This is an important post from Answers in Genesis (AIG) — the creationist ministry of Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo), the Australian entrepreneur who has become the ayatollah of Appalachia. The title is It All Adds Up.
The author of this one was Roger Patterson. At the end of his post it says he “taught in public schools for eight years before joining Answers in Genesis. He earned his BS Ed degree in biology from Montana State University–Billings. Roger is author of Evolution Exposed and serves on AiG’s editorial review board.” Here are some excerpts from his latest, with bold font added by us:
A 6,000-year-old earth? When you look up the Bible references, the math’s not that hard! We’ve all heard the horror stories. Teachers in government schools force students through strange, torturous machinations to do simple math. … You might think you need to do similar mathematical gymnastics to arrive at the age of the earth, so you leave it to the scientists. Or maybe you just ignore the subject because you don’t see how it relates to your everyday struggles to follow Jesus. Well, this is not a salvation issue, but it is an issue of authority.
The age of the Earth isn’t a salvation issue, but it’s an authority issue? What does that mean? Patterson gets to that later. Meanwhile, he says:
For those who trust in an evolutionary view of history, determining the earth’s age is a complicated process. First, you have to find a meteorite, crush it up, and then send it to a lab for analysis. (Why a meteorite? I’ll get to that later.) Technicians measure the ratio of isotopes and enter that into a complex calculation that factors in the rate of radiometric decay. Out pops a number somewhere around 4,500,000,000 years (or at least that’s the expected result). That’s a whole lot of zeros!
Jeepers, the “evolutionary view of history” really is complicated! There’s gotta be a better way. Let’s read on:
But if you look to the Bible as the ultimate source of truth, a much simpler answer emerges. And you don’t even need to find a meteorite. All you need is a Bible and a calculator.
[*Begin Drool Mode*] Ooooooooooooh! [*End Drool Mode*] How is it done? Patterson continues:
While people might joke about reading genealogies as a substitute for counting sheep, they serve a very important purpose as part of God’s Word. These lists demonstrate the historical nature of the early chapters of Genesis. Real men had real sons, and we know how old each man was at the birth of his son.
After describing what is probably the process involved in the Ussher chronology, Patterson concludes:
Adding all of this gives us a time span of about 2,008 years from Adam to Abraham.
Very persuasive! After some more scriptural gyrations, we get this:
Abraham to Jesus covers about 2,000 years, and you are 2,000 years removed from Jesus. 2 + 2 + 2 = 6. That means the earth, and the entire created universe, is about 6,000 years old.
Hey — that’s easy! But it’s not what we learned in school. Who’s right? Patterson explains:
Now that might sound radical if you have always heard the earth is 4.5 billion years old. But on what authority should you accept that claim? Christians should look to God’s Word to determine right and wrong, so why shouldn’t they do so on matters like the age of the earth? To do otherwise seems inconsistent. If you look to man’s interpretation of the natural world and the age of the earth, you place your trust in man over God.
Gasp — that’s absurd! Moving along:
Scientists who believe the universe is billions of years old assume the earth and meteors formed at the same time from a spinning cloud of debris. On top of that, the radiometric dating methods they use to determine meteorites’ ages rely on still more assumptions. This chain of assumptions is unreliable and totally disagrees with the Bible. We are talking about thousands versus billions — that’s more than a rounding error.
Okay, but why is this important? That’s explained in the next excerpt:
Without these alleged billions of years, evolution cannot happen. Ideas like human evolution are bound up in the question of the age of the earth. You don’t need those vast ages if you trust that God created plants, animals, and humans supernaturally — as He says He did in Genesis 1.
Aha — we understand! And now we come to the end:
While this question may not factor into your daily decisions, it has important consequences. To be sure, all who trust in Christ alone for salvation are secure, even if they believe in an old earth. But if you can’t trust God’s Word on the age of the earth, why should you trust it when it tells you Jesus rose from the dead? The same skeptical scientists who say the earth is 4.5 billion years old would tell you dead men don’t rise from the grave days later. So who are you going to trust?
There you are, dear reader. The math is simple; the consequences are eternal. Now the decision is yours.
Copyright © 2016. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
So who are you going to trust?
Ghost . . . busters!
No, wait, that’s wrong.
So was Roger venerated, tolerated or kicked out of those “government” (code name for those accursed public atheistic) run schools? I hope the latter.
Out pops a number somewhere around 4,500,000,000 years (or at least hat’s the expected result). That’s a whole lot of zeros!
