By taking the age of each father at the birth of his son, and adding the "six days" of creation, Young Earth Creationists thereby arrive at an age for the earth, concluding that the Earth is only 6,000 - 7,000 years old.
It's a theory, an interpretation based on assumptions.
IIRC it involves much more than just addition to reach an assumed age of the earth, as it also involves interpretations of different lengths of lives, and other aspects that make such an interpretation highly questionable.
Any relationship between events in the bible and recorded historical events is also open to interpretation as there are no real dates given - reference to events at best are tied to the reign of various rulers and reference to other events (non-biblical historical events) are equally vague - making any attempt to set biblical events into historical ones also a matter of interpretation and assumption.
Take the life of Christ as an example: what are the dates of the birth and death? What events during the life can be related to known historical events? And this was (supposedly) recorded shortly after that period.
It seems to me that if you can't even nail down these events for the most iconic person, that deriving any other dating from this source is rather questionable at best, with uncertainty increasing the further you go back in time.
It would appear that the recording of actual dates of events was not an important {criteria\element} of the record keeping.
The logical conclusion is that the YEC theory (of the age and timing of events) is not consistent with the facts, whether those facts involve the geological age of the earth, or the correlation to known historical events, or (more importantly) their
lack of evidence at the times where there should be evidence if the YEC theory were true.
The logical conclusion is that the YEC theory is falsified.
Comparing the (various) GAP (and other) theor(y\ies) to the YEC theory is (therefore) a false comparison. You need to compare them to
their ability to predict events, and the records of events, properly in the time scale of things that are known.
If they can't do that, then you need to chuck them out and get new ones. Or chuck the whole concept of developing dates from a record that pays scant at best attention to dates: is
any {age\dating} theory really necessary? Events can be relative, creating a linear progression, but the actual dates of those events is unimportant to the progression.
This isn't science, it's logic.
This message has been edited by RAZD, 02*14*2006 08:08 AM
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