Not everybody's called to be a theologian. I'm not - and I'm perfectly content not to have the answers to every hard question. Leave that stuff to the St. Thomas Aquinases.

The evidence that the earth is "old" is accepted by virtually every earth and life scientist (as is evolution) including almost every single christian scientist.  Newsweek did a poll of earth and life scientists in the US (most of which are christian) and asked them if they give any credence to anti-evolution "creation science" and 99.85% of them said none whatsoever.  Young-earth creationism is at the highest levels literally a scam. 

You see when someone believes something that is unpopular and contradicted by evidence like that the earth is 6k years old, the dinosaurs and humans lived together etc, that internal conflict between reality and the desired belief causes immense amounts of anxiety.  And unscrupulous people take advantage and make millions and millions of dollars setting up museums and selling DVDs and making TV shows lying to these people and telling them scientists are all wrong and don't you worry the earth really was created last thursday and the dinosaurs died in the flood etc, etc, etc.  Lying to biblical literalists about science is literally a multi-billion dollar industry, and many of these liars (like kent hovind) have showed themselves for the frauds that they are by committing legally actionable fraud and landing themselves in prison.

That the earth and universe are billions of years old is verifyable independantly by vast amounts of evidence in biology, geology, paleontology, genetics and almost every field of natural science.  The grand canyon formed over several millions of years of erosion, if it had formed in just 6,000 years then every river mentioned in the bible that still exists would be surrounded by a canyon a mile deep.  When we look at something a thousand light-years away like a star we are seeing it as it existed a thousand years ago, literally peering back in time because that is how long it takes the light to get to us - light travels 1 light-year per year.  In order to see stars on the other side of our galaxy the universe would need to be at least 100,000 years old, because our galaxy is around 100,000 light-years wide.  We can not only see every star in our galaxy, but we can see other galaxies billions of light-years away.

I could go on for half an hour, this is just some of the independant evidence in two fields of science.

I'm right with you. I've finally learned to accept that there are just some things I won't or can't understand. I have no problem at this point admitting that I just don't know. I don't think it makes me lazy, I just have different priorities. 

Another one is the free will vs. omnipotence

I don't see any problem or contradiction at all. It's very simple in my opinion. God made the sovereign decision to
allow us to have the freedom to make choices. There's no contradiction.
There's God's will and our will. This does not take away God's
omnipotence because it was God's power and sovereign decision to give
us the freedom to make choices. Many people confuse predestination with
foreknowledge and try to make them synonymous. They're not.
Predestination requires foreknowledge but foreknowledge does not require
predestination. Example: God foreknew that Adam would sin but he did
not predestinate it. If he did he would be contradicting himself which
we know is impossible. God told Adam that it was his will for Adam to not eat of the fruit. So, it's impossible that God would have predestined Adam to sin against him and do what God says was his will to not do. Now there are things that God does predestine apart from our wills, such as Jesus dying for our sins.

Here's a good way to think of this. Imagine a Grandmaster chessplayer
playing chess with a beginner. The Grandmaster allows the beginner to
freely make any moves he chooses, but no matter what moves the beginner
chooses to make, the Grandmaster will always end up winning the game.
The same is true for God. He allows us to the freedom to make choices
but his will always be done in the end.

Yes, you're a lazy theologian.

But heck, what's wrong with that?

My problem is that I'm a tireless theologian. I can't get away from it at work, in bed, sheesh - sometimes I even dream about theological conflicts (usually incarnated in some human form).

I could give you my opinion on all of these subjects (which speaks to my reluctant obsession that I actually HAVE those opinions).

My advice is - think about it as little as possible. Just get the basics - God created the world, men are evil, Jesus came to save us and He's going to come back again.

But my advice is - if you're going to ignore the other "non-essential" issues, then ignore them. Don't get into a half-hearted "well, maybe it was like this, so whatever" position. It's potentially dangerous, because once you compromise on one issue, it's much too easy to compromise on other, more essential ones.

If you choose not to completely ignore the smaller things, and get involved in any kind of discussion, make sure that (above all) you study the scriptures. Know your key passages like the back of your hand.

I had an apologetics professor that said there's no field of Christianity in which more people lose their faith than in apologetics.

Speaking of which, is it possible for a Christian to "lose" his salvation?

@icicle84@xanga - Omnipotence is not so much the issue as omniscience. Did God "know" before He created Adam that Adam would sin?

If you read my comment, I brought this up and affirmed that God foreknew what Adam would do. And I explained how omniscience, or foreknowledge is not synonymous with predestination.

If the answer to the above is "Yes," then it
would seem that God, by His omnipotent act, and via his omniscient
decision, "caused" those things to happen.

No it doesn't and I explained that. What you are saying is based upon a false premise. You're confusing omniscience with predestination. Again, predestination requires omniscience, but omniscience does not require predestination. Please re-read my comment again as I explained in the case with Adam.

Your chess analogy is interesting, but you
can't guarantee that the grandmaster will win. If the rookie is free to
play the game however he chooses, he is also free to defeat the
grandmaster.

He's free to try and beat the grandmaster, but if you know anything about chess, it won't happen. It's one of those logical things that we know will not happen, such as a one day old baby speaking perfect English.

