Ancient Egypt and a young Earth

[QED]

Up until last night, watching a BBC dramatization of the translation of the Rosetta Stone (a proclamation by Pharaoh Ptolemy V written in three different texts), I hadn't appreciated that Champollion (the Frenchman credited with being the first to understand the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs) was on a mission to find out about the age of the world.

Thanks to his work subsequent translations of the copious written material found in tombs has provided us with a comprehensive list of individuals dating to and around the same era as Noah's Flood -- supposed to have happened in 2370 BCE. From the archeology this would have been during the fifth dynasty, more specifically during the reign of a King called Djedkare who was living from around 2450-2300 BCE

So how can it have been business as usual in Egypt while the rest of the world was supposed to have been submerged? In the 1820's the Roman Catholic Church was breathing down Champollion's neck nervous of what he might uncover. It seems that Champollion took some of his own discoveries to his grave for fear of the heresy it represented.

But the facts and figures have been readily available ever since so I'd like to see a convincing explanation for this mismatch between the information acquired from the Archeology in Egypt and the supposed dating of the Noahic Flood from the YEC perspective. Searching these Forums for king "Djedkare" came up with nothing so perhaps this hasn't been debated before. I know there are a few YEC's active here so I hope we can have a good debate about it now.

[micatala]

Now you are confusing religion and science without having defined either.

I assume the usual meanings of these terms. If you are confused, I would suggest consulting a dictionary.

As a scientist, you can't define religion scientifically, whereas as a religionist you would be able to define science religiously.

This is beside the point, and also nonsense. Obviously, anyone can look up the definitions in the dictionary, be they a scientist, a religionist, or a Green Bay Packers fan. Perhaps Neanderthals are not able to use dictionaries, as they are all extinct and never knew how to read in the first place.

If you recall, you had claimed that the usual understanding of what science is is inherently atheistic and secular. I pointed out that science does not take any position with respect to the existence or non-existence of God, and that many scientists are believers, and gave a few examples.

Now you are simply dodging the point with word play.

The second principle is not unlike what we do in the legal system or any other system where we hope to achieve consistency and replicability. We would never allow 'GOd did it' explanations in a court of law.

That's a ridiculous legal assertion on your part since our courts are founded on the Declaration of Independence from tyranny. Since when are Jeffersonian references to self-evident truths about certain inalienable rights being endowed on all men by their Creator not admissible in an American court of law?

I think you are confusing the comments I was making regarding what is admissable evidence within a court of law, and the philosophical underpinnings of the constitution on which our laws are based.

Yes, the U.S. constitution does acknowledge that many of the rights which we take for granted are inalienable and God-given. When we say 'these truths are self-evident' we are really saying that we are going to take these truths as assumptions for which proof is irrelevant. All logical/axiomatic systems must make some assumptions. We might have reasons (hopefully good ones) for making these assumptions, but they are assumptions nonetheless.


However, rights are not the same thing as legally admissable evidence. Again, consult your dictionary. Any lawyer who walked into court and said 'we hold it as self-evident that my client is innocent, regardless of what the evidence may say' would be laughed out of court. Saying 'God told me he was innocent and that should be good enough for the judge and the jury' will only accelerate his or her departure.

The entire system is worthless if God is left out government and only secular humanism is approved of in law. Now you are polluting pure "science" with philosophy, politics and anti-theistic sentiments.

This is irrelevant to the point I was making. You are again confusing the issue of evidence with the rationale for the legal system and government. Insisting on legally admissable evidence in no way negates anyone's beliefs in the God-given nature of our rights.

So what is the court system based on then, scientific or religious beliefs?
I admit that there are scientific laws as well as social, religous and political laws.

The constitution and the laws which derive thereof are based on the best judgment of what will be conducive to fostering a civil and free society. These judgments are certainly informed by our Judeo-CHristian history and other philosophical and ethical considerations. Yes, the idea of God has been a part of how our system became what it is today.

The court system is a system for determining when people have broken the law, or to settle other legal disputes. It functions through the use of legally admissable evidence.

To make analogy with science, one could certainly postulate that God determined what the physical laws of the universe would be. One scenario is that He or She did this prior to the Big Bang, and the laws of our universe have been operating since that time.

