Age of the earth

Important to remember that no well informed person claims that it states anywhere in the Bible that the Earth is this or that age.

This misunderstanding was created by the 17th. century Anglican Bishop Usher who made his own calculation based on the ages of individuals given in the Bible.

I don't know about misunderstandings, but the link validates your statement.

I was alluding to the misunderstanding that YEC's have formed regarding the age of the Earth.

Since it isn't stated in scripture, it's puzzling why those who read the Bible literally should insist on something being fact when it isn't stated as such?

There is disagreement that happens a lot even when honest people are looking at the same data. Which means the evidence really needs to be examined in light of what we believe is true. That needs done knowing what we think is true we could be mistaken about. We can fool ourselves if we are not careful.

Not sure what you mean by "data" but it is the case that at no time did the authors of the OT attempt to give an age for the Earth. This is true, yes?

The writers of the Old and New Testaments shared what they were given, which didn't always come from knowledge of what they were saying or why. Having the One true God speak as if He were One being and other times with plural meanings had to have been confusing to the writers but sticking true to the revelation, they wrote down what they were led to write anyway. There is no difference in the NT, writing about blood and water flowing out of Jesus' body. So, the books of scripture are one thing, and the book of nature is another. God has created everything; both belong to Him.

Or, those late Bronze-Age Judeans were merely recording an earlier oral tradition of beliefs, as much mythology as anything 'received'? That makes considerably more sense to me.

Curious that any deity would choose to give 'revelation' in an especially impoverished language (ancient Hebrew) which allows quite a lot of ambiguity and therefore confusion? Also worth pointing out that if we're supposed to believe that these 'revelations' were intended not just for the small community of Judeans on the Eastern Mediterranean, but for Mankind as a whole, why not reveal said 'truth' to all the people's of the Earth?

The people of that small region had no means to communicate this supposed message to most of the human race of that time and subsequent centuries.

But to get back to the age of the Earth that YEC's insist upon, in the range 6000 to 10,000 years if I understand, on what precisely do they (you?) base it if not Bishop Usher's calculations?

You can "or" everything under the sun. It only shows that there is more than one possible response. Finding which one fits reality the best becomes necessary. You have no meta-narrative, meaning nothing that covers the full spectrum of what we know is here; how did it all start at the beginning, up to all that we see in the now? God covers all bases, from everything in the material world to all of the immaterial. It makes more sense, in my opinion, that the immaterial, the living Word God, who stands outside of the material world, is responsible for it; you have nothing.

I like to propose reasonable explanations for things that's all.

For example, I've seen the Christian faithful claim many times that Jesus was intended to be a messenger to all mankind, not just the people of a very small region of the Eastern Mediterranean. Is this reasonable, does it make sense?

Not in my view because "all mankind" was spread across the world 2000 years ago and many could not be reached by the message of the New Testament. That's simply a fact, so in what way does it make sense to say that "Jesus was intended to be a messenger to all mankind"?

But you still haven't addressed my question in #9?

The good bishop came up with numbers; he spoke about what he thought, but if you watched the video, you would see others come up with other views. They could do that because the scripture did not give very specific dates on age, and if the scripture doesn't have a clear message on a topic, we shouldn't either. This is why I stopped trying to defend a young Earth because it is not clear. I believe in a young universe, but I have no way to defend that belief, so what would the point be to express an opinion with no rationale I could use to defend it?

The rationale should be used when looking at the processes because those things are in play, and we can see if anything that is presented is reasonable. If what is proposed cannot happen no matter how much time is involved, what would old or young earth matter?

"If what is proposed cannot happen no matter how much time is involved...."

I've tried to get an answer to this question before I think but perhaps you'd address it now? Are you stating as a matter of fact that life cannot emerge as the result of any natural process?

You must show the natural process that would cause life to appear out of non-living material; what we see in nature runs counter to life. Exceptionally long odds are not overcome by simply stating it could have happened this way or that; what is needed is a natural process that we know is real, but instead, a fictional possibility is not something we should call natural.

In the later nineteenth century it was still believed as scientific fact that the Earth could be no older than several hundred million years. Why? Because scientists such as Lord Kelvin calculated the age of the planet by means of the time it took to cool from a certain starting temperature and that gave an age that was much less than we 'know' it to be today.

You might say that we're at that point in establishing how life began. So what changed? The discovery of radioactive decay and the heat generated by that process revealed that the true age of the Earth was in the billions of years, not millions.

We can never know what new discovery may shed entirely different light on a field of research. This is why it's so unsafe to claim that some process is utterly impossible by entirely natural means.

But that is what you're doing.

Listen, I ignore the question of age, mainly for reasons I have already given; it doesn't matter. There are a couple of other reasons, the first being we don't know what the beginning looked like, were the stars and planets already formed, and where were they? We can only take what we have in the here and now and try to draw some conclusions and no matter what conclusions we draw it isn't like we can delare we are right, we truthfully can only say this is what we think, now.

So, when looking at what we see here and now, we try to turn it backward to give us a clue. Reading rates can only show us the rates we get, but without knowing all of the variables that may affect our readings of rates, even if that is the best guess no matter how consistent our readings are.

No, you're missing my point - we're past debating the age of the Earth I agree but I was trying to illustrate how easy it is to imagine that some difficult question can never be answered until there's a new, unexpected discovery which opens a new line of research.

We have no way of knowing what discoveries will be made in the years and decades to come.

Claiming that a natural explanation for the emergence of life cannot ever be found is beyond both my competency and yours!

We cannot ignore what we know now if something new may come about later. What we know now is the only truth about natural processes we have to work with, and to deny what we know now is to deny the truth as is. If our current knowledge says nothing but a deliberate effort could do what is required, why would you ignore what we know now?

But our knowledge is incomplete as it was before the discovery of radioactive decay - that's what I was trying to explain.

At this point in time it is not possible to conclude that life cannot emerge as the result of natural processes!