Jenn,
Lots of problems with the young earth position. The appearance of age in a human is not one of them! However, the length of time it takes for light to travel across the universe is a little more difficult issue. Why would God create a universe so broad that it appears to take millions of years for light to travel to us? Perhaps he could have designed a smaller universe where the light emanated from stars so close that it might take a week, month, or a year to travel to our eyes. As we measure the light that IS, though, it appears to have been traveling for millions of years. Odd if the universe were created with light in passage, simultaneous with the creation of the stars which might appear to have been the source of that light.
The more difficult issue for me, though, as I struggle with this, is the existence of skeletal remains/fossils that would necessarily have been created with the rest of the world, say 10,000 years ago. That would require that we have fossils, remains, of animals that never lived?
Lane
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The issue of light might be explained by looking at Adam. He was created as a full-grown human, rather than having to grow from a baby. Similarly, it seems unlikely that God would create plant life, but only as seed, then have Adam have to wait for food until the plants grew. My point: God created things in their mature state, so why not create a mature universe? Besides which, God created the light BEFORE the stars anyway, so it's obvious that isn't a necessary problem. As far as the fossil evidence, a planet covered in trillions of tons of water for close to a year could account for the rapid covering over and hardening of animal and plant remains into fossils, especially since certain fossils (e.g. leaves) should have decayed long before the time period it should normally have taken for the fossilization process.
"Why would God create a universe so broad that it appears to take millions of years for light to travel to us?"
lol if we start getting into WHY God does things we don't understand, we might get into quite the tangent ;) . This might just be me, but this almost seems like asking why someone would take the time to bake you a feast when you're fine with a granola bar.
From my very brief understanding, our dating techniques are more or less based upon what we have observed currently - half-lives, formation of layers of rock etc. - and then are extrapolated back. This assumes that everything has always progressed in the same manner, which makes perfect sense. However, if the supernatural is possible - if there is a God - that means there are events or things in history that have not developed, decayed, or formed in a strictly "natural" sense - which is what we have been studying. And our measurements are based in natural terms. Wouldn't that make our measurements inaccurate? That was my only reason for bringing up the Adam-age analogy. If the supernatural is indeed a part of this life, then our measures of time (etc.) are not even appropriate, let alone accurate.
Thoughts?
~Jenn
Another way to look at this: If the earth is really as old as some claim then God created a world in which death and decay were rampant long before the Fall. In fact, if indeed the world is as old as most scientists claim, then there could have been no "Fall", since there would have been no Adam. Humanity simply evolved slowly (whether you believe it was guided by God or not) and therefore there could not possibly have been a first man and a first woman created from the dust. No Fall, no sin; no sin, no need for a saviour. If God DID create humanity literally from the dust (as Genesis claims and many New Testament writers and figures, including Jesus, believed), then did he create humans millions of years ago? If so, why the enormous gap in the biblical record? If humans were created recently on an older earth, why was there death and decay before the Curse? Logically, I can't reconcile what I read in the Bible with what scientists claim, and if I have to choose in which authority to put my trust, you can guess where that would be.
On Jenn's comment:
"our dating techniques are more or less based upon what we have observed currently [...] This assumes that everything has always progressed in the same manner, which makes perfect sense. However, if the supernatural is possible - [...] there are events or things in history that have not developed, decayed, or formed in a strictly "natural" sense"
Actually, there does not need to be the assumption that half-lives and such were supernaturally manipulated by God, it is possible that the actual condition of the atmosphere was different then it was now (i.e. different carbon concentrations, effects of less ozone, climate change over long term etc...). One possibility is that if there was a worldwide flood, then the climate would have been much different before and after, and the baseline for the dating methods would then be off.
I don't know, just a thought.
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