personal birth certificate, I can calculate how old I am at any point. It is similar with the earth. Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of creation. From there, we can begin calculations for the age of the earth. The genealogies listed in Genesis provide the age at which Adam and his descendants each fathered the next generation in a successive ancestral line from Adam to Abraham. By determining where Abraham fits into history chronologically, it becomes apparent that the Bible teaches the earth to be about 6000 years old, give or take a few hundred years.

Quite a few people have done this calculation and, with careful attention to the biblical details, have arrived at the same time-frame of about 6000 years (4000 B.C.). Two of the most popular are a recent work by Dr. Floyd Jones (1993) and a much earlier book by Archbishop James Ussher (1658); both of which calculated the age of the earth at 4004 B.C. Jones gives a listing of several chronologists who have undertaken the task of calculating the age of the earth based on the Bible; and their calculations range from 5501-3836 B.C. 

Cultures throughout the world have kept track of history as well. From a biblical perspective, we would expect the dates given for creation of the earth to align much closer to the biblical date than billions of years. This is expected since everyone descended from Noah after the Flood and scattered from the Tower of Babel. Another expectation is that there should be some discrepancies among the age of the earth as people scattered throughout the world, taking their uninspired records or oral history to different parts of the globe.

Dr. William Hales lists an accumulation of dates of creation from many cultures and in most cases Hales says which authority gave the date. Some of these cultures (names of the culture in parenthesis, followed by the age calculation) include: Spain (Spain by Alfonso X, 6484-6984), India (5369-6204), Babylon (6158), Chinese (6157), Greece (Greece by Diogenes Laertius, 6138), Egypt (6081), and Persia (5507).

These were not the only ones. Historian Bill Cooper's research provides intriguing dates from several ancient cultures. The first is that of the Anglo-Saxons, whose history has 5200 years from creation to Christ. Cooper's research also indicated that Nennius' record of the ancient British history has 5228 years from creation to Christ. The Irish chronology has a date of about 4000 B.C. for creation. Even the Mayans had a date for the Flood of 3113 B.C.

This meticulous work of many historians should not be ignored. Their dates of only thousands of years are good support for the biblical date of about 6000 years, but not for billions of years.

1) Genesis is history, not poetry, parable, prophetic vision, or mythology. This is seen in the Hebrew verbs used in Genesis 1, the fact that Genesis 1-11 has the same characteristics of historical narrative as in Genesis 12-50, most of Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, 1 and 2 Kings, etc., and the way the other biblical authors and Jesus treat Genesis 1-11 (as literal history).

2) The very dominant meaning of yom in the OT is a literal day, and the context of Genesis 1 confirms that meaning there. It is repeatedly used with a number (one day, second day, etc.) and with evening and morning, which elsewhere in the OT always means a literal day.

3) The order of creation in Genesis 1 contradicts the order of events in the evolution story in at least 30 points. For example, the Bible says the earth was created before the sun and stars, and that fruit trees were created before any sea creatures; both of which are exactly the opposite of the evolution story. The Bible says the earth was covered completely with water before dry land appeared, and then it was covered again at the Flood. Evolution theory says the earth has never been covered with a global ocean, and dry land existed before the first seas.

4) Exodus 20 resists all attempts to add millions of years anywhere in or before Genesis 1 as it says that God created everything in six days. The day-age view is ruled out because the plural form of the Hebrew word for day (yom) is used in both parts of the commandment. The days of the Jewish work-week are the same as the days for Creation Week. God could have used several other words or phrases if He meant to say "work six days because I created in six long, indefinite periods." But He didn't. These verses also rule out the gap theory or any attempt to add millions of years before Genesis 1:1 because God says He created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them during the six days described in Genesis 1.

5) Jesus' comments show that He clearly took the events recorded in Genesis as literal history, just as did all the NT writers. Several passages show Jesus believed that man was created at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning (as al old-earth views imply), which confirms the young-earth creationist view.

6) The Bible teaches that there was no animal or human death before the Fall of Adam and Eve. So the geological record of rock layers and fossils could not have been millions of years before the Fall.

