Age of the Earth and Other Subjects

 Hi Al, hope you are feeling better.

 

From what I have read when Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species" in 1859, many church leaders in the late nineteenth century actually embraced his theory as an insight into the means God used to create the world. B. B. Warfield, a conservative Christian theologian, wrote:

 

"I am free to say, for myself, that I do not think that there is any general statement in the Bible or any part of the account of creation, either as given in Genesis 1 and 2 or elsewhere alluded to, that need to be opposed to evolution."

 

According to authors of books I have read reading Genesis in a literal way and the widespread insistence that it can only be read this way is a recent development i.e. mid-twentieth century.

 

Sixteen-hundred years ago changing one's interpretation of the Bible on the question of fixed-earth – moving-earth because the "truths of science" and the "truths of the Bible" do not contradict must have been as difficult to accept as considering evolution is today. Instead of listening only to people with whom we agree we should listen to others or at least read what they have written and decide if we agree or disagree and why. "Ideological amplification" is the result of listening only to people who share one's opinions and results in opinions becoming more extreme; more entrenched; and worst of all mimics our Congress.

 

Accepting that the earth is 10,000 years-old requires reconciling that conclusion with the reports that scientists have found trees, whose rings they believe show are six-thousand-years-old and dead trees they believe are older; that lake beds have been found at the bottom of lakes suggesting layers as old as thirty-five-thousand years; and ice rings in glaciers that show ice 123,000 years old in Greenland and as old as 740,000 years in Antarctica? (I have asked Dr Harrub how he reconciles these conclusions.

 

Research shows that many young people believe Jesus committed sins; that Satan is symbolic and not real; there are no moral absolutes; and Judas was a fictional character. If we deny science without providing evidence imagine how our evangelistic efforts will be received.

John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN



Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Blogs: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
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"It is, in the end, cheaper to feed the whole flock for a year than to fight them for a week."  

---1850 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs

"If the tale of the poor wretches...could be impartially related, it would exhibit  a picture of cruelty, injustice, and horror scarcely surpassed by that of the Peruvians in the time of Pizarro."  

---1852 Gen. E. D. Townsend in his California Diary of the Indians facing pressure from the 1849 gold rush