Could asteroids lead to the extinction of YECism ?

Tangle writes: Don't try to change history Faith. Pretty much all 19th century Western scientists believed what you believe about the age of the earth. They only very grudgingly changed their collective minds over time when they were presented with the overwhelming evidence. That's what science does and faith doesn't.

Not true. The age of the earth was fairly well accepted in the 19th century, at least from the middle of the century onward. Even conservative Christians generally accepted the evidence for the age of the earth.

They could always just argue that it is a 'test of faith'.

God's all: "Hehe, let's see who believes in me now!"

So there you'll be, standing at the pearly gates, and they're gonna be laughing their asses off at you: "What? You fell for the flying lizards? You're such a dumbass. That was a joke. Pff, flying lizards How could you fall for that?"

Shamelessly ripped from Bill Hicks.

Oh, found a quote:

quote:

---

Twelve thousand years old. But I actually asked this guy, "OK, dinosaur fossils-- how does that fit into your scheme of life? What's the deal?" He goes:

"God put those here to test our faith."
"I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. I think I've figured this out."

Does that-- That's what this guy said. Does that bother anyone here? The idea that God might be fucking with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their head? God's running around burying fossils: "Ho ho! We'll see who believes in me now, ha ha! I'm a prankster God. I am killing me, ho ho ho!" You know? You die, you go to St. Peter:

"Did you believe in dinosaurs?"
"Well, yeah. There were fossils everywhere. (trapdoor opens) Aaaaarhhh!"
"You fuckin' idiot! Flying lizards? You're a moron. God was fuckin' with you!"
"It seemed so plausible, aaaaaahh!"
"Enjoy the lake of fire, fucker!"

-Bill Hicks

---

Not true. The age of the earth was fairly well accepted in the 19th century, at least from the middle of the century onward.

Which I also said so we agree on this much, meaning of course the OLD EARTH notion of the age of the earth.

Even conservative Christians generally accepted the evidence for the age of the earth.

I'm sure some did, again meaning for the millions-of-years age of the earth, and they had the Bible-twisting effects of the Tubingen school of theology to push them in that direction too, the whole Liberal Christian movement that got underway about that same time; but those who continued in the traditional understanding of the Bible and its inerrancy could not accept the Old Earth, and that remains the same to this day.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

kbertsche writes: Not true. The age of the earth was fairly well accepted in the 19th century, at least from the middle of the century onward. Even conservative Christians generally accepted the evidence for the age of the earth.

There's a hundred years in a century. At the beginning of the century by far the majority view was that the earth was young. It took time and a lot of evidence to change that position amongst an almost universal Christian scientific community.

The point is that the prevailing understanding was of a young earth which wasn't easily changed and had to be hard won by evidence. It wasn't, as Faith would have you believe, the starting point that couldn't be changed, it was, in fact, the reverse.

There's a hundred years in a century. At the beginning of the century by far the majority view was that the earth was young. It took time and a lot of evidence to change that position amongst an almost universal Christian scientific community.

It took time and a lot of ARGUMENT in the scientific societies, NOT evidence. All they had was the subjective speculations of Hutton for starters and Lyell's arguments for Hutton's speculations, and other speculations that piled on top of those. NOT EVIDENCE, just speculation. "Gee it sure seems to me that it must have taken a lot longer than six thousand years..." That's about the extent of your "evidence" in those days.

Faith writes: Kbertsche writes: Even conservative Christians generally accepted the evidence for the age of the earth. I'm sure some did, again meaning for the millions-of-years age of the earth, and they had the Bible-twisting effects of the Tubingen school of theology to push them in that direction too, the whole Liberal Christian movement that got underway about that same time; but those who continued in the traditional understanding of the Bible and its inerrancy could not accept the Old Earth, and that remains the same to this day.

Sorry, but on this you are completely wrong. Where did you get your bogus information? Can you support your claim?

From about the mid-19th to mid-20th century, most conservative Christians accepted the geologic evidence for an old earth and incorporated it into a view known as the "Gap Theory".  This view was popularized by Thomas Chalmers in the early 19th century, and became the de facto view of conservative Christians after C.I. Scofield incorporated it into his reference Bible in the early 20th century.  As Bernard Ramm wrote in 1954 (see the wikipedia article referenced above):

quote:

---

"The gap theory has become the standard interpretation throughout hyper-orthodoxy, appearing in an endless stream of books, booklets, Bible studies, and periodical articles. In fact, it has become so sacrosanct with some that to question it is equivalent to tampering with Sacred Scripture or to manifest modernistic leanings".

---

Who held to an old earth in this period (mid-19th to mid-20th century)?  Most of the conservative Christian scholars and Bible teachers, including most of the scholars who opposed the Tuebingen school and modernism. Here are a few of them:

James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000). Pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia; chairman of International Council on Biblical Inerrancy.
William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925). Prominent anti-evolutionist; prosecutor in Scopes “monkey trial”.
A.A. Hodge (1823-1886). Old Princeton Theologian.
Charles Hodge (1797-1878). Old Princeton Theologian.
H. A. Ironside (1876-1951). Bible preacher, commentator, and author.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). Literature professor and Christian apologist.
J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937).  Theologian.
J. Vernon McGee (1904-1988). Founder of Thru the Bible ministry.
C.I. Scofield (1843-1921).  Known for his Scofield Reference Bible.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892). Known as “the prince of preachers”.
R.A. Torrey (1856-1928). Editor of "The Fundamentals"
Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921). Theologian; Champion of biblical inerrancy.
Edward J. Young (1907-1968). Theologian; Champion of biblical inerrancy.
 

