God years, days and other obscure measurements.
OP - August 17, 2009, 11:08 PM
So, FinallyFree has a question for all of our night owls tonight.
According to many Muslims, Islam is compatible with evolutionary theory and they do often accept that the earth is older than young-earth creationist 6000 years estimation. They can do this (in their eyes) because Allah's "six days" refers to periods rather than specific days.
Interesting, though, isn't it? According to Allah's useless book of crap proverbs and boring stories-one of Allah's days is as long as 1000 earthly years (Surah 22:47, and 32:5). Another assertion is that one of Allah's days is as long as 50,000 earthly years (Surah 70:4). Of course, the contradiction is what you would expect when a man makes up bullshit on the spot and is later quoted for it.
Anyway, the lousy contradiction is a dime a dozen in the quran, the point is, in scenario one Allah created the world in 6000 years, in scenario two, Allah created the world in 300,000 years. Either way, Allah is telling serious porkies. Because we know through many many scientific methods that the universe let alone the earth is a whole lot longer than either period. The problem is also that in Tirmidhi hadith among others and in general in Muslim tradition, Adam is thought to have lived for a thousand years, this is a copy of the biblical story of adam living for 930 years. Adam is also thought to have been the longest living man, so, lets say for arguments sake that everyone of the 124,000 prophets (speculated in some Islamic books) that existed before Muhammad also lived for a thousand years and that none of them lived at the same time (even though some of them did-like Isa and Yahya) the problem would be that it would make the earth around 124,000,000 years old. Today's scientific view is that the earth is 4.55 billion years old. 124 million falls a long way short of this. And even that is a very speculative number.
But, Muhammad didn't intend the earth to be 124 million years old, in fact he copied the number almost digit-by-digit from the bible because he probably thought that it was accurate-or that it would score him points with teh Jews. Unless the chronology from the bible is one of the many "corrupted" things in it, Muhammad probably believed in it (why would they corrupt the chronology? There was no evolution v creationism debate at the time). So, that would make the intended age of the Earth according to Prophet Mo (based-like many other things in Islam-on the bible): either 12000 or 56000 years old.
Either number is completely innaccurate. We are also forgetting that man was created-rather than homosapiens evolving from earlier species, Man was literally created as he is now. Allah had no idea about the previous species! Or forgot to mention them. I also make the date of the creation of the universe/earth and humanity for simplicity, but according to traditional Islamic thought Adam's creation was very close to the creation of the earth, and the universe isn't even mentioned.
But this whole confusing diatribe is completely pointless when it comes to one question: "Why the fuck didn't the grand designer of the universe-the masterminding genius-simply tell us all that the Universe is so-and-so billion years old? Was it so hard to put in a long number?Wouldn't it have advanced this area of Science and scientific thought in general by hundreds of years? Or is it simply because the writer of this book was not the creator of the Universe?"
"I am ready to make my confession. I ask for no forgiveness father, for I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive. I did not ask for the life that I was given, but it was given nonetheless-and with it, I did my best"
Topic: God years, days and other obscure measurements.