7) The nature of God as revealed in Scripture rules out the idea that He created over millions of years.

8) The global catastrophic Flood of Noah was responsible for producing most (but not all) of the geological record of rock layers and fossils. It is most unreasonable to believe in a global, year-long Flood that left no geological evidence. The global evidence of sedimentary rock layers filled with land and marine fossils is exactly the kind of evidence we would expect from Noah's Flood. If most of the rock record is the evidence of the Flood, then there really is no geological evidence for millions of years.

Two of the points above (#6 and #7) require further explanation because they are so important and are overlooked or resisted by nearly all who have advocated the acceptance of millions of years.

Death before the Fall:

Simply put, the evolutionary idea of millions of years is completely opposed to the Bible's teaching about death. Evolution says that during the course of millions of years, death, bloodshed, suffering, disease, and extinction eventually led to man's existence. So when evolutionists talk about millions of years, they are not merely referring to a large number. They are imagining a long period of history in which certain events took place.

The fossils, which the evolutionists say represent millions of years of history, are a record not of life, but of death. And in many places around the world we see evidence of massive and violent carnage in fossil graveyards containing millions of former living creatures packed in high concentrations.

But the biblical teaching on death is very clear and consistent from Genesis to Revelation. There is so much I could expand on this topic, but I will sum it up (and if need be, explain it later in full detail). When Adam and Eve sinned, death and corruption entered the world. The whole earth was cursed again at Noah's Flood (Genesis 8:22). All of creation now groans in bondage to corruption, waiting for the final act in the redemption of Christians - giving them immortal resurrected bodies (Romans 8:19-25). When that redemptive event happens, we will see the restoration and redemption of all things (Acts 3:21, Col 1:20). To accept millions of years of animal death before the Creation and Fall of man contradicts and destroys not only the Bible's teaching on death but also undermines its teaching on the full redemptive work of Christ.

If God cursed the earth with thorns after Adam sinned (as Genesis 3:18 says, "both thorns and thistles is shall grow for you"), then why do we find fossil thorns in rocks that the evolutionists claim are about 350 million years old? If the millions of years are true, then God lied. If Genesis 3:18 is true, then evolution claims about millions of years are a lie. Were arthritis and cancer in the "very good" world before man sinned? If the evolutionists' dating methods are correct, the answer must be "yes." Many kinds of disease have been found in the fossil record, including arthritis and tumors in dinosaur bones dated to be 110 million years old. If the Bible is true, then those dates are false and there was no pre-Fall death and disease.

Evolutionists believe that over the course of a half billion years there were five major extinction events/periods, when 65-90% of all species living at those particular times went extinct. If this was the way the creation was for millions of years, then what impact on the creation did the Fall have? None. Contrary to what the Bible says, the Fall would have only caused spiritual death in man. We have never seen in human history the kind of mass-kill, extinction events that the evolutionary geologists say occurred before man came into existence (unless, that is, we accept the global Flood of Noah's day, but that is the very event that old-earth proponents reject). So, if the millions of years really happened, then the Fall actually improved the world from what it was in the "very good" pre-Fall creation, and would actually be a "blessing," which is absolutely absurd.

I conclude here then that if the Bible's teaching on death, the Curse and the final redemptive work of Christ is true, as it surely is, then the millions-of-years idea must be a grand myth, really a lie. Conversely, if the millions of years really happened, then the Bible's teaching on these subjects must be utterly false, which is devastating for the gospel.

The Nature of God:

Closely related to this issue of death is the incompatibility of the idea of millions of years with the character of God, as revealed in Scripture.

God spoke and things immediately came into existence, as both Genesis 1 and Psalm 33 state. It is difficult to imagine how God could say "let there be light" and then need to wait millions of years for light to appear. These facts support the conclusion that all the other divine acts in Genesis 1 were essentially instantaneous or occurred in a miraculously short period of time. Conversely, there is nothing in the text that indicates that thousands or millions of years would have been required for God to accomplish His objective in each act of creation.

