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You said:
If you wish to put your faith in 3,000 year old science, be my guest.
I am basing my judgments on literal word meanings of the Torah and current science which is in agreement with the Torah.
I am somewhat puzzled at the term “3,000 year old science”. I know of no one else who believes the Earth is billions of years old and that life on the earth is only 6000 years old.
If you are saying I am dating the Earth at 6000 years please remember that was your interpretation of the Torah not mine.
You said:
The fossile record and the radioactive dating both put the earth orders of magnitude older than the Hebrew calendar.
I am not sure how you have determined that the fossil record in itself indicates an objects age unless you are using the evolutionary theory to prove the evolutionary theory.
As for the radioactive dating this is my understanding of the process.
A rock is formed which radionuclide the K atom is present which generates Ar gas and a decayed K atom as it decomposes by physical laws according to its half life.
Please note that a literal interpretation of the Torah indicates that the Earth rocks have been here an unspecified and apparently lengthy time, which could easily be billions of years.
A radioactive dating of billions of years for a rock is what I would expect.
In a catastrophic event like a world wide flood, the concentrations of K Ar and decayed K which had developed in a rock a billion years old would be reformed into a new sediment structure without giving any of the trace elements a chance to escape. This would create a rock structure which would have the trace element concentrations of a very old date.
In common practice at this point the fossil is assumed to be the same age as the radioactive date calculated for the surrounding strata.
Actual fossils are not able to be dated due to the absence of sufficient quantities of radioactive materials.
I am not saying that the radioactive dating is always wrong, I’m just saying we need to understand its limitations and how a history as describe in the Torah would affect the interpretation of the data accumulated.
Carbon 14 dating assumes that the concentration of Carbon 14 has been increasing on a straight line curve for millions of years.
If the concentration of carbon 14 was minimal in the atmosphere before a catastrophic flood then the low carbon 14 concentrations would cause large time calculation errors.
You said:
I will put my faith in modern science and in the god it reveals.
Ok.
How about some current science?
If the earth was under a water canopy as I believe it was according to the Torah it would have similar temperatures and weather conditions on all continents.
In that case the Northern and Southern polar regions should have tropical fossil species similar to the equator.
Which they do.
As I was composing this response I realized that no matter what evidence I brought which would suggest the Torah was correct the evidence could also be explained by adding a few million years somewhere in the evolutionary theory history which complied with the new data.
It is similar to being able to use an equation to describe any number of random data points as long as you are allowed to have an unlimited number of variables in the equation.
You can say the North and South poles move, or propose greenhouse gases cause climate changes, or just say the entire Earth was warmer during a million year period to explain tropical plants at the north and south pole.
So I guess its like you said.
God will not provide absolute proof because He desires us to choose to believe in His existence with a free will and if we are given absolute proof there is no free will choice.
It is interesting that God has painted himself in a corner by putting specific time constraints on His description of creation life on Earth.
In essence by creating the Torah God has limited himself to just a few variables which must still comply with all the data.
The original text can not be modified to comply with new information.
That is of course only if we take a literal interpretation.
If the Torah continues to comply with the available data as it has been it may be considered to be an indication that the Torah was indeed composed by God.
I think God’s biggest problem is that His Torah is continually being redefined ( or reinterpret ) to say something which it doesn't say. |
