It seems difficult, in my view, to make those 6 days into long time periods.

Indeed. The author is rather obviously framing the creation in a literal week with a literal 6 days. To try to turn that into some “day-age theory” is to recognise this fact while at the same time trying to ignore it. I find such an appoach irrational.

It certainly fails to capture the original intent of the author. But then, I understand that method of interpretation is out of vogue these days anyways.

It’s opening in July! See Creation Science Museum

I wouldn’t count the YECs out. They’ve been the object of derision, and many times, deservedly so, but the new YECs will be a force to be reckoned with. A new weblog is being constrcuted to cover these developments.

Visit:
http://www.CreationSafaris.com

http://www.CreationScience.com

http://www.YoungCosmos.com

And remember, it was the YEC A.E Wilder-Smith PhD PhD PhD (from Oxford) who so badly mauled Richard Dawkins in debate, that Dawkins refuses to this day to debate creationists. If Dawkins were up against Walter Brown, Dawkins would be put on his rear end.

People mention a wide variety of things that will probably never be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.
There is the tension about the new YEC museum that just opened up. I had the link from MSNBC but lost it due to a computer error where I had to shut down, but trust me that Eugenie Scot is probably apoplectic right about now and ready and armed with a petition to counter “creeping theocracy.”

Beyond this is the disagreement over Scripture and of course the YECs take (vs. IDers) on issues like rocks and fossils and whether “behemoth” was a crocodile or something like a dinosaur. I make no commentary on the proposition of this type except to say that to me the more serious issue is whether we as
Christians get cowed into thinking that Adam himself was some marvelous allegory or proto human when in fact according to some scholars I ran into he was certainly referred to by Christ as a real person. This being the case, and ancestral lineage meaning everything in OT and NT custom to show the kingship of Christ (both physical and divine) we have a problem on our hands, folks. That to me is far more serious a thorn than starlight contraction or dilation or whether bacterial mechanisms are front-end loaded to later develop funny little eye bulges. Ken Ham for one has been open about what he thinks borders on the apostate in trying to seek “creation compromise” with ID, in that (in his mind) the research programs of ID that refuse to name or procaim the exact Intel Agent are missing the larger point.

On the other hand I understand the need for DI to remain at a distance from the doctronaire in order to foster a healthy and inclusive approach to DI.

Others dwell on whether the Bible is cosmologically inaccurate and promotes a realm where the Hebrew authors merely copycatted their NME neighbors and declared, say, that the earth flat (not true, so far as we can tell, see JP Holding’s historical notes on all this) and said the stars could “fall from the sky”, etc. Where in this case it is probably a matter of true allegory. “Flat Earth” is a smear campaign, for example, that according to Rodney Stark (who refuted the notion that the Church gave us “ignorance” during the alleged “dark ages”, when all manner of learning and invention actually took place under noses!) and others, that had its origin in misinterpreted language from Isaiah about the “foundations of the world.”

Job said mentions the “circle of the earth” and other than allegorical language about foundations (God’s power, etc) there is little evidence that even IF the early Hebrews felt this way, certainly their writings didn’t make manifest a belief in a flat earth. Nor did the issue even come up that often in Church teachings nor was anyone persecuted for all we know, for that kind of belief system. That came from their neighbors, and in point of fact even IF some thought that, no educated Christian from about 100 AD onward thought that, from everything we can tell. And it came from rather fanciful writers like Washington Irving (of Sleepy Hollow fame) who made cute stories with cock-n-bull input about Christopher Columbus and others facing down stern hooded and ignorant Church elders before their voyages. But it was not quite so simple.