If the gap theory is true, then what kind of God is it who would create the earth and all forms of life, except man, and let them live and die for millions of years and then destroy them all (in a supposed flood associated with Satan's fall) before He recreated the world with creatures very similar to the ones He had already destroyed?

If the day-age view or framework hypothesis or any other old-earth view is true, then what kind of God is it who would create the world instantly and then leave it covered with water for millions of years and then create dry land and plants and let them produce for millions of years before He made the sun? And what kind of God would make the sun, moon, and stars with the purpose of enabling man to measure the passage of time, but then wait billions of years before He made man to measure time periods? That makes God out to be quite foolish.

Or if we reject the order of events in Genesis 1 and say that the evolutionary order of appearance of the different creatures and the time-scale are correct, we have other theological problems. What kind of God would create the earth 4.5 billion years ago and let it exist for one billion years before He made the first microscopic creatures and then wait another 2.875 billion years before He made the first metazoans and then waited another 625 million years before He made Adam, who was the ultimate goal of His creation and was made to rule over all the animals, most of whom lived and died before Adam was created? This is a bizarre, wasteful God, and nothing like the wise and omnipotent Creator revealed in Scripture.

And if God really created in the order and over the long time-scales that evolutionists claim, does this not make God a deceiver and a liar or at least a very incompetent communicator when He inspired Moses to write the Genesis 1 account of the order of His creative acts, which is so contradictory to the evolutionary order of events of history? Furthermore, could the God of Scripture really describe as "very good" a fossil graveyard of thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks covering the whole earth containing billions of fossils of former living things? Could He really call cancer (as seen in dinosaurs bones) "very good?" If God called all this death "very good" and if God told Adam that thorns were a consequence of his sin when in fact they existed long before he was created, then again God lied or He is totally incompetent in His use of language. But the biblical God is the God of truth, and as the Author of all language He is fully capable of saying exactly what He means. The acceptance of millions of years is an assault on the character of Almighty God.

Only young-earth creationism gives us a view that is consistent with the glory, wisdom, power, holiness, truthfulness, and omnipotent intelligence of the God revealed through the pages of Scripture.

-Even with the evidence for the Bible's view of a young earth, the old-earth perspective has dominated the public schools, in the major academic centers, and in the popular media for generations. It is no wonder then that most scientists share the old-earth perspective. It's all they were taught growing up in school and ultimately at the universities where they got their degrees. But more and more scientists are confronting a growing body of evidence which challenges the old-earth paradigm, causing dissension among some of the scientific community, and their numbers are growing.

Now this is not to say that everyone who examines these evidences will reject the old-earth perspective. But the fact remains that a growing number of professionally trained scientists are accepting a young-earth perspective as being at least scientifically plausible, if not compelling. Here are a few of the relevant evidences (outside of the Bible) for consideration:

1) Continental Erosion and Fossil Remains: The continents are eroding at such a rate that, if not for tectonic uplift, meteoric dusting and volcanic influx, they would erode flat (Mt Everest and all) in less than 25 million years. At this rate, high-altitude, million-year-old fossils should have long since eroded away. And yet they remain. The implication is that these fossils are not millions of years old. If this were true, the entire geologic column would need serious revision.

The "fossil record" refers to the total number of fossils that have been discovered, as well as to the information derived from them. The problem is that paleontologists interpret the fossil record in the terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory, which is not a surprise considering the starting point. Creationists, on the other hand, ascribe to the biblical account of creation. How, then, do creationists interpret the fossil record?

To answer this question, we need to begin with the premise that it is impossible for the Bible to contradict true science as God is the author of both. When a fallible human scientist's interpretation of a finding does not correspond with the clear teaching of the biblical texts, we should never reinterpret the Bible, and God's written Word is the final authority in all matters that it addresses. Yet that is what people have been doing for far too long - reinterpreting Scripture to accommodate scientific findings.