Obviously too many for Roger’s little mind to comprehend, though his brain is filled with even more zeroes. And we see his reliance on biblical authority allows him not to think about anything objectively or rationally, since all those zeroes bouncing around in his head like ping pong balls make him dizzy.
It’s a good thing Rog is not teaching his misguided version of biology in public schools anymore! If he prefers the “authority” of ancient myths to reality, that’s his business, but at least he’s not inflicting it on students anymore. Oh, and not to confuse him further, but it’s a lot easier to write that big scary number as 4.5 x 10^9.
From the Flood to Abraham is some 350 years. Add to that the Babelonion ‘language crisis’ and the fact that Abraham visits a great Egyptian Empire (The Middle Kingdom) is quite remarkable.
To avoid this, some YEC’s rewrite the whole of Egyptian history to fit it in the biblical chronology
As if the Bible chronology requires no assumptions?
You cannot introduce facts into a faith fight.
Remember that the claim of Biblical authority (no matter how much, or how little, you value that) is based on some modern person’s thoughts.
Most people will add to what the Bible clearly says about some things, and ignore what it clearly says about other things. The whole thing about Baraminology is just made up. While very few people accept what the Bible clearly says about the Sun, Moon and stars.
According to a YouTube interview with Roger and some AIG guy, young Roger was teaching (badly) in Wyoming and injecting lots of good old time religion into his chemistry and biology. Apparently, either he was warned by the administration (most likely) or he knew he was teaching out of bounds (most definitely) that he decided to pack in his teaching career. Rather that was a voluntary move or not he doesn’t clarify.
Nothing much to see here other than another undereducated Christian apologist living a delusion.
Roger:
“To be fair, there are some differences in various ancient manuscripts that you should study if you want to understand this issue in detail. But you’ll find the dates vary by a few thousand years at the most.”
If the dates vary by a few thousand years, the earth is no longer 6000 years old but somewhere between, say, 2000 and 10000 years old. Granted, this is still ridiculous from any realistic point of view; but doesn’t a range of “a few thousand years” trouble the YECs?
“Christians should look to God’s Word to determine right and wrong, so why shouldn’t they do so on matters like the age of the earth?’
The first is questionable, but let me accept it for the sake of argument. The answer to this question is almost as simple as 2 + 2+ 2 = 6. Ethically right or wrong is not the same as scientifically correct or incorrect.
Off topic, but important news: Dumbski has produced a new turd. This take on it is hilarious.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/recursivity/2016/09/11/beating-the-dead-horse-of-intelligent-design/
To give credence to the Genesis chronology, one must believe that the biblical Dunedain lived long, long lives, like Adam who died at the age of 930 years or Methuselah who died at 969, the same year as the flood. And, one must believe that they and women in their 80s, 100s and older had children. Adam and Eve were supposedly 130 when they had their first child. Seriously, did it take them that long to figure it out? Creationist logic truly boggles the mind.
To give credence to the Young Earth chronology, one must want to. Just as one must want to believe in heliocentrism to take a figurstive interpretation of the Bible.
In the first half of the 20th century, there were very few even fundamentalist Christians who were YEC. Most found some way to accept more than 10,000 years. (They probably didn’t go so far as billions of years, but then, scientists weren’t all that sure about the age of things, either.)
I don’t understand why YEC suddenly became popular. Maybe because scientists were becoming so certain about what they knew?
Now it’s just getting stupid. Why even pay attention to these morons. Better to listen to the drunks at the end of the bar at 1:00 a.m.; at least they’ll wake up
Yeah, calculating the age of the solar system is just unnecessarily complicated; better to just use elementary school arithmetic and a cheap, four-function calculator.
Here is yet another YEC “paper” using the same argument that Jason Lisle used to calculate the rate of recession of the Moon’s orbit; namely, dr/dt = k/r^6 and plugging in some numbers to come up with an age that they claim is inconsistent with the age of the solar system.
Apparently this “impressive calculus-level calculation” is copied from YEC to YEC without anyone questioning its validity. This is the third place I have found it.
Even more “impressive” are all their answers to perceived strawman “counter arguments” from scientists they never hear from. It never occurs to them that any real physicist who actually knows how to do the correct calculation would point out to them that their “calculation” is complete gibberish.
So, he just tosses the speed of light in the trash?
@MaryL, yep, I’ve thought the starlight problem was the clearest comeback to YEC clap-trap.
Good question.
