A Question on Quora

5/17/2017

I occasionally visit Quora.com to find out what kind of questions people are asking about God, the Bible and Religion.

One of the questions I answered seemed to have some traffic. I thought it might be something my readers would like to see. Here is the question:

“My Bible teacher said that God accelerated the formation of the Earth to make it look like 4.5 billion years old. How can I refute him?”

My thinking in answering the question was that while you want to show respect for the teacher, you might also want to challenge his thinking. Critical thinking skills are so lacking in this generation. We need to use those skills as much as possible or we will end up with a society that is astonishingly portrayed in the Movie “Idiocrasy”.

This is how I answered the question.

“Ask him the three Socratic Questions that usually get to the root of the idea. First question, “What do you mean by that?” He will have to be specific. Second Question: “How did you come to that conclusion”? It will tell you WHERE he got his information, for example, I had a vision and God told me directly (smile). Then you know what you are dealing with. Third Question: “Have you ever considered……”? This is where you insert the idea that this is just a hypothesis with NO evidence. You want him to have evidence to back up his hypothesis. If he is just guessing, as he would have to be, then you can just shrug it off. If you want to be more graceful, you can use the word theory instead of the word hypothesis to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt that he may have had something behind his assumption. Christians are supposed to be graceful in speech.”

The answer got quite a few views and upvotes. Two persons kindly suggested that I say “hypothesis” instead of theory. Apparently my nuance was not caught. I amended the answer to include ‘hypothesis’ to be accurate, however, I explained the nuance below the amendment.

Grace should be the hallmark of a Christian, not just ‘being right’.

Relationships are what God is after, not a bunch of Smarty Pants!

2 Comments

Cheryl Durham, Ph.D.

Cheryl is the Executive Director at Living Truth. She is also currently Dean of Students and Professor of New Testament Culture and History at Master's International University of Divinity. She holds a Bachelor and Master's Degree in Biblical Counseling, a Doctor of Biblical Studies in Worldview and a Ph.D. in New Testament History and Culture.

James

6/1/2019 07:49:08 am

You can use the Socratic method to easily explain this legitimacy of the claim.

“What do you mean by that?”

The world was created in six-days with the seventh-day reserved for rest.

"How did you come to that conclusion”

It is stated in the Bible in the first Chapter of Genesis, one of the first recorded documents in the Historical record dating to roughly 1445 B.C./B.C.E., Much of the related work contradicting the Biblical account dates from theories related to Einsteins theory of relativity and Archeological finds that have been dated to older than the Biblical account. Regarding the aging of the universe, it is conducted by light, which was considered a constant at 299,792,458 miles per second. This has been overturned with other theories and observed scientific research. In 2015, the University of Glasgow and Heriot-Watt University were able to slow down photons in free space. It stands to reason that if you can slow an object down it is no longer constant, which means it is also possible to speed it up past the constant. This is again, observed data that was able to be reproduced thus overturning Einsteins notion that light is constant, thus putting into question the age of the Universe, as other Galaxies no longer have a constant possible speed at which they could've expanded from our own.

Much of the dating of the Earth has been done through relative dating in determining the supposed 4.6 Billion-year old account of our patch of dirt. This also has been thrown into question because it is simply guess work for lack of proof. This rock type sits on this type thus it must be this many years old? Why? Because Strata! It's not satisfactory and it's not observable science, and when reproduced in a laboratory it can be sped up to weeks in many cases. Thus throwing the entire natural process into question as it is only our "current" understanding.

Lastly is the question regarding Carbon-14 testing which has been a thorn in the side of archaeologists as it has dated archaeological finds at the thousands of years-and not millions. For those who state it is an unreliable test, they must be equipped to answer why there is carbon to date, as carbon has a half-life of 100,000-years thus meaning no material should be available to test, period. They should also be prepared to answer why independent dating facilities (non-religious) are dating fossils at various thousands of years, and not the millions, and why these facilities are just outright be black-marked for doing a scientific experiment.

The author of this blog is correct in stating that Relationships are indeed what G-d is after, and not a bunch of know-it-all's. However, professing Christians and Jews should be equipped to debate these issues, and not simply check off what a textbook states.

Grant link

10/4/2024 02:04:45 pm

This is a great ppost thanks

Critical Thinking and the Paradigm

A Question on Quora

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Cheryl Durham, Ph.D.

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