Creation

reation 'ex nihilo' means creation out of nothing. Most ancient religions placed implicit limits on the power of the gods, and therefore usually did not claim that creation was entirely ex nihilo.

Many experts in Hebrew have carefully examined the creation accounts in Genesis and confirm that they are not 'ex nihilo'. In both creation stories, the basics were already there - the waters, the dry land, the wind and therefore the air.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

Answer 1

The use of chemicals for healing or other purposes has been known from the time of Adam. Through inspiration the Lord made it know unto Adam and his progenitors which herbs to use. In the beginning only natural herbs were used.We now know that other elements taken from the earth, other than herbs, can be used when administered by themselves or combined are useful to mankind.

Answer 2

I believe that the question refers to the origination of life on Earth, and not to the use of chemicals in healing. It has not been established with absolute certitude when the first life appeared on Earth, but fossil evidence shows that stromatolites existed as early as 3500 million years ago, and more recent findings suggest the possibility that life already existed hundreds of millions of years before that. So the answer to the question is: it took the Earth at most a billion years after its formation to produce life, and probably at least half a billion years.

This question is about the age of the universe and the age of the earth, so any must address both issues and provide supporting evidence for the age of both. Moreover, although scientific estimates are constantly being revised, the real issue is not whether the estimates are marginally wrong, but whether they are dramatically wrong. Young Earth creationists insist that the earth is only a few thousand years old.

Present estimates put the age of the earth at 4.54 billion years, plus or minus 45 million. The oldest things so far found on earth are zircon crystals in Western Australia - these are more than 4 billion years old. The preponderance of evidence points to these ages. They have been measured in various different ways, and they all tend to point towards the same age range. This information is always open to challenge as new knowledge comes to light, but clearly the true figure is close to 4.54 billion years.

Creationists usually ignore other scientific dating methods and focus on attacking only radiation dating, by speculating that rates of decay of radioisotopes may have changed most dramatically in the recent past. The reason for this assertion is the need to claim that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Of course, if all rocks are exactly the same age - 6,000 years - why do different rocks in the geological column provide different ages via radioisotope dating, with the youngest rocks in any locality consistently at the top of the column? Some creationists speculate that the rates of decay of radioisotopes changed so dramatically due to some catastrophe, such as the biblical Flood. However, moon rocks have also been found to be just over 4 billion years old, and they would be entirely unaffected by any Earth-bound flood.

Present estimates put the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years. Light from the nearest star to our sun takes 4 years to get here, but light from distant galaxies takes millions of years to get here. For radiation to reach Earth from the most distant discernible sources in only the last few thousand years, the speed of light must have been millions of times higher than it is now, with a sudden and most dramatic fall in its speed everywhere in the universe, in the last few thousand years. Like the creationist claim that radiation decay rates changed dramatically only a few thousand years ago, this is just too improbable to be taken seriously.

Another answer from our community:

Alternate If you believe in current scientific cosmology the would be yes, as above. If you believe in Creation the would be no. Quite a lot of verifiable and repeatable scientific data points to the earth being much younger than suggested by current science.

Some believe that there is no way to reliably check these ages since we cannot go back and test the early earth and repeat its beginning. In any case dating methods, such as those involving radioactive decay such as uranium to lead or potassium to argon involve three unprovable assumptions and so may not be at all correct. It is known that they fail when testing rocks of known age due to contamination. Notes: People will often refer to this general debate as being between Creation and Evolution. It is important to know that evolution is a relatively recent process in cosmological time. Evolution is not the fundamental science that has led to the theories of the origins of the universe. Proponents of creation/intelligent design are interested in at least these two areas of scientific theory: origins of the universe, usually called 'cosmology' and usually associated with astronomy and sometimes physics; and the origins of different species, currently called evolution and usually considered part of biology. Evolution does not address issues of the origins of life itself, another question of biology that is important for creationists.

Credible scientific evidence suggesting that the earth and universe are considerably younger than the scientific estimates should be carefully examined. Generally people holding to younger ages are basing their interpretations on scriptural accounts that suggest a younger world, and they assume that the accounts are authoritative. Other scientists start with a different set of assumptions, develop sometimes brilliant strategies to test them out, they make measurements, share their data and the material is available for others to verify, refute or re-interpret. People coming from faith-based positions tend to hold a more dogmatic view, essentially by definition, although many from an allegedly scientific perspective hold their position no less dogmatically. Their opinion is not discovered or uncovered, but revealed. Science is a process, and scientists should be cautious about putting too much weight on current beliefs until they have withstood the test of time-- lots and lots of time.

