Anyways, how do you think the Earth and life came about?
You are right, God could have put an age mark on things. Yet, I want to try to go into some evidences for a Young Earth
http://drdino.com/articles.php?spec=6:"It has been estimated by evolutionary anthropologists that the earth could have easily supported 10 million hunter/gatherer type humans. To maintain an average of 10 million people, spread over the entire plane, with an average life span of 25 years, for the last 100,000 years . . . .would mean that 40 billion people had lived and died. Archeological evidence clearly shows that these "stone age" people buried their dead. Forty billion graves should be easy to find. Yet only a few thousand exist."
"Another indication of both a young earth and a confirmation of the worldwide flood is the scarcity of meteors in sedimentary rock layers. Although some meteors have been found in sedimentary layers, they are relatively rare. Meteors are easily identifiable, and many thousands have been identified and recovered from recent impacts on the planet’s surface. If most of the rock layers were laid down rapidly during the one year period of a worldwide flood, you would not expect to find many meteorites buried in only one year. However, if the sediment was laid down over billions of years, there should be multiple billions of meteorites buried within this sediment. The fact that we find so few is another possible evidence for the rapid accumulation of the sedimentary layers and a young earth."
From
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i1/howold.asp:"If the continents were billions of years old, they would have eroded by wind and water many times over. Mountain uplift and other ‘recycling’ processes are nowhere near capable of compensating for this."
"Helium, a light gas, is formed during radioactive alpha decay in rock minerals. It rapidly escapes and enters the atmosphere much faster than it can escape Earth’s gravity.2 Even if God had created the world with no helium to begin with, the small amount in the atmosphere would have taken at most around two million years to accumulate. This is far less than the assumed 3,000-million-year age of the atmosphere."
"There are billions of fossil fish in rock layers around the world which are incredibly well-preserved. They frequently show intact fins and often scales, indicating that they were buried rapidly and the rock hardened quickly. In the real world, dead fish are scavenged within 24 hours. Even in some idealized cold, sterile, predator-free and oxygen-free water, they will become soggy and fall apart within weeks.3 A fish buried quickly in sediment that does not harden within a few weeks at the most will still be subject to decay by oxygen and bacteria, such that the delicate features like fins, scales, etc. would not preserve their form. Rapid burial in the many underwater landslides (turbidity currents) and other sedimentary processes accompanying Noah’s Flood would explain not only their excellent preservation, but their existence in huge deposits, often covering thousands of square kilometres."
"Argonne National Laboratories have shown that heating wood (lignin, its major component), water and acidic clay at 150°C (rather cool geologically) for 4 to 36 weeks, in a sealed quartz tube with no added pressure, forms high-grade black coal."
"Each year, the world’s rivers and underground streams add millions of tonnes of salt to the sea, and only a fraction of this goes back onto the land. Using the most favourable possible assumptions for long-agers, the absolute maximum age of the oceans is only a tiny fraction of their assumed billions-of-years age."
Okay, more information on the canopy of water.
From Dr. Hovind's second Creation Science Seminar
http://www.algonet.se/~tourtel/hovind_semi...nar_part2.html:" Well, today an eighty footer could not breathe, but before the Flood, I think they had double the air pressure from that canopy of water or ice over head-increase the air pressure. Plus, when they drilled into the amber (how many saw Jurassic Park when they went after the mosquito blood?), sometimes in amber they find air bubbles trapped. The air bubbles trapped in amber have 50% more oxygen than we do today. Interesting! Did you know if you lived in a world with double the air pressure and 50% more oxygen, just breathing would be exciting! Adam would go,
"(breathe) Wow! Eve, that was fun, let’s do that again, ready?" Because under those conditions, not only does your hemoglobin take on oxygen, your plasma gets oxygen saturated in your blood stream which means you could run for hundreds of miles without getting tired. Adam and Eve did not need a car; they could run to Grandma’s! Only they did not have a grandma, or a mother-in-law by the way, which was why it was paradise! No, actually my wife has a great mother-in-law, but!
I think before the Flood came the earth had double the air pressure and increased oxygen. That explains how the dinosaurs could get so big on small lungs. It explains a lot of things by the way. It would sure heal up faster under those conditions; extra oxygen makes you heal much faster. How many of your remember Baby Jessica, she fell down in the well in Texas about 10 or 12 years ago? When Jessica fell down in the well, she was 18 months old, her left leg slipped down in the pipe, her right leg came up behind her and she did the splits as she slid down 20 feet inside an 8 inch steel pipe. She was down there 2 and 1/2 days; it was an amazing rescue, when they finally got her out a lot of her body had turned black from lack of circulation. Her right leg was totally black;
one of the doctors said we have to cut the leg off immediately. Another doctor said, before we cut her leg off, let’s just try putting Jessica in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. In a what? Hyperbaric oxygen chamber? What is that? Well, it is a chamber like this; they put Jessica in one of these. Now, back in
1987 this was very new therapy. This was a revolutionary idea; today it is being used more and more. They stuck Jessica in one of these chambers, filled it up full of pure oxygen, and pumped it up to double normal pressure forcing oxygen into her system. Within a few hours, her leg turned pink; one by one her toes turned pink. They finally had to amputate half of her little toe. She would have lost her whole leg had it not been for hyperbaric therapy.
