Question for young earth creationists

[PainPositive]

“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;”
-1 Corinthians 1:27

Don't let things that are out of man's comprehension be a "stumbling block" for you. It doesn't matter whether the Earth is billions of years old or thousands. Concentrate on living like Christ by loving others, forgiving them that do you wrong, and spreading the Gospel or "good news".

Look at Proverbs (a book about using wisdom for good in your life) and the subsequent book, Ecclesiastes. The former tells of a life lived in wisdom and it's benefits while the latter, Ecclesiastes (thought to be written from King Solomon's point-of-view, who the wisest and most educated man in the world at the time) comes along and says it's all "hevel" (even wisdom, which is described as what God used to create the world with in Proverbs.)

(Heb. hevel): “futility,” “meaninglessness,” “emptiness,” “breath,” “nothingness,” “absurdity,” and so on. The word means “that which is futile or worthless, of no value or profit,” but it also connotes that which is transitory or passing away. As Solomon observed life, he saw little that exhibited profit and accomplishment. The word all in the expression all is vanity must not be taken to mean everything in the universe for these reasons: (1) The author’s observations are clearly limited to what is “under the sun” or observable. (2) The negative conclusions always grow out of observable phenomena as the expressions “I saw,” “I have seen,” “Again I saw,” and so on, exhibit. (3) “Vanity” is never predicated of God, God’s work, God’s revelation, or man as man. (4) Specific realities are commended by Solomon in such a way as not to be considered vanity (e.g., the fear of God, enjoyment of life, and proper use of wisdom).

Vexation of spirit (v. 14) occurs seven times in the book and contains the idea of fruitlessness or futility. Even Solomon’s wisdom (v. 18) did not suffice to solve life’s ultimate questions. This is the first of several passages in the book that emphasize wisdom’s limitations, whereas Proverbs emphasizes wisdom’s benefits.
Nelson, Thomas. KJV Study Bible, eBook . Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

7:23—8:1. Solomon is known as the wisest man who ever lived, but even his wisdom was insufficient to understand life fully (7:23). In his search for wisdom Solomon found many sinful people (7:26) but few righteous (7:28; cf. Prov. 31:10). In spite of the failures of wisdom, it is still the most attractive virtue since it helps bring inner happiness (8:1).

Here are a couple videos that summarize Ecclesiastes. It's in the "wisdom books" where you'll find the conclusion on how to live life and what to do about trying to answer life's puzzles.

 

[Regent]

Young earth creationists are not neccessarily right. An argument could be made from the bible of a very old earth. Gen 1:1 Says God created the heaven and earth. Gen 1:2, we find the earth in ruin. What caused the ruin? Lucifer's rebellion and thats why jesus says he saw satan fall to the earth as lightening. So the history of man starts with the REcreation and REgeneration of the universe. The length of man's existence is not the equal to the age of the earth and universe.

 

[JackinMelbourne]

This is the exact same type of argument that people use on Jehova's Witnesses and Mormons when they come knocking on your door. But at least those religions have the decency to knock and be upfront rather than sneaking in though the back door.

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

The only problem the people have with the Bible is to take it literally. Not even the Catholic clergy does that.

Two points that point to a higher exitence at our current level of development:

1) The Big Bang - it just created itself or is there a higher force that let it come into being?
2) Evolution just calculated randomly would hardly generate life the way it did after the time-frame given - you would need billions of years more. That is where the Intelligent Design arguments come in. Now Atheists who know the math say: "OK - evolution ran too fast on Earth, then how about it ran randomly before on some Alien planet and Aliens now created most of major evolutionary steps on Earth?" Oh great - now they have to bring in Aliens who visit us once every 10.000 years in order to explain the inconsistencies with random evolution.

So what is the big deal if God created the universe and the Spirit/his Voice helps along the evolutionairy force? So all you would have to dispute is that you absolutely want Earth to be created on a Friday 4000 BC, just because? I like David Wood's Bible interpretations. He is known as a guy who debates the Muslim scholars and dogma, but he is also well-versed in Ancient Abrahamic history. For example he explains why likely some stories were told - sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. Back in his day there were popular huge religions like the Cult of Baal which actually practiced human sacrifice. So the story was simply a way to show that the new Abrahamic God would only want to demand willingness of sacrifice, but not actually want you to sacrifice any humans. That was a step up from the thinking back then. Nowadays the story does not make sense from our viewpoint, but to the people back then it was very telling.

 

[CynicalContrarian]

We talking about the ~6000 year Hebrew family tree detailed in the Bible / New Testament?

If so, there's one key to the whole 6000 year earth thing.

The Bible never explicitly states the age of the earth.
I know it's an Evangelical American thing to say as such. Cause of that Hebrew family tree.
Yet as far as I recall.
The Bible never details a literal age of the earth...

Plus. Time is relative.
A God that can create the entire physical universe can easily manipulate time.

 

[T and A Man]

how do you know what period of time was meant by the word which was translated to "day"

The word found in ancient hebew was 'yem' or 'khem'.

It has three meanings
i) they daylight hours, sun rise to sunset
ii) a full day, and the interpretation used for young earth creationism
iii) a translation roughly equivalent to 'era'

If genisis was interpreted as the world forming in 7 distinct eras, particularly when the formation of flora is described as plants seeding new plants and so forth, as an era, it paints a different picture

 

[CynicalContrarian]

Each day of creation equating to 2 billion years would be 14 billion years + 6000 for the Hebrew family tree.

God simply had the universe on fast forward until he got to the good parts.

 

[True Position]

This book does an excellent job of explaining all of this. I highly recommend reading it.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Universe...the+way+it+is&qid=1563211775&s=gateway&sr=8-1