Aside from the obvious conflicting evidence from nature, the question relies on the assumption that we know what “God’s Word was.” In reality we have no clue what “God’s Word” was. The oldest scraps of the Hebrew bible (and they are mere scraps) are contained in various Dead Sea scrolls, which were written in the first century BCE. That would have been about 4,000 years after the events in question. Some of those scraps have different wording for the same verse – or partial verse – which they refer to. I believe only a few words of the creation verses in Genesis can be found there.
That’s it. Before that, it’s only conjecture – human conjecture. Since the keeping of records, God has been conspicuously silent. For a deity that was once highly active in human affairs, he has shown a remarkable disinterest over the past 2,500 years or so. In fact, his absence calls into question the stories of his ever being there in the first place.
This should bother someone who asks “who are you going to trust?”
No, you place your tust in evidence and reason above the “authority” of the Bible–the same “authority” once used to argue that the sun revolves around the earth, something even (most) creationists reject today and must desperately deny that the Bible claims.
Who you gonna trust? Well Hambone is essentially a preacher. ALL preachers lie. ALL holey book o’BS LIE! So definitely will not trust Hambone or his book o’BS.
“The same skeptical scientists who say the earth is 4.5 billion years old would tell you dead men don’t rise from the grave days later.”
I’ll have to tell all of the biology teachers I’ve had, ever, all about this, as all espoused a belief in an Old Earth and were, well, not all Christians, but a mix of Christian and agnostic with a pagan thrown in for flavouring.
I do appreciate the attempt to divide the entire world into just two groups, though. That certainly seems useful and not at all problematic.
To appreciate just how delusional Patterson and his ilk are, it’s fun to check out the Ussher Chronology and how the good bishop went about constructing it. Turns out all the information Ussher used was not in the Bible but came from other sources. Seems to me Patterson and Hambo need to explain that. Also, there are many gaps in the chronology. Surely Hambo and Patterson don’t make ASSUMPTIONS about filling those gaps. Assumptions are bad, right?
But, getting to a practical matter, according to the chronology it was 300 years between the end of the Flood and the Tower of Babel. The chronology only lists the sons and sons of sons and not all that many sons, too. Where were the daughters? How did the world go from 8 people to “civilizations” ruled by the sons of sons in 300 years?
Of course, any reasonable, rational person would say that this is all just a fable and that says quite a lot about Patterson and Hambo right there.
Something funny about the emphasis of meteorites. First it makes it sound like we can’t get an ancient age from rocks on the Earth. There are in fact zircons found in Australia that date to 4.4 billion years (the oldest rocks somewhat younger). The fact that the oldest meteorites are only 200 million years older shows how robust certain theories of lunar formation and crust formation are from a time perspective.
Of course the AIG narrative is that only by making the mental leap from meteorites forming the Earth is the age of the Earth correct, when in fact there are plenty of ancient rocks on the Earth.
It’s always irked me that creationists purport to “take God at His Word” but never accept all of the implications of their assertions. They’ll accept Biblical chronology and history, but when it comes to cosmology they become the Episcopalians they slander. Rather than swallowing their whole pill and believe that the earth is flat and the sky is a solid dome with water over it (and monsters in the water of course) they BS like like the cafeteria christian losers they typically malign. It’s pathetic. If you can’t trust God on cosmology, then why should you trust it on anything else? I mean really.
@James Bolton Theuer
While I agree with you, the dome over the flat Earth was generally recognized as incorrect even in antiquity, so one could argue that it is “obvious that it is not to be taken literally”. The same category as the Fable of the Trees and the Bramble (in Judges 9).
The situation with geocentrism cannot be so easily dismissed, for it was taken literally, by every Bible believer, with no exception, up until the rise of modern science. (It is also nice that so many people take heliocentrism merely on the authority of merely human scientists. It is not “obvious”, even today, that the Earth is in a yearly orbit of the Sun.)
I see what you mean, but Ken Sham asserts that the “Genesis 3 attack” on the authority of “God’s Word” has been present from the beginning of creation (https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2013/07/09/the-state-of-the-nation-and-the-genesis-3-attack/). The fact that that name is a hilarious misnomer (the serpent doesn’t dispute Yahweh’s assertions or lie about the consequences of eating the fruit, but Yahweh does lie) goes straight over their heads. If they consistently believed what they claim to, then they wouldn’t care about what ancient christians believed. They certainly couldn’t care less in other theological areas (the use of icons, for example).
Wait the serpent does dispute Yahweh. Disregard that statement.
Burger King of Kings – Have It Yahweh!