If God's will is always done in the end, then it was God's will before He created Adam that Hitler would go to hell?

Again, that is a false presupposition. If God allowed Hitler to have the freedom to make his own choice, then it was Hitler's will to make his own decisions. Again, just go back to what I said about Adam. God told Adam that it was his will for Adam to not eat the fruit. So, when Adam ate it, that was not God's will, even though God foreknew Adam would eat it. It was Adam's will.

I'm not trying to beat you up here - honest.

No problem.

I'm just dissatisfied with those answers.

And I'm dissatisfied with yours.

1.)  Age of the earth

My take on it is that the Bible isn't clear about the age of the earth (even if you take a literal reading).  But then again, that was never its purpose either.  Even if you use a literal translation of the word "day" in Genesis (the Hebrew word "yowm"), you find the concept of a day that is DEFINED by sunrises and sunsets, not by the amount of time that would tick by one someone's clock.  From reading Genesis, it seems that these days are defined by the "evenings" and "mornings" that we keep reading about.  So if the amount of time between these evenings and mornings isn't precisely 24 hours, then you can have days that are very long or very short (whether 100 billions years long, or 12 picoseconds long), and they would still be called a "day" under the literal definition.  Also, from reading Genesis it doesn't seem to be clear what these evenings and mornings represent, so who knows how long the days actually are.

And once one allows for the potential that days could be millions or billions of years in length (the days need not be the same length either), then the concept of evolution itself doesn't seem to be so divorced from Christianity, since having only six days to do everything seems to be the real show-stopper.  With the potential for so much time now, who knows what all could happen, and the exact mechanics behind it.  The first chapter or two of Genesis are quite brief and a bit vague, so once you allow for an old earth, it's much harder to find an actual contradiction between the results of modern science and those chapters (yes, I'm quickly glossing over this, but I'm trying to keep my comment reasonably brief).

Then I do suppose there's also the issue of relativity, and the fact that time flows differently to those in different frames of reference.  That can make things a bit hairy as well if you were to try to factor that in.  I have a hard time looking at the text of the Bible and getting any idea whatsoever for the age of the earth.  But the Bible's not there to answer every single question one could ask.  It doesn't tell me what size shoe I wear, how the photoelectic effect works, or who won Super Bowl III.  Nor should it.  But I have other ways of finding those things out if I really want to know. 

Currently, science has pointed us toward an earth that is around 4 billion years old, and a universe that is around 13 billion or so.  Sure, this may change in light of better information, and it won't suprise me if there are some corrections in the next decade or so.  But I certainly don't expect something so radical as to show that the earth is only 6,000 years old, especially when there's no good reason (Biblical, scientific, or other) to even suspect that. 

@MysteriumFidei@xanga - Everyone is a theologian. If you have any beliefs about the character or nature of the Divine, that makes you a theologian. Some spend more time studying, reading, discussing, and developing their theology, but everyone is a theologian.

Your post isn't about theology, it's about apologetics. But semantics aside, you're not lazy about that either, because at the very least you've come to your conclusions or lack thereof through actual thought, instead of knowledge through osmosis. Any sort of thought and energy put into any of the "difficult" parts of our walk put you ahead of the game with comparison to most people out there.

Did God "know" before He created Adam that Adam would sin?
Let me answer this with a quote for the only authority Who has the answer.  " He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you"1 Peter 1:20 (NKJV)


God in His foreknowledge knew that Adam would sin and He had already before creation determined that Jesus would have to die for fallen man. 

@Red_Apocalypse_Horse@xanga - 

"What this
means is that we really don't know how old the earth is. No theologian
or scientist can categorically state the age of the earth, but only
make guesses based on assumptions and models. Logically, it has to be at least 6000 years old, because no archaelogical evidence of advanced human civilisation has yet been found that is older than that."

there are two really horrible mistakes in your argument:

1) the earliest evidence of human occupation of an area is far older than 6000 BP.  google for the archaeological sites Monte Verde and Sungir.

2) the techniques used to date the civilizations you cite as proof are the same techniques used to date what you consider to be mistakes.  sorry, but you can't have it both ways.

also, if you're going to discuss the accuracy of the Genesis creation story, you need to pick which one you think is true.  was God made before or after animals?  was man and woman created at the same time, or consecutively?  did God fashion them out of dust, or merely speak them into existence?

@ael_ecurai@xanga - one could make the argument that the only death which matters in a spiritual sense is that of beings with souls.  it seems pretty obvious that humans are unique in their ability to understand a divine power.  and even we don't view the death of a bacterium or cow as equal to the death of a human.

a short statement on the free will issue:  just because God has the ability to see the future does not mean He preordained it.  nor does the simple fact that He allows us to bad things mean that He wants us to do bad things.  think of your parents... they could have locked you up and controlled your every move, too.  did they?  no, because they understood that it's more important to learn from one's own experiences.

and on a side note: it's depressing to hear so many Christians denouncing the search for knowledge and truth.  perhaps it's the Christian mystic in me, but i think the only way to connect to God is through our intelligence.

@madmorrigan@xanga - Flattery will get you EVERYWHERE!!