No. It's not true and even evolutionists question the dates and the dating methods.

They are not absolute and proven as evolutionary believers so often state.

'The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radiodecay rates of uranium and thorium. Such "confirmation" may be short-lived as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radiodecay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences.

And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man.'

Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC, 'Secular catastrophism'. Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p.21.

'All the above methods for dating the age of the earth, its various strata, and its fossils are questionable because the rates are likely to have fluctuated widely over earth history. A method that appears to have much greater reliability for determining absolute ages of rocks is that of radiometricdating.'....

'It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different(sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological "clock". The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists....".

William D. Stansfield, Ph.D.(animal breeding)(Instructor of Biology, California Polytechnic State University)in The Science of Evolution, Macmillan, New York, 1977,pp.82 and 84.

'In conventional interpretation of K-Ar age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or to low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geologic time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily attributed to excess or loss of argon. '

A. Hayatsu(Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada), 'K-Ar isochron age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia'. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 16, 1979,p.974.

'Thus, if one believes that the derived ages in particular instances are in gross disagreement with established facts of field geology, he must conjure up geological processes that could cause anomalous or altered argon contents of the minerals.'

Prof. J. F. Evernden (Department of Geology, University of California, Berkeley, USA) and Dr. John R. Richards (Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra),'Potassium-argon ages in eastern Australia'. Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, vol. 9(1), 1962,p.3.

Regarding the rubidium/strontium (Rb/Sr) method:

'These results indicate that even total-rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age.'

Prof. Gunter Faure (Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA) and Prof. James L. Powell (Department of Geology,Oberlin College,Ohio, USA) in Strontium Isotope Geology, Springer-Verlag, Berlin and New York, 1972, p.102.

'One serious consequence of the mantle isochron model is that crystallization ages determined on basic igneous rocks by the Rb-Sr whole rock technique can be greater than the true age by many hundreds of millions of years. This problem of inherited age is more serious for younger rocks, and there are well-documented instances of conflicts between stratigraphic age and Rb-Sr age in the literature.'

Dr. C. Brooks (Professor of Geology, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada), Dr. D. E. James (Staff Member in geophysics and geochemistry, Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C., USA) and Dr. S. R. Hart (Professor of Geochemistry, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,USA), 'Ancient lithosphere: its role in young continental vulcanism'. Science,vol. 193, 17 September 1976, p.1093.

Answer The first thing is to decide what is meant be "recognized scientists" - eminent scientists, less eminent scientists who do perform pure research, or persons with advanced science degrees but perform little or no pure research. If reliable data on belief in creation within the scientific community is not available, we could start by establishing how many scientists believe in a personal god, because the number who literally believe in creation must be somewhat smaller than this.

• In 1998, a study by Larson and Witham appeared on the leading journal Nature ("Leading scientists still reject God"), showing that of the American scientists who had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, only about 7 percent believein a personal god. Religious believers form about 40 percent of the less eminent scientists in America.
• A study in Britain, undertaken by R. Elisabeth Cornwell and Michael Stirrat, involved sending a questionnaire to all 1,074 Fellows of the Royal Society who possessed an email address, offering several propositions and asking the scientists to rank their beliefs on that point from 1 to 7. About 23 percent responded and preliminary results indicate that, of these, 3.3 percent agreed strongly (chose 7) and 78.8 percent disagreed strongly (chose 1) that a personal god exists. A total of 12 Fellows chose 6 or 7 to indicate that they were believers, while 213 Fellows chose 1 or 2 to indicate that they were nonbelievers.

The first thing is to decide what is meant be "recognized scientists" - eminent scientists, less eminent scientists who do perform pure research, or persons with advanced science degrees but perform little or no pure research. If reliable data on belief in creation within the scientific community is not available, we could start by establishing how many scientists believe in a personal god, because the number who literally believe in creation must be somewhat smaller than this.

• In 1998, a study by Larson and Witham appeared on the leading journal Nature ("Leading scientists still reject God"), showing that of the American scientists who had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, only about 7 percent believe in a personal god. Religious believers form about40 percent of the less eminent scientists in America.
• A study in Britain, undertaken by R. Elisabeth Cornwell and Michael Stirrat, involved sending a questionnaire to all 1,074 Fellows of the Royal Society who possessed an email address, offering several propositions and asking the scientists to rank their beliefs on that point from 1 to 7. About 23 percent responded and preliminary results indicate that, of these, 3.3 percent agreed strongly (chose 7) and 78.8 percent disagreed strongly (chose 1) that a personal god exists. A total of 12 Fellows chose 6 or 7 to indicate that they were believers, while 213 Fellows chose 1 or 2 to indicate that they were nonbelievers.

