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Planets May Form in Hundreds, Not Millions, of Years
Seanasy writes "Recent simulations on the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's Terascale Computing System suggest that planet formation may take a lot less time than previously thought. The results were published in SCIENCE."
This is a troll, right?
God made the Earth about 6000 years ago so it couldn't have formed in millions of years.
Interesting logic. In other words, "Because CONCLUSION, then QUESTION must lead to CONCLUSION." I believe this is called a syllogism.
I don't care if oil forms in ten minutes, the Earth is not 6,000 years old to a 99.9% level of certainty unless God has a very odd sense of humor (possible). Personally I'm leaning towards 4.5 billion years.
Seriously, in defense of Christianity, and I am agnostic, scant few Christians subscribe to creationism or intelligent design, so whatever you may believe be careful not to stereotype Christians based on it.
I wouldn't presume anything; as a scientific type I am obsessed with fact.
I'm not sure whether you think the % of creationists is high or low, and I don't have time to research the web. There are however various surveys out there; the question has been studied extensively because of the evolution v. creationism debate for public school classrooms.
I should add that by Creationist I intend the fundamentalists who insist on a literal interpretation of Bible (if such a thing is possible given its complexities, various translations, and internal contradictions -- this is not a criticism but an acknowledgement I hope most of us can make) that leads to the 6,000-year figure and so on. These are the most conservatives.
As with most things, Americans cover the spectrum from Creationist to evolutionary-ist (?) with most kind trying to be accommodating. I don't count these accommodating Christians among the ones who claim their reading of the Bible is the end of all debate, and so the % who think maybe creationism should be discussed in school are not the hard-liners most folks think of when they hear "creationist." I personally think many of those who vote for creationism never had evolution properly explained to them -- note the correlation with less education. A poll may thus unfairly suggest their minds are closed to alternatives, as with the creationists. Better PR for evolution is part of why we've seen an upsurge of "intelligent design," a kind of soft-sell creationism.
Where do you draw the line as when the process begins/ends?
...but how long did it take for all the parts to form like raising the pig or growing the wheat?
You have a large number of events that need to be carried out before the actuall planet sphere begins to form...
1) Matter needs to be created
2) A vast ammount of gas needs to slowly collect together.
3) A stable center of gravity needs to be distinguished
4) That gravity needs to slowly (and exponentially) gather more mass around it to finally form the planet.
But when do you start the stop-watch? Step 1... or 4?
It's like saying "I can put together a ham sandwich in 30 seconds!"
If you go back far enough, it took billions of years for that sandwich to be created... since the beginning of time...
The earth couldn't be millions of years old because God created it about 6000 years ago. If the creation of the earth about 6000 years ago is accepted as truth, then we use this to eliminate the question of the age of the earth being 4.5 billion of year old.
If we start with the assumption that the world is 6000 years old, then given that assumption, it's 6000 years old. If you start without any assumption of Christianity's truth, it looks like the world is roughly 5 billion years old. If you start by assuming the Bible is true, and the information of our senses is true, then you have a fairly complex question, with different answers depending on the believer.
it is impossible to be a true Christian and not believe that God created the world.
No where in the Bible does it say the world was created 6000 years ago. I think the Bible has pretty good evidence that the Hebrews didn't view large numbers with the precision we did - notice the symbolic use of 70, 70 times 70, and 144,000 at various places in the bible. It would have been very hard to explain to them that the world was five billion years old. Christians* believe God created the world; but they don't necessarily believe that he felt compelled to give the exact blow by blow to the Hebrews, instead of giving them some version they could understand.
* Well, most Christians, at least.
I appreciate the sincerity of your views. You may also be right.
What I have disliked about creationism is its claim to being scientific when it has but one view of the possible truth, and only looks for evidence to support that presupposed truth. Unlike proposing a theory, the investigator asserts that if experimentation does not prove the assumption, then the experiment is flawed. This is closed-mindedness incompatible with science.
By contrast, "white holes" and whatever else might support creationism, would be part of the scientific discourse. This is far better than the argument that the mere possibility of a flaw in a theory means that all views are of equal value. It is really a question of probabilities, and the current estimates of the age of the earth, using different approaches, and considered to be very, very probable.
The strictly hypothetical white holes -- proposed but unproven to even the satisfaction of their proponents -- will of course require theory or evidence. Most all of the arguments I have heard for 6,000-year creationism (the "young earth" subset) amount to negative "You don't know for sure" or "There seems to be an inconsistency here" rather than positive proof of a mechanism for such a radical alternative model. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying it hasn't been done, and the faith of its proponents, however sincere, can not carry weight with the rest of us.
As someone who has spent much of his life reading, I also find untenable the view that there is one literal view of the Bible. I don't see, for example, any way of proving that the "six days" was six literal days (notice "literal day" means something quite different from "literal reading" -- does this mean there is no literal meaning of literal?) as we know them, and not a part of the metaphors and poetry so prevalent in the Bible. Indeed, I challenge anyone to prove that only one interpretation of any text is possible (if I tell you to "stop," do I mean stop what you are doing? to stop talking? to stop what someone else is doing? to hand me something to hold the door open? or hand me a part for my flute?). Maybe some readings are more faithful than others, but one sole literal one? There is a big gap between stating such an interpretation and proving it. The label "literal" is to me an attempt to squelch debate, like claiming to be a patriot in a political debate.
Dr. Humphreys presents an example of the indeterminacy of literalism. If you look closely at what he's saying, he is trying very hard to extract the "right" interpretation of individual words in the rather terse Genesis story that might comport with theories or future theories of physics. This is all the more tricky because the original words were not in English, are quite ancient, and lack precise translation. So he is interpreting, as he must -- but game over for literalism. Maybe he has it backwards and should determine what the words mean by looking to the natural phenomena that the words describe rather than insisting the "six days" is precise and the rest merely needs to be interpreted to suit it. Why are some words literal and others not?
If Dr. Humphreys can pull it off and dethrone the most brilliant physicists of the last hundred years, more power to him. It will be an enormous contribution to mankind, and a boon to "young earth" creationists. But it is much much much too soon to declare such a revolution.
I am not trying to answer any of these questions, and I am not addressing the infalliability or existence of God; rather harping on the oft-proven falliability of humans to get the message right. I'll bet even creationists misunderstand or disagree with one another from time to time, or there wouldn't be so much discussion among them of what Genesis means. And how has the understanding of Bible changed in the past, and how will it change in the future? If falliability infects science, why does it not infect the "literal" reading of the Bible? Humans are flawed and have imperfect knowledge, so any scientist who tells you science can not be wrong -- not ever -- is lying or deluded. Any creationist who says the same...?
But in any event -- I do appreciate your effort to approach the question thoughtfully. Keep an open mind, I'll do the same.