Smear campaigns against Christians are nothing new–but certainly once the full context of things is hashed out it can, if we get lucky, shed light on these kinds of topics. So it is refreshing to have a forum where some things CAN be rolled out for examination where you don’t have the usual jackals calling names and appealing to the NSF for the final word

If Gen 1 refers to only the current age (assumption there were prior ages), then Mark 10:3-9 could not be evidence that there isn’t a prior age. The question about Gen 1 has to be solved another way, or perhaps not solved.

http://www.creationscience.com.....#wp1257493

“The arms in these six representative spiral galaxies have about the same amount of twist. Their distances from Earth are shown in light-years. (One light-year, the distance light travels in one year, equals 5,879,000,000,000 miles.) [the six distances are 2, 18, 25, 32, 65, 106 ly] For the light from all galaxies to arrive at Earth tonight, the more distant galaxies, which had to release their light long before the closer galaxies, did not have as much time to rotate and twist their arms. Therefore, farther galaxies should have less twist. Of course, if light traveled millions of times faster in the past, the farthest galaxies did not have to send their light long before the nearest galaxies.”

Brown musters quotes to show that a good deal that’s postulated about galaxy formation is speculative or doubtful. I’m just guessing, but it seems to me that knowledge of galaxy formation would constitute a major component in determining the age of the universe. If astronomers don’t know what made innumerable galaxies flat and thin, instead of globular, then perhaps astronomers don’t know as much as they’d like non-specialists to believe.

Moreover, though the idea of unseen matter existed previously, the trigger for the search for dark matter was the discovery in the mid 70′s by Vera Rubin that ~60 spiral galaxies that she studied showed the stars in the arms rotating at the same velocity as the stars near the center, a completely unexpected result, since that would have caused galaxies to have lost their spiral form in less than a billion years, according to one. This resulted in a concerted effort to find either dark matter or a revised formula for gravity. But of course no mention of revising theories of origin or dating schemes.

Regarding scriptural testimony, to me one of the more significant difficulties for postulating either an age preceding the current age, or some version of the day-age interpretation of Genesis 1 comes from Mark 10:3-9. Christ based his demands for abiding marital commitment on the fact that “from the beginning of Creation” (apo de arches ktiseos) “male and female He made them” quoting Genesis. To me (and I suspect to most YEC folk) that leaves no room for 4.5 billion years (much less 15 billion years) prior to the creation of humans. The tenor of the NT leads me to conclude the authors believed in recent Creation and the universal Noahic flood, including their testimony of Christ.

YEC Annual Budget (my estimate): 20,000,000 to 50,000,000 world-wide and probably growing

True but the Darwinist budget is probably in the billions if you consider almost every researcher in the fields of biology, molecular biology, astronomey, astrophysics, geology, paleontology, and evolution at every university world wide and the secular media that makes huge fanfare out of any piddling discovery.

Discovery Institute CSC annual budget: about 800,000

YEC Annual Budget (my estimate): 20,000,000 to 50,000,000 world-wide and probably growing

The Darwinists had their hands full with the tiny ID movement, now the YECs are coming back stronger than ever. The Darwinists must now defend themselves on two fronts (ID and YEC) in the USA, and more fronts world wide…..

What needs to happen is to crush the political and financial clout of the Darwinists. No more NSF or taxpayer monies to fund their scientifically useless and socially harmful enterprise.

The Darwinists also grossly underestimate the abilities of the modern YECs to debate. 20 years ago the YECs were easy pickins, not any more. That’s because some major developments in science have come through for the YECs where they most needed it:

1. Doubts about the Big Bang

2. Secular Physcists advocating Variable Speed of Light theories

It’s a whole new ballgame.

Yes, the gap theory. I agree that if the universe and the Earth really are old, that implied gap is probably the best candidate to accommodate the extra time. I’m open to the gap theory, or some permutation of it. I don’t think I’m open to the “day-age” theory, theory.

Hey, what about the soft tissues in the T-Rex femur that they found in Montana in 2002? Do old-Earthers not view that as a threat? Do we have reason to believe that soft tissues really can survive fossilization through 65 million years? Should the soft tissues inside that femur serve as proof that such material CAN be preserved for 65 million years? Or should it make us question whether the 65 million year date for dinos is correct?

Thanks again. Interesting discussion.

You don’t have to. Though not specified, it is certainly allowed by the text itself that there were prior ages to this one, and that Genesis 1 refers only to this age.