Noting the use of the word "created" in the question, there can be only one answer. Creation speaks of the point at which anything begins to exist, so the answer is one of faith, not science. As such, God created oxygen.

If you happen to be Hindu, then Brahma, via his creation by Vishnu is likely responsible for oxygen.

The Azrec belied it was the godmother Teteoh innan.

The Maya belied it was Kukulkán and Tepeu.

The Finnish tell that it was Ilmater, daughter of Sky.

The ancestors of the Scandinavians, Anglos, and Saxons believed it was done by the gods Odin, Vili, and Vé.

According to the ancient Hawai'ian Kumulipo (creation story) it just happens in a Big Bang/evolution sort of way, up to the point that the four divine beings (Laʻilaʻi (Female), Kiʻi (Male), Kane (God), and Kanaloa (Octopus)), in the eighth wa.

Different ideas have risen throughout the history of man. No one has the market cornered though and respect for all is important.

• Creationists and Intelligent Design scientists believe animals were created as kinds, and that variations within those kinds have occurred over time by adaptation and by manipulation, such as the genetic selection of traits by breeders of pets and livestock. Evolutionary scientists usually believe complex animals evolved from simpler life forms. They do not generally explain how the simple life forms, which are also animals, came to be, although some believe that non-living protogenic amino acids may have combined and generated life forms.

• Creation Theory is that all life comes from created kinds. There is no argument against speciation. All changes in life forms are micro-evolution, and do not add complexity or genetic material. The fossil record shows fully formed abrupt appearance and stasis (no change) in each layer. Even evolutionists admit this fact.James Crow, a modern leader for evolution theory admits, "...the details (of how evolution could have taken place) are difficult and obscure." (The Twilight of Evolution, p.48) Almost all the touted proofs for evolution show only micro-evolution (eg. Darwin's finches, the peppered moth, antibiotic resistent bacteria), which is not disputed by Creationists or Intelligent Design proponents. These changes have no increase in complexity, but merely emphasize certain pre-existing traits over others. Evolution Theory totally and directly contradicts the well-proven Second Law of Thermodynamics--the universal law of increasing entropy. Things tend toward disorder over time, unless there is outside influence. A common misconception is that 'change equals evolution.' Animals change or adapt to their environment because they already have the inbuilt genetic ability to do so. No new genetic information is added or written into the genetic code. It has also never been demonstrated that chance random processes can generate anything remotely like life. Biochemistry clearly demonstrates that even the simplest cell is incredibly complex and is easily destroyed. Water is particularly destructive. If even the simplest cell cannot arise spontaneously, neither can anything else, including the animals.

• Animals came to be God creating them. Every building has to have a builder. If you start there that at least states there has to be a higher power! Everything in the Bible is true and not one thing has ever been proven wrong.

• In Genesis 1: 20 God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." In Genesis 1: 24 he said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." We know that the Bible is the true, inspired Word of God. So how much more proof do you need? Maybe in the beginning of the world, animals and humans lived longer, so you won't find many fossils of them. The world was pure before the Fall of Man, and we don't know how long the time between the Creation and the Fall of Man. It could have been centuries, or years, or days, or seconds. But maybe that is why you don't find many fossils of animals in the first layers of earth. And God didn't see fit to tell us how everything fit together. He just told us what we need to know, and we need to accept that. So, animals were made on the fifth and sixth days of creation.

• The fossil record shows the gradual emergence of different, and generally more complex species over time. For example, the oldest layers only contain bacteria. Newer layers contain mollusks, invertebrates, etc. The newest layers contain vertebrates.

• Creationist Theory does not explain geographic distribution. The most closely related species are generally also found in the closest proximity to each other.

• Creationist Theory does not explain vestigial structures. Vestigial structures are the leftovers of evolution that are no longer functional. For example, wings on flightless birds, remnant hindlimb/pelvic bones in whales, tailbone on humans. If we were created, why the extra spare parts?