And can you point me to the actual evidence that those on your list supported the Old Earth? I'd be particularly interested in Spurgeon, Boice, Machen, Warfield and Hodge.

ABE: This Wikipedia article lists these:

Proponents of this form of creationism have included Oral Roberts, Cyrus I. Scofield, Harry Rimmer, Jimmy Swaggart,[8] G. H. Pember, L. Allen Higley,[4] Arthur Pink, Peter Ruckman, Finis Jennings Dake, Chuck Missler, E. W. Bullinger, Donald Grey Barnhouse and Clarence Larkin.,[9]

Not my favorites, except Arthur Pink, who got it wrong about the Antichrist too.

If you are right it seems a lot of the best succumbed to this easy way out of a dilemma, at the expense of the Bible in my opinion. Very sad if so.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith writes: It took time and a lot of ARGUMENT in the scientific societies, NOT evidence. All they had was the subjective speculations of Hutton for starters and Lyell's arguments for Hutton's speculations, and other speculations that piled on top of those. NOT EVIDENCE, just speculation. "Gee it sure seems to me that it must have taken a lot longer than six thousand years..." That's about the extent of your "evidence" in those days.

The process was the same as all scientific discovery - a hypothesis is formed "Gee it sure seems to me that it must have taken a lot longer than six thousand years..." Then the evidence is gathered to support or reject it. The saner ones accept the evidence.

I haven't even so much as looked at the theory yet. Why would I try to support something I'm not even familiar with?

Seriously though, even if someone is the worst most suspect person in the world, you should attack their ideas, not their person.

quote:

---

Very few creationists believe Walt Brown's hydropants fantasy. He's so loony even the loonies think he's loony.

Waltie's asteroid fantasy is probably the stupidest of all YEC fantasies, and that's really saying something. His idea of how the asteroids migrated to their current position is laughable,...

---

and

quote:

---

But it does go to show that Coyote is right; YEC's, especially you, will buy anything that sounds good without any thought.

---

really just paint your side of the argument in a really bad light. Ridiculing your opposition doesn't help your cause.

Seriously though, even if someone is the worst most suspect person in the world, you should attack their ideas, not their person. Very few creationists believe Walt Brown's hydropants fantasy. He's so loony even the loonies think he's loony. Waltie's asteroid fantasy is probably the stupidest of all YEC fantasies, and that's really saying something. His idea of how the asteroids migrated to their current position is laughable,...

Those aren't attacks. Those are observations. If you want to claim otherwise, let's see some discussion. I notice you cut and ignored my reasoning behind my claims. Extremely telling, and standard YEC practice.

But it does go to show that Coyote is right; YEC's, especially you, will buy anything that sounds good without any thought. really just paint your side of the argument in a really bad light. Ridiculing your opposition doesn't help your cause.

That's just another observation. Doesn't help any cause but it's a fact. You haven't read the links I provided to back up my claims

You are becoming very boring very quickly. Just another YEC making stuff up and not even attempting to support your claims. That's an observation.

lokiare writes: Ridiculing your opposition doesn't help your cause.

Science depends on observation. When you observe the ridiculous it is necessary to be able to recognize it as ridiculous.

The problem is that the evidence was just people's speculations about geological formations. Hutton's evidence was simply his ponderings about how Siccar Point must have been formed which in his estimation would have taken millions of years. OK that's all the evidence they had and one can't fault them for that, but it's the usual problem: there is no way to prove this stuff, it starts out as speculation and it remains speculation because there is simply no way to prove any of the hypotheses about age. It gets established purely on the basis of persuasion, but everybody eventually forgets that and starts thinking of it as established fact and upbraiding anyone who refuses to accept it as fact.

Hutton looked at Siccar Point, a famous angular unconformity, and decided that the lower vertical layers were laid down first and then they were tilted and eroded and some time later the upper horizontal layers were then laid on top of the lower. Well, it's a possible theory but that's all it is, yet it is accepted as dogma now. All angular unconformities, including the Great Unconformity at the base of the Grand Canyon, are understood to follow this pattern and this time scale as hypothesized by Hutton, though now expanded to even more enormous quantities of time.

One thing that's interesting is that most such formations show a very paltry one or two horizontal layers remaining over the buckled lower layers. But I guess I shouldn't get into the reasons NOT to accept Hutton's view here. The point should be recognized that it is only a hypothesis, that all they had in the end and still have is the idea that it looked to them like it must have taken more than 6000 years, and eventually others got persuaded and that's the so-called "evidence" you have.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Somebody brought up some other threads on this topic of the asteroids. Apparently the theory I found is THE main creationist theory, by a Walter Brown? I have to say it doesn't sound very plausible to me either although I haven't spent any time on it to know how he argues the case. It would be nice if there were other creationist ideas about the asteroids to think about but maybe there aren't any.

Walt's theory, loony as it is, is the only YEC asteroid "theroy" I've seen. Most YECs just call them created like the planets. Walt came up with his asteroid "theory" in a lam attempt to save his hydroplate theory after he forgot his basic thermodynamics. He took an impossible "theory" and made it impossible squared.

Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Siccar point is the evidence. No YEC has come up with a possible explanation for it.

Nobody is interested n any fantasies you make up about it; you are far too ignorant to come up with a possible scenario.

Edited by JonF, : No reason given.