Clearly, the many contributions made by the scientific community are staggering indeed. In one way or another everyone undeniably has benefited from their research and technological discoveries. However, the fields of paleontology and fossilology are highly prone to error. For example, the Coelacanth was declared extinct for about 70 million years; this fish was thought by scientists to have been the fish that first walked out of the ocean on its way to becoming the ascendant of modern man. But a fisherman caught one off the island of Madagascar in 1938. No lungs, no legs. Many evolutionists believed the reason  this fish disappeared from the fossil record is because they evolved into land-dwelling tetrapods. And here they are, still swimming in and around the Indian Ocean. No lungs, no legs. Yet how many fossils were dated to be roughly 70 million years old simply because their fossilized remains were found in the same strata as the fossilized remains of the "70 million-year-old" coelacanth. This is one example why using the geologic timescale to date the age of the earth does not work.

Next, recall the "Nebraska Man" debacle. In the early 1920s a scientist found one single tooth from which he was, amazingly, able to draw an entire picture of what this particular "ape-man" looked like. The scientific community was ecstatic. In fact, this tooth was used in the 1925 Scopes trial as proof for human evolution. Two years later, however, other parts of this very same skeleton were found. It was determined that "Nebraska Man" was actually an extinct wild pig.

The vast majority of these discoveries come from a worldview that excludes God, the author, creator, and sustainer of life. The truth is that our vast fossil record is and always has been compatible with the global flood which God used to send judgment on the Earth. The flood was a violent geologic upheaval with enormous destructive power that not only destroyed all land-dwelling, air-breathing life but also changed the landscape of the entire planet. And the tens of millions of marine fossils found inland on practically every continent certainly dispels the notion of this deluge being "local," as some have argued.

2) Subterranean Fluid Pressure: When a drill rig strikes oil, the oil sometimes gushes out in huge fountains. This is because the oil is often under huge amounts of pressure from the sheer weight of the rock sitting on top of it. The problem is that the rock above many pressurized subterranean fluid deposits is relatively permeable. The pressure should escape in less than 100,000 years. Yet these deposits remain highly pressurized. Once again, because of the supposed antiquity of these deposits and their location throughout the geologic column, this observation calls into question some of the interpretations which have led to the formulation of the column.

3) Lunar Recession: The rotation of the earth is gradually slowing down at about 0.00002 seconds a year, due to tidal friction and other factors. The lost energy is transferred to the moon. The moon, therefore, is slowly moving away from the earth at about 4 centimeters a year. This would put the moon in contact with the earth less than 2 billion years ago. Yet, if the moon were closer than about 11,500 miles, the moon would be broken into tiny pieces, much as the rings of Saturn.

4) The Shrinking Sun: Since 1836, observations of the sun indicate it is shrinking about five feet an hour. Studies show this has been true for at least 400 years. At this rate, 100,000 years ago the sun would be twice as large as it is today. Twenty million years ago the sun would have touched earth.

5) The Moon's Dust: Interplanetary dust and meteors is depositing dust on the moon at the rate of at least 14,300,000 tons per year. At this rate, if the moon were 4.5 billion years old there would be at least 440 feet of dust on the moon. The astronauts, however, found a layer only 1/8 to three inches thick. Three inches would take only 8000 years. Even evolutionists believe the moon is the same age as the earth, giving the earth's age as only 8000 years.

6) The Magnetic Field: The earth has a magnetic field that is constantly decreasing due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The half-life of the magnetic field is 1400 years. Only 2800 years ago the magnetic field would be four times as strong as it is now. Only 10,000 years ago the magnetic field would be as strong as a magnetic star and be a nuclear power source as the sun. For this reason the earth could not be more than 10,000 years old.

7) The Missing Helium: Helium is generated as radioactive uranium decays. This is known as radiogenic helium, and is the primary source of helium in the earth's atmosphere. If the earth were really 4.5 billion years old as claimed by evolutionists, the atmosphere would be saturated with this helium. But it isn't. Where did it go? It can't escape to space. The simple answer, of course, is that the earth isn't really that old.