• Creationist Theory does not explain why species' designs contain flaws. With evolution, flaws can be passed down from ancestors. Evolution only selects for the best available, but does not guarantee that the best is without flaws. Sometimes it requires a trade off. For example, primates (including humans) have a non-functional gene for synthesizing vitamin c because presumably ancestral primates had so much vitamin c in their diets from fruit that the gene was not necessary. The gene is still there, but unlike in other animals, it doesn't work, so now that our diets don't always contain enough vitamin c, we can get scurvy. Another flaw in our design is that our windpipe stems from the throat so it can be easy to die from choking. If we were simply created, then why would there be these flaws in our physical design?

• Where is the mixing of features? If animals were just created, wouldn't there be a more random mixing of features? Instead, you have groupings of species sharing many similar traits as if they were related to one another or evolved from common ancestors. For example, mammals are grouped because they all produce milk. But all mammals also are warm blooded and have hair or fur (even whales have vestigial hair in the fetal stages). Where are the feathered mammals? Where are the birds that bear live young? You can find the features of older groups appearing on groups that evolved from these groups, but you don't see traits from more recent groups on species from older groups. Sure, there are a few anomalies out there, but do a little research and evolution explains why.

• Creation is just one possible explanation for the origin of life on earth. There is no single way to demonstrate how life began. Any who claim creation are not necessarily correct. It's a war of words. Of philosophies and ideologies. And it is likely to remain so for some time. Until then, just about any argument concerning the origin of life on earth is as "valid" as the next. The Bible thumper is no more or less correct than the one who thumps a science text. Believe what you want to. But your beliefs do not invalidate those of others.

• All the proof one needs to see the changes evolution has effected are at hand. The earth has changed dramatically over the billions of years since it was formed. When life began (by what mechanism one is free to speculate on), it began a long, long time ago. As the planet changed, the life changed, evolved, to adapt to the new conditions. Or it died. It's that simple. The ideation of the tree of life (by Linnaeus) was a brilliant stroke. Modern evolutionary synthesis (MES), the state of the art construct that deals with evolution, is fact. (We just disagree amongst ourselves about abiogenesis - the mechanism of life's inception.) Many Christians are on board with MES and modern science's take on the age of the earth. Literal interpretation of the Bible leads to severe ideological conflicts. But some believe in a young earth. This seems to be adherence to obviously flawed ideology. Particularly in the face of the mountain of facts that any individual could understand. To evolutionists, young earth Christians seem to practice a form of denial on an epic scale. Intelligent Design Science is pseudo-science. It is an ideology that appears to have been designed for a single purpose: to get creation taught in public schools. The basic laws of existence state that nothing comes from nothing. However that would not preclude the possibility that life can come from nonliving things. Protenogenic amino acids are not alive, and neither are the proteins they create. However, a simple combination of proteins with the necessary levels of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to form strong bonds could very well result in single celled organisms, which, through symbiosis could bond with others and create multi-celled organisms. These things can occur spontaneously. Science has not demonstrated they did occur that way, but it would be foolish to deny that it is possible. There is no way to prove that life here on earth did not come from somewhere else. It could have, and there is more than one explanation as to how it could have occurred.

• Some molecules, acids, a pool of lava and luck.

• If something needed to put the 'objects in question' into motion in order for them to even have a chance to bond into life, why can that not be the case to evolutionists? There is still room for evolution after the cause of motion. Also, why can the world and all life within it not have been intelligently designed but designed to evolve?

Claim: All changes in life forms are micro-evolution, and do not add complexity or genetic material.

The Science- This is simply not true. New genetic material passed through the filter of natural selection easily gives rise to complexity. Such complexity can be seen in the case of a nylon-eating bacteria. New genetic material can come about by various mechanisms. The two most dominant ones in vertebrate evolution are genetic recombination and genetic mutations. These are widely studied phenomena and have an extremely well documented scientific basis.

ClaimThe fossil record shows fully formed abrupt appearance and stasis (no change) in each layer.

The Science- I can only imagine that the author is referring to the Cambrian explosion, which is a well documented event in geology. Furthermore, there have been found countless precambrian fossiles, and first solid evidence of life dates back to roughly 3.5 Bya.

Claim-Even evolutionists admit this fact.James Crow, a modern leader for evolution theory admits, "...the details (of how evolution could have taken place) are difficult and obscure." (The Twilight of Evolution, p.48)

The Science- This is a case of quote mining and, even if quoted correctly, isn't evidence for anything. What one scientist, or any person, says about his own personal incredulity says nothing of the viability of a theory.

