[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by Boreas

Well, the flood was supposed to have been long before the time of Christ and He lived 2000 years ago. Back in the 1600s an Anglican Archbishop named James Ussher sat down with the Old and New Testaments and set out to discover the age of the Earth. Ussher determined that the Earth was born the night before Sunday, October 23, 4,004 BC. So the Earth is coming up on it's 6,014th birthday. As you will probably guess, I think this is complete and utter nonsense.

There is something interesting about the world 6,000 years ago. It's the time that people began to organize themselves into complex societies, the basis for the way we live today. It's when people started systematically keeping historical records. This happened in the Middle East, the land which the Old Testament talks about. So, the Prophets and Patriarchs of the Hebrews wouldn't have had access to information older than around 6,000 years.

What you're talking about above is pretty much the Creationist argument for world history and I'm not surprised that you say it doesn't make much sense to you. That's because it doesn't make much sense. The Bible was never intended to be an historical or scientific document. The fact that some folks try to make it into one has caused a lot of trouble.

Anyway, according to anthropologists, the oldest known direct ancestors of modern humans lived around 4.5 million years ago. They weren't human. Scientists call them "hominids" which more or less means "like humans". By that time the earth was already very old (around 4 billion years old).

The first humans, beginning with Homo habilis ("handy man"), appeared around 2.5 million years ago. They were really primitive. They didn't really look like us very much but they walked erect, had culture, made tools, etc. There were several other steps on the way, finally getting to Homo sapiens (us) a little less than 100,000 years ago.

The thing is, an all-powerful God who has existed for all time could have created the world in any way and at any time He chose to. To insist that He did it in a way that we humans can understand, at a time which placed us in the world from its beginnings and especially in a way specifically designed for our benefit, is just human arrogance.

John

Thank You.

And, some white people will fight the notion that the human race originated in Africa, tooth and nail until the day we bury their asses, because admitting even the remotest possibilty of this would mean they are descended from.....GULP.....AFRICANS!!!!

Dave