-Creationists admit that they can't prove the age of the earth using a particular scientific method. They realize that all science is tentative because we do not have all the data, especially when dealing with the past. This is true of both creationist and evolutionist scientific arguments - evolutionists have had to abandon many 'proofs' for evolution as well. For example, the atheistic evolutionist W.B. Provine admits: 'Most of what I learned of the field in graduate (1964-68) school is either wrong or significantly changed.' Creationists ultimately date the earth using the chronology of the Bible. This is because they believe that this is an accurate eyewitness account of world history, which can be shown to be consistent with much data.

Prior to the 1700s, few believed in an old earth. Recently, however, opponents of the biblical chronology essentially left God out of the picture. The idea of millions of years really took hold in geology when men like Abraham Werner, James Hutton, William Smith, Georges Cuvier, and Charles Lyell used their interpretations of geology as the standard, rather than the Bible.

From these men and others came the consensus view that the geologic layers were laid down slowly over long periods of time based on the rates we see them accumulating today. This viewpoint is called naturalistic uniformitarianism, and would exclude any major catastrophes like Noah's Flood. 

Thinking biblically, we can see that the global Flood in Genesis 6-8 would wipe away the concept of millions of years, for this Flood would explain massive amounts of fossil layers. Many fail to realize that if there was a global Flood, it would rip up many of the previous rock layers and redeposit them elsewhere, destroying the previous fragile contents. This would destroy any evidence of alleged millions of years anyway. So the rock layers can theoretically represent the evidence of either millions of years or a global Flood, but not both.

With the development of radiometric dating in the early 20th century, the age of the earth expanded radically, giving the earth an age of 1.6 billion years. Since then, the supposed age of the earth has expanded to its present estimate of about 4.5 billion years (and about 14 billion years for the universe). But there is growing scientific evidence that radiometric dating methods are completely unreliable.

Radiometric Dating: is a method which scientists use to determine the age of various specimens, mainly inorganic matter (rocks, etc.), though there is one radiometric dating technique, radiocarbon dating, which is used to date organic specimens.

This is how it works. Basically, scientists take advantage of a natural process by which unstable radioactive "parent" isotopes decay into stable "daughter" isotopes spontaneously over time. Uranium-238 (U238)(the "parent"), for example, is an unstable radioactive isotope which decays into Lead-206 (Pb206)(the "daughter") naturally over time.

Scientists begin by measuring how long it takes for a parent isotope to decay into a daughter isotope. In this particular case, it takes 4.46 billion years for half of a sample of U238 to decay into Pb206 (called "half-life"). It takes another 4.46 billion years for half of the remaining sample to decay into Pb206 and then another 4.46 billion years for half of what's then left to decay, and so on.

By measuring radioactive half-lives, by measuring how much parent and daughter are present in any given specimen, and by making certain key assumptions, scientists believe they are able to accurately determine the age of a specimen. The measurements involved can be quite accurate. But how reliable are the underlying key assumptions?

The three key assumptions are (1) the rate of decay of parent into daughter has remained constant throughout the unobservable past; (2) the specimen (parent or daughter) which we are examining hasn't been added or taken away at any point during the unobservable past, and (3) we can determine how much parent and daughter were present at the beginning of the decay process - not all of the Pb206 present today necessarily came from decaying U238; Pb206 may have been part of the original constitution of the specimen. If ANY of these assumptions are wrong, the method cannot accurately determine the age of a specimen.

While assumptions (2) and (3) have always been a bit troublesome, the first assumption was thought to be a pretty safe bet since scientists were not able to vary the decay rates much in a lab. New research has revealed, however, that the decay rates may have been drastically different in the unobservable past. For example, it requires that the rate of radioactive decay is constant over time and is not influenced by such factors as temperature and pressure - conclusions supported by extensive research in physics.

It is true that in today's world, radioactive decay rates seem constant, and are unaffected by heat or pressure. However, we have tested decay rates for only about 100 years, so we can't be sure that they were constant over the alleged billions of years. This calls the whole method into question. AiG's Dr. Carl Wieland explains (for the sake of typing his entire explanation, I am only going to quote his conclusion), "...Results show that because of all the helium still in the zircons, these crystals (and since this is Precambrian basement granite, by implication the whole earth) could not be older than between 4000 and 14,000 years. In other words, in only a few thousand years, 1.5 billion years' worth (at today's rates) of radioactive decay has taken place."