You know, one of the biggest ones in America is right here in Pensacola, Florida. Holds thirty people in emergencies. Hyperbaric Chamber, strange, huh? You know in West Germany all stroke patients are required to go for hyperbaric oxygen treatments after they have a stroke? They are finding incredible healing. Different countries around the world—in England, Multiple Sclerosis patients are being treated with hyperbaric oxygen; in India, they treat leprosy with it.
Adding oxygen to the system, everything seems to heal faster. A small chamber like this, it only holds one person, is cheaper to operate and to build; quite a few pro teams have one. Dallas Cowboys have one, the San Francisco 49er’s have one, the New York Jets have one, all these pro teams are finding their injured players are healing twice as fast under hyperbarics. Well, if you are paying the guy $1000 a minute to go play with a ball, you want him out there playing with the ball, right? Can you imagine, though, if the entire earth was hyperbaric before the Flood? That would be a different world, wouldn’t it? You would not need a hospital, you would be healed up before you could get there; plus it would make plants grow like crazy. See, increased air pressure would also increase pressure to the plants. Now, plants do not have lungs to breathe, they have to rely on what comes by right? It would also increase pressure to the gases—that puts more gas into the water and fish have to breathe under water; if you have increased air pressure you get a lot more fish able to survive per cubic mile, I mean lots more fish, lots more plant growth. ...
You know before the Flood came, the Bible says the people lived to be over 900 years old. Right after the Flood came, that canopy of water fell down, life spans dropped off to 400, and then 200, and then 100, and today 100 is old. Before the Flood, you were just a kid at 100; it was about time to start looking for a wife and a house near a grade school. Well, today if you wait till you are 100, you can still get the wife, but you can forget the grade school! You will not need it, okay? It was just different back then folks, a lot different; they lived a long time.
One guy is going around the country and claims to be a Creationist, he says, "You know folks they were not really living to be 900, they counted every month as a year, you have to divide their age by 12." Wow, that is an even bigger miracle! Let’s see, Enoch was 65 when he begat Methuselah. Two of these guys were 65 when their son was born. Let’s see, 65 divided by 12, he was 5 and 1/2 when he became a daddy! I do not think so! No, they really lived to be 900, folks, something was different back then."
There is a lot more in that link talking about the canopy.
Okay, I need to clearify what I consider kinds of animals and the difference between macroevolution and microevolution. A wolf and a dog can have kids, they are the same kind (not species). A horse and a zebra can have kids, they are the same kind. With microevolution breeds within a kind and species within a kind develope. Now, a zebra can never produce a giraffe or new kind of animal. Now, with macroevolution, you have to assume that all animals came from one animal. Now if the Earth was young, macroevolution could not have happened, now could it?
I would consider dog to be a kind of animal, that also included wolf and coyote. Horses and donkeys, if they can mate, then they are the same kind. A lot of people would consider dogs to be a species. Now, like dogs, other kinds have inbred and bred amongst themselves, thus how horses, donkeys, and zebras are the same kind.
And why do all these similar species of animals exists if none of them are truely related?
... God created the heavens and the earth and the birds and the fish and the animals. Creation has an explanation for it as well.
And humanism, according to the American Humanist Association: "Humanism is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead meaningful, ethical lives capable of adding to the greater good of humanity." I do use the term a bit loosely, but you seem to have some leanings towards it.
And even so, wouldn't religion being taught in schools make it a state sponsored religion?
Evolution is state sponsered and takes faith, if it is okay to teach that in school, why is it wrong to teach Christianity? Anyways, if I had things my way, there would be no public school system. If you can get control of the schools you can get quite an unfair impact on the population. Also, here in America, more is spent per kid in a public school than in a private school. (Due to tax dollars) We could really go into this more ... in another debate.
As for more people knowing evolution that creationism, I think I'd disagree.
Worldwide, maybe, but in America, where the public education is terrible, more people know about evolution theory than creationism. The stories of Adam and Eve and the Flood are well known, but they are not often taught in the light of Creation Science. If Adam and Eve is talked about in a sermon, then most likely they are talking about the first sin and there is a chance that the sermon will go on to why we need a Savior. Now, with Noah and the Flood, many people teach that as a story about faith. You had a guy that spent 120 years building the ark while being ridiculed by the rest of the world. He HAD to have faith.
The Bible is more than just a book. It is the divinely inspired word of God. Many different authors, but each one was just as divinely inspired, and by God's guidance do we have the assembly of the books of the Bible today. It has survived many ages and has been translated carefully. (Except for the past 100-200 years where you started getting a lot of translations. Bible translations is a whole other ball of wax) Many of the events that happened in the Bible could not have happened without a God.
I believe that God planned on sin, in eternity past set up his salvation plan, and that He still has an active presense in this world. I believe that the whole of history, when it all is over, will be the greatest testiment to God and all of his infinite attributes. (Such as infinite love, infinite justice, infinite grace, so on and so forth)
Well, I'll take a chance with the female readers.
