Rant: Believing the earth is 5000 years old is not ok

Freedom of thought is essential. Anyone should be allowed to put forth any idea and not be ridiculed or shun for it. This is how our world advances, and that’s the way it should be. It’s a given in any “free society”.

That being said, what starts out as a good intention can be perverted. This can bring us to accept an idiocy as a respectable theory. When something as asinine as “the earth is 5000 years old” becomes a somewhat accepted opinion, we, as a society, have to put our foot down.

Best case scenario, you discuss and explain why you believe the idea is wrong. Worst case scenario, you just don’t talk about it. Even “agreeing to disagree” makes us complicit, and lets people take it as a valid argument. Not to be overly dramatic, but this threatens the very essence of what make western culture a success: rational thinking.
Western societies have many many flaws, but they are still what works best to date. Democracy, capitalism, rational thinking… Perfect? Nope. But show me another system that works better and then we can talk.

For a lot of hot issues, “agreeing to disagree” is the best we can do to avoid sinking into everlasting pointless arguments. Abortion, death penalty, neo-capitalism, guns, religion even… But this is different. It is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of ignorance.

Rational thinking is non-negotiable. Cultural relativism teaches us that we should be respectful of other people’s ideas, no matter how strange they seem to us. Study them, understand them, respect them, sure. But I will not believe that women should have lesser rights then men, I will not believe that people can own other people, and I will not believe that opinion has the same weight as evidence.
We have a system where truth is established by facts, and facts are validated by evidence. We shouldn’t take it as a given. It is a precious thing and we should stand for it.

I might be stating the obvious here, but then I don’t understand why I don’t see more uproar, indignation and public outrage when officials state that “the earth is 5000 years old”, to give only one example. I am the most accepting person in the world, but this is not acceptable, and it is absolutely not ok.
And we shouldn’t stand for it, even for a second.

Actually, a second is ok. But it has long passed…

September 18th, 2008

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  • Derick

    I agree with you completely, which is why I didn’t post any of the theories. I knew that I would probably just misrepresent them in some way.

    It’s been a little while back, so it might take me a little while to find out all that information, but I will get it for you.

  • Keith

    Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity tells us (among other things) that time is not absolute. Time is not the same for all relative points in the universe. Conceivably, The earth can be billions of years old AND 5000 years old, depending on which clock you’re looking at.

    It’s the idea of the “Twin Paradox” (Special Relativity retold by Paul Langevin). Imagine you were to take identical twins and keep one on earth while sending the other into space in a rocket approaching the speed of light (and bring him back to earth). When the traveling twin returned, he would appear younger than his sibling. For the traveling twin 22 yrs have passed and for the earth-bound twin 26 yrs have passed despite the fact they were born within minutes of each other (I used arbitrary age differences to illustrate the principle).

    I’m tired of people telling me that because X is true, Y has to be false. No, X being true only means that X is true. It does nothing to disprove any other position.

    I don’t care how old the earth is. I don’t care how old other people think the earth is. I don’t want to close my mind to potential paradigm shifts because I think I have it all figured out. :)

  • http://www.frenchspin.com Patrick

    Hmmm let me guess; physics major, 1st year? :)

    Seriously though Keith, I don’t think the point is to count in dog years or in light speed years; when young earth theorists say the earth is 5000 years old, I’m pretty sure they don’t think of Einstein or relativity. They say: “men and dinosaurs lived happily together a while back, and now we can’t be sure what happened”.

    I think you’re talking about something quite different. Your point is strange to begin with (essentially: “relativity says the earth can be however old we want it to be”… really?) but I also think it doesn’t really have a lot to do with what we are talking about in the end.

    Again, these people don’t say “we could think it’s true from a certain point of view”, they say “the earth is 5000 “man years” old, period”.

  • http://relmstein.blogspot.com Relmstein

    Again, these people don’t say “we could think it’s true from a certain point of view”, they say “the earth is 5000 “man years” old, period”.

    I don’t know I’ve increasingly run into younger religious people who thought that god creating the universe in seven days was more a matter of relativity. They usually point to a passage from the bible saying that a day in the eye of god stretches to infinity, or something like that. I guess if you look at it from a modern point of view it hints that time is relative. Anyways the 5,000 years thing does bother me but it’s usually only the hardliners and older Christians who interpret it that way anymore.

  • bryan

    Keith,

    The Earth is quite large and does not travel near the speed of light no matter how you look at it. Thus it (as we do) experiences a more Newtonian relationship with time, which can be approximated as linear even at the time scale of the Universe.

    And if someone did manage to avoid the fact that only certain particles can travel at/near the speed of light, and found a way to zip around in this probably physically impossible spaceship, the effect would only be that this observer would see the Earth become older relative to his own age, not younger. There are no conditions where it would go the other way.
    :-)

    Bryan

  • Jack

    ” I am the most accepting person in the world, but this is not acceptable, and it is absolutely not ok.”
    do you not recognize that whilst your statement is absolutely correct in the relative context of your emotional outcry, that it is an absolute contradiction? That is the human nature as he sins.. he is always wrong, never right. he can be relatively wrong and right, but in the absolute, in God’s eyes, we are all wrong. and He lets you be wrong. He lets u say, “i am the most accepting person in the world” as if you actually are, then He lets you refute yourself by saying that you absolutely won’t accept something. He lets you do whatever you want. keep walkin, wherever you see fit

  • http://www.frenchspin.com Patrick

    @Jack
    I think it’s called a figure of speech, and I think you’re being very passive aggressive… :)

  • Jim

    It’s well known that Ancient Rome’s origins are around 750 years B.C.

    If the earth was really only 5 thousand years old, Do creationists really believe dinosaurs had already dominated the earth and become extinct in a mere 2 thousand years or so before the Roman Kingdom developed?

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