For assumption (2), it also assumes that the rocks being analyzed have not been altered over time by migration of atoms in or out of the rocks, which requires detailed information from both the geologic and chemical sciences. This is a huge assumption. Potassium and uranium, both common parent elements, are easily dissolved in water, so could be leached out of rocks. Argon, produced by decay from potassium, is a gas, so moves quite readily.

This can also be illustrated with an hourglass example. When it is up-ended, sand flows from the top container to the bottom one at a rate that can be measured. If we observe an hourglass with the sand still flowing, we can determine how long ago it was up-ended from the quantities of sand in both containers and the flow rate. Or can we? First, we must assume the same three things.

Assumption 1: The rate has stayed constant. For example, if the sand had become damp recently, it would flow more slowly now than in the past. If the flow were greater in the past, it would take less time for the sand to reach a certain level than it would if the sand had always flowed at the present rate.

Assumption 2: The system has remained closed. Suppose that, however, without your knowledge, sand had been added to the bottom container, or removed from the top container. Then if you calculated the time since the last up-ending by measuring the sand in both containers, it would be longer than the actual time.

Assumption 3: We know the quantities of sand in both containers at the start. Normally, an hourglass is up-ended when the top container is empty. But if this were not so, then it would take less time for the sand to fill the new bottom container to a particular level.

-The point is that radiometric dating is not the sure thing that it has been made out to be over the last century. There still remains a lot of research to do, but, as it currently stands, the accuracy of radiometric dating remains ambiguously suspect at best.

Today, secular geologists will allow for some catastrophic events into their thinking as an explanation for what they see in the rocks. But uniformitarian thinking is still widespread and secular geologists will seemingly never entertain the idea of the global catastrophic Flood of Noah's day.

Other uniformitarian methods:

Radiometric dating methods are not the only uniformitarian methods. Any radiometric dating model or other uniformitarian dating method can and does have problems. All uniformitarian dating methods make assumptions. If the assumptions are truly accurate, then uniformitarian dates should agree with radiometric dating across the board for the same event. However, radiometric dates often disagree with dates obtained from other uniformitarian dating methods for the age of the earth, such as the influx of salts into the ocean, the rate of decay of the earth's magnetic field, the growth rate of human population, etc.

Another uniformitarian method is the radiocarbon dating method. It is quite accurate in many applications for which the specimens are only a few thousand years old.

Here is how it works. The stratosphere above our earth is bombarded with cosmic rays from the sun, which converts the N14 in the stratosphere to radioactive carbon, or C14. This weak isotope is a part of our environment, and is absorbed by all living organisms along with another version of carbon, C12, which is not radioactive. As long as the organism is alive, the ratio of C12 to C14 in the organism is theoretically the same as that of the environment; that is, the organism is in balance with the environment.

Once the organism dies, there is not longer a carbon intake. The amount of C12 in the organism remains constant, but the radioactive C14 decomposes with a half life of 5730 years into nitrogen. Nitrogen is a gas, which leaves the organism. This means after 5730 years, there will only be half as much C14 as when the organism died. Thus, by measuring the ratio of C12 to C14, one can (at least theoretically) determine when the organism died.

For practical reality, however, this doesn't always work. Researchers testing the shell of a live clam showed this live clam had been dead for 300 years. Dried up seal-carcasses only thirty years old have tested as old as 4600 years. Fresh carcasses often date as old as 1300 years.

Why is this so? Radiocarbon dating also makes several assumptions. If any of these are wrong, the results can be in error.

Assumption 1: The living organism is in balance with the environment.

This method assumes the C14 is absorbed by the organism at the same rate as the C12 from the environment. This is not always true. Some organisms have some type of internal metabolism that can reject the C14 more effectively than the C12. At death, then, these organisms have abnormally low C14 levels and appear much older than they really are.

