Doesn't the distance of stars disprove the young earth theory?

Hi nlerd. Well, you're absolutely right about that. Trying to explain the bible using science is something many people would like to have happen, but at which no one has succeeded as yet.You can try as hard as you can, futilely, to make the Genesis account of creation (or any creation myth, for that matter) seem straightforward and rational ...... or ...you can take the bible's creation story as just that: a story. One meant for people of Jacob's time who needed a tale explaining the mysteries of creation, which could be told through the generations before the written word existed. Unfortunately for the religious, knowledge and science tend to relegate these types of stories to the myth bin.Have a good one.

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"My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. J.B.S Haldane 1892-1964

This is the way I look at it. I find truth and wisdom in Aesop's Fables. However, this truth and wisdom does not go away when science shows that tortoises, hares, crows and rabbits are incapable of speech. Aesop did not write these fables as a way of passing on the information that animals talk, and it would be a big mistake to think so. Creationists are making this mistake. What Genesis is trying to discuss is not science. It is wisdom and truth.

Yes, for self-explanatory reasons.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

I highly doubt that because the implications on Special Relativity would be enormous. Quite frankly if anyone debunked Special Relativity it would certainly achieve world headlines.I'm familiar with Humphrey's Setterfield's work, which once you get passed all the distortion basically says that God made it appear as if the earth is old, but is actually not.It's an absurdity.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Not if god put the light in transit very far from earth, making it appear older then it actually is. Which I think is a stupid thing to claim, but there you have it. Which is why you shouldn't take genesis literally. It doesn't reflect what we know about the universe. The bible isn't about science. Like a famous person once said "The bible teaches us how to work to get to heaven, not how the heavens work". Don't try to mix science with the bible, either you'll have to say the bible is wrong, or you'll have to shoehorn the eivdence in htere with rediculous explanations. Just accept that they are two completely different things, leading to two different truths. No problem mate, there's no time limit.

You do know that in the very link you gave, it says ''The idea has seen some revival in the twentieth century by some modern creationists, who have extended the argument to light that appears to originate in far-off stars and galaxies (although other creationists reject this explanation[1]).''The link 1 being an AiG article based on Humphrey's (amongst other things). So the wiki page you used really contradicts the very thing you wanted to use it for ...which was that Humphrey's hypothesis came down to omphalos hypothesis, which of course it does not and if you think so then you didn't really understand it. As someone earlier in the thread said Humphrey's proposition made predictions, who turned out to be wrong, but it is still far from the omphalos which by definition cannot make any prediction.Anyhow I don't view humphrey's explanation to be the right one anyways.

If god didn't do the things in the bible the way it says they were done, how is someone supposed to know what is and is not true in the bible? Unless you mean some other kind of truth? And as for wisdom, old wisdom is not always good wisdom. A few hundred years ago the wise said that the old lady next door with all the cats could be a witch and that you could turn lead into gold if you tried hard enough.

What if none of it is "true" in the litteral sense? Would this detract from the messsage that it is trying to convey? Spiritual truth? Whatever that may be.

I don't mean to say that there is nothing of value to be learned from the bible, I'm just saying that you've got to know what is worth taking from it and what isn't. If someone tries to take it all as literal they could miss out on alot while wasting time on something that was written 2000+ years ago by various people for unknowable reasons.There are good things that the bible can teach but the bible is not the only sorce for those things. The Lord of The Rings books have things that you can learn from in them but that doesn't mean you should believe in Hobbits and talking trees.Edited by nlerd, : No reason given.

I agree. And I agree againAgreeing is nice

Hi nlerd, And how are we to make that judgement? I consider some bits of the Bible to contain good advice. Other bits can only be described as evil. If we are able to tell the difference, then we must possess some independent means of assessing good and evil, some means that does not depend on the Bible. That rather undermines the Bible's alleged role in teaching us moral lessons. Just because some of the claims made in the Bible do not stand up to comparison with reality (your light example being a case in point), does not mean that we should assume that the claims were not intended literally. They might well have been literal, but erroneous. I agree with you here, but I would make one further observation; the LOTR does not claim to be a true story. It dresses itself in the trappings of myth, but it is clearly intended to be read as fiction. The same cannot be said of the Bible. The tendency for religious believers of all stripes to insist that their holy book of choice is actually true clouds the issue. It makes it more problematic to use the book as a moral compass or source of subjective wisdom than pure fiction. Fiction does not distract us with concerns over its authenticity. I think that makes it a better bet when searching for truth.Mutate and Survive

How could the literal word of god be erroneous? If its nothing more than translation errors or someone misshearing or missunderstanding god then how can anyone be sure which parts are right and which are wrong? You'd think god would want a matter so important as our eternal souls to be clear and easily understandable.

It all depends on one's base assumptions about the text I guess. If God is as all-knowing and perfect as he's cracked up to be, I guess it couldn't. If however, the Bible is the work of men, then all such bets are off. Well quite. You can't. Of course some believers are so determined to view the Bible as being true that they are willing to disregard actual observed reality in favour of torturous apologetics like the "starlight created in transit" example. Ultimately, people believe what they want to believe. Yes, you would. Pretty shoddy on God's part not to make matters clearer.Mutate and Survive

If the tortoise and the hare did not have a race exactly as Aesop described it does this mean that slow and steady really doesn't win the race? Quite right. Nonetheless, that is what the Bible is trying to relate to the reader, what wisdom and truth is within the Judeo-Christian religion.

There in lies the million dollar question. What is and what is not worth taking from the Bible?If you start to realize parts of the Bible seem completely ridiculuos and can't be true, then what really is true? That is setting yourself up for disaster. You can not defend something that you only believe parts of and reject other parts. It is either real or it is not. If it has facts mixed in with falsehoods, where does that leave this "holy book" at? When you start to finally get this is when you just might start letting it go. Like I did. You need to be honest with yourself and understand the only reason in hell you even defend this so much is because you were taught to.Let someone try to convince you of scientology. You would think they were crazy. Which is why the older religions are easier to swallow for most people. The mass delusion has continued for so long that a lot of people take it as truth. It appears to me to be one heck of a slippery slope.I would love to think there is a happy ending after death. I am just not sure if there is at all.