How can I be a Christian and believe in an "old earth" if there had to be death before "the Fall".

I don't think that you can believe in both, because then you would be contradicting yourself. I mean, come on, we have evidence of animals being millions of years old (dinosaurs), and the Bible mentions nothing of them. Earth Science does not take kindly to the Bible or Christianity, there are to many holes in it and evidence against it for us.

every primitive culture has a charming and mythical creation story. the ancient hebrews were no exception. It's nonsense of course, but primitive and stupid people will continue to beleive it no matter how much rational evidence is put before them because to do otherwise would threaten their whole world view - indeed their whole social structure (thinking of the US in particualr). If the bible is true, why are there several different versions of how judas died? why does only Matthew mention the wise men ( a tale which confirms astrology if ever there was one!) and why is hell, heaven and the devil only mentioned in New testament (becuase they were new concepts garnered from the persians thats why). Grow up and smell the (evolved) flowers. I used to be a 'born-again' christian until I grew up and applied just half an ounce of intellect and common sense to the whole thing. I havent got rid of Christ's basic concept - be nice to each other - but the rest is bunkum.

You cannot take the Bible seriously and at the same time believe the earth is ancient. The account of creation in Genesis is clearly written as historical narrative, as any Hebrew scholar will tell you. http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4141/ It is popular to claim that it is allegory or myth or some such, but these are modern interpretations invented since evolution took a grip on teh public imagination. They are not Biblically sound ideas. The New Testament contains at least 200 references to Genesis, of which over 100 refer to Genesis 1-11, and 25 of which are by Jesus himself. Jesus clearly accepted the Genesis account as historical. For example Lk 1, 70 "As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, Who have been since the world began," Also Mk 10: 6-9 "But at the beginning of Creation God 'made them male and female'. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." Jesus expects us to believe Genesis "For had ye believed Moses you would have believed me: for he wrote of me.But if ye believe not his writings how will ye believe My words?" It is interesting that if you listen to (typically evangelical) long-age apologists, they *always* try to justify their long-age position by recourse to (evolutionary) 'science', and not the Bible. Christians should wake up and smell the coffee! Evolution and old-earth ideas are easily scientifically refutable (http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3302/), it are utterly contradicted by the Bible (http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3049/). We do have the answers.

As a scientist, and a Christian I have no issues with the contradiction. Human ignorance on the mysteries of the Universe and the message of God is our problem, not the bible's or science in general. Let's start with an example from physics. Most science students will recognize the idea the twins paradox. It states that as one twin leaves Earth at speeds approaching celerity, when he returns he will be much younger then his twin. How is this possible? Go read a book, I won't bother wasting time on the math here. Another example given is the "falling into a black hole" scenario. If you are observing your friend falling into a black hole (a horrible idea in my mind) then you will see him slow down to such a point that eventually you will not see him moving at all. From your point of view he is stuck. From his point of view he is dead. You will age and die and still it will appear that almost nothing is happening. Take these two ideas into mind and you will see that in one, two objects that should be the same age are not, and in the other one object has two different ages. Now in terms of religion if you conclude that God created all of the rules of science than you see that God must have also created these strange time distortion phenomenon. Now if you believe that God also has a sense of humor than you can imagine that as a mystery to us God may have played with time and offered us a riddle. So here now comes my conclusion. God created the universe while standing close to a black hole. He knew full well the effect of time distortion as the Universe was being created. To him, 7 days passed. To us, untold ages. So too could this effect be done by God to explain the Bible and the age of the Earth, everything is written by God in God time, not human time. So if you believe the Bible is a divine book handed down to us by God, and God has a sense of humor, and wrote everything in God time instead of us time, than the universe can have dual properties. Earth can be billions of years old and yet to God only be 6-10k. So God creates a plethora of mystery and hands it to us as a challenge of faith. Is it possible to believe God and yet believe science? Of course, and there is no need to assume that scientists are wrong either. They are correct (in our time) and so is God (in His time.) If you want to read more on calculating the age of the Universe mathematically along with the time dilation effects of a black hole, check out a book called the Permutanomicon. It has a good article that simplifies the ideas much better than I do. So yes, you can believe in an old Earth and still be a Christian. Simply remember there was no death before the fall in God's time. Now congratulations, you are a science believer, and a faithful Christian.

Interesting question. If any Christians answer, you'll probably get the "well, plants died" (an objection that has been more than satifactorily answered) or "Genesis is allegory" (which really just side-steps the question) responses - along with the occasional Gap Theory thrown in for good measure. Oh - and lest I forget, there's the Old Earth Creationist position - championed by Hugh Ross, who has some interesting twists to the Day Age theory. Me? It was exactly this question which God used to start me on my long and not always comfortable journey to the Young Earth position, so I'll be watching with interest any responses.

i am agnostic... hence i dont belive in god... but if im given some (proveable) evidence i might change my mind (like "doubting thomas"?) why cant your "god" work through evolution? why cant your "god's" "day" be longer than 24 hours (if god can create everything, isnt 24 hours a little short for him to work with, why cant his day be millions of years?) i have many faithful christian friends who belive in science because they dont consider the creation storys as LITERALY "true" good luck, i know how this can be confuseing but at the end of the day... its a matter of FAITH defn "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence" if you can "prove" it then you cant have "faith"?