Friday, January 16, 2015

8,000 Years?

8,000 Years?

My very devout friends that I converse with at my coffee shop have determined within their faith, that the earth and everything we know is about – they approximate – 8,000 years old.  Because that is what it says in their holy book.  As an open-minded scholar I have read this holy book, in parts and as a whole several, if not many, times.  I have gotten into the nifty-grifty of it and read books about it.  Its history.  The story, as we can determine, about its evolution from campfire stories into written form in separate parts into the compilation we know today – I have studied all this.

Why?  You ask, why?  Because it interests me.  So much of what we must endure in our culture today is as a result of millenniums of worship of the precepts put forth in this text.  Actual worship of the text as a set of hard-fast bylaws by which lives are promoted or withdrawn.  Wear a hat here and we cut your head off, if you don’t wear a hat over in this other place … we cut your head off.  Really???

So the 8,000 year rule?  As it was explained to me; I am told there is no scientific proof that the ground beneath our feet with all of the dinosaur fossils and all carbon dating, etc., etc. are truly as old as science tells us.  I am told that science is wrong.  Lots of other science is correct because we can see the other science.  Nobody was there when the earth was created, so I am told we have to take that part on faith?

I can do that.  I mean, I really can do that.  Taking certain parts of science on faith and discounting other parts because I can’t drum enough faith to accept them.  For instance I do accept on faith that the universe is infinite.  I can’t pull it together enough to accept that the universe is ever expanding.  If something is already as big as it is possible to ever be, how can it be in a constant process of getting bigger?

Stuff like that. 

An electron is an atomic element.  If you have an atom, you have to one or more electrons circulating, orbiting, the nucleus.  We are told that these electrons are everywhere around that nucleus at once.  Or, they are separate and distinct things which are everywhere at once.  I find that concept is something I can accept, but I have to do so on faith.

Now this means, if a god is everywhere at once, omnipotent and all-powerful and just decides once day (or whatever time element he/she lives by) to create a planet and place certain life forms, and such, on it – what would be the time constraints?  None really – that I can see.  Seven days plus 8,000 years?  Sure?  Why not?  If you want to take that on faith.  To me it makes as much sense as the electron.

Not even taking into account that nearly all evidence points to an observable condition of being able to stand on perceivably firm ground because the electrons sort of bind together with a measurable force.  To me this kinds of proves the existence and conditions of certain scientific evidence.  You can deny that it is fact, but you cannot deny the resulting factors.

Now, if you accept the electron part and that it is possible to actually and remotely measure the lifespan of certain atoms by the amount of energy remaining within those same atoms then there are intelligent design conclusions you sort of have to accept. 

One of those intelligent design conclusions is that if that measurement of the energy force remaining in the atoms (electrons cohesion) is measurably 100 million years old (or however many millions) and you are not sinking into the floor like quicksand – well then maybe the 8,000 year old faith component is kind of weird.


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