In doing science, we are trying to ascertain what these laws are, and to determine how they would apply in certain situations by looking at the evidence we have from the natural universe.

One major difference, of course, is that in science, we assume that the laws (God-given or not) cannot be broken, while in human society they obviously can be broken. OUr history shows us that when it seems that a scientific law 'has been violated', it turns out upon further investigation that it was only because we did not have a complete understanding of the law or principle involved. This history tends to support the idea that the laws are 'inviolable' and not whimsical.

From a religious standpoint, this notion is certainly consistent with the notion that God is always the same, now and forever, that his laws are immutable and eternal, etc.

The creationist notion that physical laws have been changed in the past, at the discretion of God, actually seems to me to be inconsistent with the character of the Biblical God.

You seem to ignore creation science and the Creator as well.

Yes, I am certainly ignoring creation science because in my view, it is a fiction and there is no such thing at least as practiced by those today who call themselves creation scientists.

I most certainly do not ignore the Creator. In my mind, science is discovering the laws as they were set out by the Creator, even if some of the scientists doing the work do not acknowledge this Creator.

THis fact does not matter in the least, just as it does not matter whether a person who goes to court acknowledges the history of our legal system or its roots in the Judeo-CHristian tradition. As long as they bring valid evidence to the table, they may well win their case, whether they are a Christian, Muslim, atheist, or whatever.

It seems to me it is the so-called creation scientists who ignore the Creator by ignoring a large part of the evidence that this Creator has supplied us through his creation. As it says in Psalm 19, "the Heavens declare the glory of God."

IMHO opinion, so-called creation science de-glorifies the reputation of this creation by trivializing the wisdom of God and putting their own limited opinions over the evidence that God has provided.

[Lambert]

Ussher's date for creation is unrealistic and will never play. For my own working purposes I suggest the Flood of Noah was about 3500 BC.

See http://www.ldolphin.org/barrychron.html for an analysis I think is more reasonable.

[micatala]

Hello Lambert and welcome to the forum.

I did browse through your citation, but confess I did not read the whole thing.

One thing I noted is that the writer seems to make the assumption that Jesus 'corrected' either the text of the OT or the interpretation of the OT that people had made up to that time and that these corrections were then passed onto the apostles and subsequently to the early church fathers, etc. I have to say, I have never heard such a contention made before. There certainly is no evidence in scripture that Jesus discussed such chronologies with the apostles, or that he even cared about them.

For the purposes of this thread, if one does accept the much older date of the flood, one might get around the particular evidence from Egypt that we have been talking about.

Unfortunately, it will not get around the other evidence like the annual ice layers in Greenland and the bristlecone pine tree rings. Here is one discussion of bristlecone pines, as well as oak trees, with respect to chronologies. Just the oak trees give us a span of at least 7000 years in which on catastrophe like a global flood occurred. See here for another discussion, which indicates no global catastrophe going back to at least 7000 BC.

[QED]

Unfortunately, it will not get around the other evidence like the annual ice layers in Greenland and the bristlecone pine tree rings. Here is one discussion of bristlecone pines, as well as oak trees, with respect to chronologies. Just the oak trees give us a span of at least 7000 years in which on catastrophe like a global flood occurred. See here for another discussion, which indicates no global catastrophe going back to at least 7000 BC.

Ah, 7000 BC. That would at least explain how come we have evidence of domesticated Chick Pea seeds in Jericho dating to 6500 BC.

[Chimp]

See http://www.ldolphin.org/barrychron.html for an analysis I think is more reasonable.

I noticed on the table at the bottom of the page a listing for "Light Speed
(times present value)"

Are you suggesting, a la Humphreys, that the speed of light is variable?

[Cathar1950]

If God is light then maybe the light speed is how much God has grown since then? 14.8 billion is the age the universe and 10.6 million Is how big God was then. Of course that means God is getting smaller as we enter the future.
I read they had a tusk, carved with Orion the hunter and the belt dating to 32,500 years.
That is older then God or is it bigger?
I often wonder that maybe there is a God but is not the creator but came with the universe. Kind of a package deal. The creator attribute came because we are like that and figure God should be more, and they were just bragging and didn't know anything. "My God lives on a mountain. So my God is the shy. So my God is bigger. Big deal mine is infinite plus one."