In addition, while living the organism may eat and metabolize organic material that is old, thus loading their own system with the outdated organic material that returns the false reading.

Assumption 2: The C12/C14 level of the atmosphere has remained constant.

Scientists today have a growing conviction that this ratio has not been constant. Immanuel Velikovsky and other scientists believe that cataclysmic events in the history of the earth could have radically altered the stratosphere, affecting the amount of C14 created.

Velikovsky believed that the history of the earth was dramatically altered by the close approaches of Mars and Venus. His book described Venus as originally a planet which passes the earth as a comet only 3500 years ago and was captured by our solar system. Velikovsky believed the Flood, the parting of the Red Sea, and other Biblical events were all related to natural events.

With the landing of the astronauts on the moon, the dust levels that should have been several feet high for the Big Bang theory were found as only a few inches high, giving credence to Velikovsky's theories and giving him a fresh recognition during the last years of his life.

Today more and more scientific evidence gives proof to Velikovsky's theories. The Bible describes the long life- times of early man, perhaps due to the increased cloud cover at that time. The lower levels of C14 at that time would make the current samples appear older than they actually are. Evidence exists that the earth's magnetic poles switch occasionally, as old samples often show magnetic patterns that do not match with the current magnetic alignment. Tropical plants have been found buried in Sweden that could not have been there unless Sweden was, at one time, a lush tropical paradise. (And I did not know this until my dad told me some time back... that they have found plants buried way way way down under the ice in Antarctica).

Assumption 3: The dating method assumes the sample is in a closed system.

Once the organism has died, the theory assumes the only continuing process is the decay of the C14. This, in fact, is seldom true. Ground water can leach C14 from a rock. Heat, changes in the magnetic field, and other factors can affect the ratio of C12 to C14.

Assumption 4: There are no daughter elements in the sample originally.

There is no way to know how much radioactive daughter elements are actually in the sample at death. Other elements can affect the ratio.

-So this shows that these dating methods are completely unreliable and indicates that the presumed assumptions in the methods are flawed.

Other dating methods similar to the radiocarbon method are potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating. All of these suffer from the same basic assumptions.

Another method of dating that is popular with some scientists is tree-ring dating. When a tree is cut, you can study a cross-section of the trunk and determine its age. Each year of growth produces a single ring. Moreover, the width of the ring is related to environmental conditions at the time the ring was formed.

The Bristle cone Pine, found particularly in California, is a very old tree, with specimens supposedly dating as old as 7000 years.

Ring patterns vary considerably between trees of similar ages. To resolve the discrepancies, patterns are compared between several trees, with the attempt made to identify common years in several ring patterns. The key rings that are used to align different trees are the rings for drought years, or the narrowest rings. In some cases, however, a drought year ring may be missing altogether, falling on the ring for an adjacent year.

This leads to what is known as the "missing ring" problem. To solve this, the scientists fall back to radiocarbon dating to identify the rings more completely. This, in turn, leads to circular logic; if the radiocarbon dating is incorrect, the resulting ring dating will also be incorrect.

The Rocks: The vast thicknesses of sedimentary rocks around the world are commonly used as evidence for vast age, and are an example of uniformitarian thinking. 

The 'deep time' indoctrination comes with the statement 'often reaching great thicknesses over long periods of time.' However, this goes beyond the evidence. Great thicknesses could conceivably be produced either by a little water over long periods, or a lot of water over short periods. Different biases can result in differentinterpretations of the same data, in this case the rock layers. Because sedimentation usually occurs slowly today, it is assumedthat it must have always occurred slowly, forming over vast ages.

However, a cataclysmic globe-covering (and fossil-forming) flood would have eroded huge quantities of sediment, and deposited them elsewhere. Many organisms would have been buried very quickly and fossilized.

Also, recent catastrophes show that violent events like the flood described in Genesis could form many rock layers very quickly. The Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington State produced 25 feet on finely layered sediment in a single afternoon! Sedimentation experiments by the creationist Guy Berthault, sometimes working with non-creationists, have shown that fine layers can form by a self-sorting mechanism during the settling of different sized particles.