Claim-Almost all the touted proofs for evolution show only micro-evolution (eg. Darwin's finches, the peppered moth, antibiotic resistent bacteria), which is not disputed by Creationists or Intelligent Design proponents. These changes have no increase in complexity, but merely emphasize certain pre-existing traits over others.

The Science- I cannot emphasise the error of this statement. I return to the case of the nylon-eating bacteria, where nylon is a polymer first synthesised in the lab in 1935 by Wallace Carothers. "Macro-evolution" (mind you, biologists and geneticists alike do not differentiate between the two) is merely the result of accumulated "micro-evolution". Whereas 1+1+1=3, 1+1+1+1... would eventually equal 100, enough for one to call it macro-evolution by the "micro-macro" standard.

Claim-Evolution Theory totally and directly contradicts the well-proven Second Law of Thermodynamics--the universal law of increasing entropy.

The Science The Second Law of Thermodynamics explains how entropy tends to increase in a closed system. The way this law interacts with biology is that organisms must fight the tendency for disorder lest their cells will collapse. This is the purpose of homeostasis, a process which every organism shares. It has absolutely nothing to do with the increasing complexity of the global gene pool. Apples and oranges!

Claim-Animals change or adapt to their environment because they already have the inbuilt genetic ability to do so. No new genetic information is added or written into the genetic code.

The Science - This is a statement which simply contradicts modern research. I have already written a great deal about mutations and its mechanisms, so I won't comment further.

Claim-It has also never been demonstrated that chance random processes can generate anything remotely like life. Biochemistry clearly demonstrates that even the simplest cell is incredibly complex and is easily destroyed. Water is particularly destructive. If even the simplest cell cannot arise spontaneously, neither can anything else, including the animals.

The Science- It has been demonstrated that amino acids can be synthesised using only a mild electric current from where there were once only simple gases such as, among others, H2O (water vapour), CO (carbonmonoxide) and CH4 (methane). Furthermore, this has nothing to do with evolutionary theory. This is an entirely different field of study altogether called Abiogenesis and is in the field of Organic Chemistry rather than Evolutionary Biology. More importantly, Evolutionary theory is not dependent on Abiogenesis, and Abiogenesis is not dependent on Evolutionary theory for either to be true. This statement supposes that this is the case.

The oldest rock samples, zirconium oxides, were discovered in situ and then analyzed to an accuracy of a few million years. These samples yield an age of something on the order of 3.9 billion years or so. But the earth "recycles" rock, and we have to look around a bit to find "old" rock. That is why we cannot place the age of the earth with native material.

No matter how old the earth is, it is clear from the geological column that fossils are laid down in sequence, with the most recent fossils above the earliest ones. Any method that established a minimum age for the most recent fossils would at least provide a minimum age for the earth. Early in the 19th century, Charles Lyell examined the Etna volcano on Sicily and studied the historical records of frequent eruptions. He noticed that each time it erupted, a new layer of lava would be added, causing the mountain to grow at a measurable rate. By knowing the height of the volcano, its approximate rate of growth and the frequency of eruptions, Lyall determined that the volcano must be several hundred thousand years old. At the edge of the volcano, under the first lava flows, he found fossil shells that were virtually identical to the shells of molluscs still found in the Mediterranean Sea. From this, he deduced that the fossils were geologically recent, that a hundred thousand years was geologically short, and that the age of the earth must be immense.

Even many creationists now accept the evidence for the immense age of the Earth. No longer do all creationists follow the Bible literally, instead we now have the traditional "Young-Earth" creationists and the "Old-Earth" creationists who largely accept that the Earth really is around 4.5 billion years old.

Use the link to the related question on how scientists can date rock using radiometry.

The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) date to about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago (by several radiometric dating methods). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, and include minerals which are themselves as old as 4.1 to 4.2 billion years. Rocks of this age are relatively rare, however rocks that are at least 3.5 billion years in age have been found on North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia.

While these values do not compute an age for the Earth, they do establish a lower limit (the Earth must be at least as old as any formation on it). This lower limit is at least concordant with the independently derived figure of 4.55 billion years for the Earth's actual age.

[As an informational but relevant note, Kent Hovind holds no degrees from any accredited institution. (He is not a "Doctor" of anything.) And at this writing, he is currently housed in Federal prison. A link is provided for factual data.]

For now, we cannot be sure. Who knows? Maybe soon the next Galileo, Columbus, or even the next Wright Brothers will show up, giving us the magical constant that will give each of these equations the same, and correct, answer.