Comments on: in which j.d. gets what he asked for

By: j.d.

j.d. — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 20:26:05 +0000

Which, I think, illustrates the futility of the whole exercise.

By: Mike Z

Mike Z — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:27:14 +0000

The 6000 years comes specifically from one Bishop Ussher, who, as Josh said, counted up the “begats” , and took the peculiarities of the calendar[s] into account. He was quite precise, but very inaccurate. He was actually a very bright guy, but got bogged down in minutiae, and was stuck with what we knew about the world in the mid-1600s.

One problem with looking at “twinkling” is that Genesis uses the Hebrew word for “day” (roughly, “yom”, as in “Yom Kippur”), which really means “day”.

I think it’s more reasonable to understand “twinkling” as “a short time”, not necessarily 70 years. Not to mention the fact that a lifespan was a lot shorter in those days than it is now.

By: j.d.

j.d. — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 22:54:10 +0000

It depends on what the definition of a “twinkling” is. If it’s one second, then 70 human years becomes one second to God.

6,000 of God’s years becomes 6000 * 365.25 * 24 * 60 * 60 = 189,345,600,000 “twinklings.” Since each “twinkling” is worth 70 human years, multiplying by 70 yields 13.3 trillion Earth years. This calculation, of course, assumes several things.

Science estimates the age of the Universe to be between twelve and twenty billion Earth years.

A fun mental exercise might be to determine the appropriate values of a Biblical “twinkling” that yield the scientific results.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 21:19:45 +0000

It is interesting that people who claim to believe the Bible can not accept that God’s day is not 24 h. They seem to come up with this about 6000 years from some calculation on the story of creation, but they ignore the passage that says a mans life is but a twinkling to the Lord, if 70 years is a twinkling how long is a day? 1 million years?
Hugh

By: Pigilito

Pigilito — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 18:52:42 +0000

Learned it in my Thermodynamics of Geology course. It’s the only thing (I think) I remember.

By: j.d.

j.d. — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 17:54:08 +0000

Never heard it put quite that way before, but that’s pretty good.

By: Pigilito

Pigilito — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 20:06:07 +0000

2nd law in a nutshell: you can’t shove manure into a horse’s ass and get hay out of its mouth.

By: j.d.

j.d. — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 03:46:39 +0000

I am not defending or arguing against the idea of “theistic evolution” (and I am not accusing you of ascribing either motivation to me, nor am I ascribing such to you; rather, that is merely a statement of fact). Pope John Paul II expressed similar sentiments to Hawking when he visited the Vatican early in JPII’s time under the mitre — that for man to look into the processes which drive the Universe but not its Creation for that was the work of God and unknowable to man.

Hawking argued against that in A Brief History of Time, asking the (rhetorical) question: why did God equip us with reason and allow the Universe to develop in ways we could make sense of if He did not intend us to do it?

My answer is that I believe He did.

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 03:34:58 +0000

You are entirely right that the first law has no relevance in evolutionary biology, and rarely do creationists bother with it.

Sometimes they wrap the Big Bang up into “evolution,” and insist that the whole ball of wax is impossible.

There are instances of gene duplication (new information!) all over the place, it’s a fairly commonplace phenomenon.

6,000 years comes from counting “begats,” and insisting that every generation is accounted for.

Theistic evolution (the idea that the process science studies and describes was guided by the hand of God in a way science cannot examine) has been defended by Kenneth Miller of Brown, but also by Keith Miller, of K-State.