So when we start from the bias that the Bible is God's Word and is thus true, we can derive reasonable interpretations of the data. Not that every problem has been solved, but many of them have been.

Conversely, how does the 'slow and gradual' explanation fare? Think how long dead organisms usually last. Scavengers and rotting normally remove all traces within weeks. The booklet Stones and Bones shows fossils that must have formed rapidly. One is a 7-foot long ichthyosaur (extinct fish-shaped marine reptile) fossilized while giving birth. Another is a fish fossilized in the middle of its lunch. And there is a vertical tree trunk that penetrates several rock layers. If the upper sedimentary layers really took millions or even hundreds of years to form, then the top of the tree trunk would have rotted away.

Ironically, NASA scientists accept that there have been 'catastrophic floods' on Mars that carved out canyons although no liquid water is present today. But they deny that a global flood happened on earth, where there is enough water to cover the whole planet to a depth of 1.7 MILES if it were completely uniform, and even now covers 71% of the earth's surface! If it weren't for the fact that the Bible teaches it, they probably wouldn't have any problem with a global flood on earth. This demonstrates again how the biases of scientists affect their interpretation of the evidence.

These and other examples raise a critical question. If radiometric dating fails to get an accurate date on something of which we doknow the true age, then how can it be trusted to give us the correct age for rocks that had no human observers to record when they formed? If the methods don't work on rocks of known age, it is most unreasonable to trust that they work on rocks of unknown age. It is far more rational to trust the Word of the God who CREATED the world, knows its history perfectly, and has revealed sufficient information in the Bible for us to understand that history and the age of the creation.

When we start our thinking with God's Word, we see that the world is about 6,000 years old. When we rely on man's fallible (and often demonstrably false) dating methods, we can get a confusing range of ages from a few thousand to billions of years, though the vast majority of methods do not give dates even close to billions. 

Cultures around the world give an age to the earth which confirms what the Bible teaches. Radiometric dates, on the other hand, have been shown to be wildly in error.

The age of the earth ultimately comes down to a matter of trust - it's a worldview issue. Will you trust what and all-knowing God says on the subject or will you trust imperfect man's assumptions and imaginations about the past that regularly are changing?

Personally, I side with the God of the Bible, and I hope this helps you to choose the same brother.

I actually work at a really nice golf course doing golf course maintenance. Absolutely love my job. 

I have been raised in my Christian faith, as my grand dad was a pastor when he was still alive, and my dad is currently a pastor. I went to a Christian high school, and have just been surrounded around this Christian belief my entire life, enabling me to understand and be able to speak knowledgeably on the subject. 

Had a few people poke some fun at me when I posted this in like my first or second post in this thread, but I am just the type of dude that loves to help people, no matter who they are or what the situation is. I tell my buddies that arent Christians, that its not that i feel obligated to talk to them about Christianity, but I would feel utterly horrible if one day something happened to them, and I never got to share with them who God is. My Big Bro in my fraternity passed away  back in January 2009, and that was sort of the deal there. IDK if he was a Christian or not, but I do know that I had chances to talk to him about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but didnt take the time that I should have to talk to him about it; and now I will never get that chance again. So now I live my life (or try to as much as I can) to try and help everybody I can, and if the opportunity presents itself, talk to them about God.

Thanks again Randisist 

I meant to apologize for being so late on my response as well. I have been on vacation down here in Florida visiting my buddies from school, and have just been all over the place. I am heading back to NC tomorrow morning, so if you have any questions or you want to hear how I stand on a particular subject, or just whatever, then it might be tomorrow evening before I can respond. Thanks again and sorry I was so late 

Catholicism is a form of Christianity that relies more on commitment to traditions and idol worship rather than just through faith in the Bible alone. So my question in simple terms is, do Catholics get into Heaven? And a second part to my question is, what about people who are born into families of strong Catholic (or any other religion for that matter) beliefs. If they are raised to know only the religion of their parents or surrounding environment, what chance do they have of ever knowing about the word of God and Christianity?? Therefore ultimately going to Hell without having a choice..