Age of the earth?

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

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Glee
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Age of the earth?

Post #1

Post by Glee »

Yay new thread. Also, another one about the age of the earth :o
Looking over the results of other threads, it seems that the defining point of the argument for both sides is the age of the earth. Sort of a global flood verses millions of years sediment buildup.

If the Earth is proven to be millions of years old, and the sediment has built up over time, then the fossils found would seem to imply that evolution happened, as they seem to be structured in an order of complexity, development over time, etc.

If the Earth is only thousands of years old, then fossil evidence is irrelevant because the flood was the sole creator of most of the fossils, and they were deposited in their consecutive layers due to how long they would float for/how easily they mixed with the liquidfied layers of the ground during the flood.

Without fossil evidence, and without proof that the earth has had millions of years of existance, evolution cannot be proven. If the earth is in fact millions of years old, and the fossil record is indeed correct, then creationism as it currently stands would be invalidated as well.

SO: Is there a single piece of evidence that comprehensively proves that a global flood happened / did not happen? Is there a lay-man, easy to identify, unrefutable piece of evidence that can be used to show the age of the earth?


I always thought that underground salt deposits were a great proof of a old age earth. Salt was the leftover from an evaporated sea, which was then covered with subsequent layers of sediments, etc.

Case in point: the Michigan Basin Salt mines. See http://www.saltinstitute.org/mich-1.html for some fairly straightforward pictures about how the michigan salt mines were supposedly formed, and how many layers of sediments are layered on top of it. Note the size, shapes and locations. (And http://www.beg.utexas.edu/indassoc/agl/agl_if.html for some nifty animations of salt in general)

It is interesting to note that there are 6 different layers of salt in the area, meaning at 6 different times through history there inland seas at this location, each of which subsequently evaporated.

The creationist answer to salt deposits, at least by Walt Brown ( http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebo ... view7.html ) also involves evaporation, however, only part of the sea is evaporated and the salt is precipatated due to the water becoming superstaurated. This "thick pasty" precipetate is then buried under heavier sediments(!) during the flood.

I don't see how this could lead to multiple layers of salt forming, nor why the salt precipatate would even form a layer, much less 6 differernt ones in this particular area alone, whilst the majority of other areas have no salt deposits at all. A global flood I would have thought using this model would no doubt have had a fairly even distribution of salt deposits.

The locations of salt deposits are a telling factor that it was not laid down in a global flood - as (from the first link) clearly shows:
Image

Actually, looking back at that, im not sure if its lay-man enough. Any other simple irrefutable examples for/against?

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hannahjoy
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Post #11

Post by hannahjoy »

Are there any actual creationists in the forum?
I'm a Creationist, but not a scientist.
I simply believe "The Expert" over the "experts" - the infallible Creator over His fallible creation.
"Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood;
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!"
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Glee
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Post #12

Post by Glee »

I found this the other day whilst somewhere, it provided a few interesting anecdotes:

SERMON: The Religion of Jesus vs. the Religion About Jesus by Davidson Loehr
You probably aren’t aware of what a significant day this is. For today, October 23, 2005, is the 6009th birthday of the universe! Yes, according to Archbishop Ussher’s seventeenth-century calculation, made by adding up all the days he found in the Bible, he concluded that the world was created on October 23, 4004 B.C. Pretty exciting. Also pretty absurd.

Yet that absurdity is part of one of the main styles of religion that exist within Christianity, so it’s worth understanding those styles, and the implications of that absurdity.

Within the tradition of Christianity, there are two distinct and diametrically opposed religions. They have almost nothing to do with each other, and both began in the first century, about thirty to forty years apart.

The first is the religion of Jesus, which can be found in his most profound teachings. The second is the religion about Jesus, which is called Christianity. The differences between them are sometimes almost total, and they had two very different origins. So I want to talk about these two religions this morning, because those two styles of religion - the liberal and the literal, the religions of trust and of fear, of love and of hate, seem to be eternal parts of the human imagination, wearing the costumes of the culture and era in which they appear in each of their new forms.
Later on he says
But the difference between the two religions is fundamental, profound, and often deadly. Jesus hit people between the eyes with his demand that they treat all humans as equally children of God. The religion about Jesus demanded obedience to their teachings, not his, and to their ever-changing and usually strange creeds. Catholics teach that there is no salvation outside of the church. Jesus never talked about salvation at all. Baptists say Presbyterians, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists and just about everyone else is going to hell. Jesus never talked about heaven or hell at all - though the community that wrote the Gospel of John put words in his mouth sixty years after he died, that made it seem otherwise.

If you look back through the history of Christianity for its absurdities, as many like to do, you will find virtually all of the absurdities in the religion about Jesus, but almost never in the religion of Jesus. Like people saying Jesus was both God and man, when there has never been a theologian who could make coherent sense of such an absurd statement except as poetry. Churches exhorting believers to go into holy wars and kill other people, as they are now exhorting American Christian Soldiers to kill people in Iraq who look a whole lot more like Jesus than they look like most of us. It’s absurd. They’re also saying the universe is just 6,000 years old, and may well agree with the 17th century Archbishop Ussher that today is the universe’s birthday. It’s a dangerous kind of absurdity.

Voltaire once said that those with the power to make you believe absurdities have the power to make you commit atrocities. That’s why absurdities like thinking this is the universe’s 6009th birthday are potentially so dangerous. Because those conditioned to believe that are also conditioned to believe that teaching about “Intelligent Design” is intelligent, or that God hates homosexuals, or wants America to rule the world, or invade Iraq, take its money and oil, and kill anyone who gets in the way.
Is your Expert that of the religion of jesus or about jesus?

Actually, i'm not quite sure how on topic this is, because the article does devle into sort of more religious interpretation and not really that of evidence that much. So i will try not to post any more on it. Just seemed kinda appropriate to the response, as it was itself not really particiapting properly in the topic i guess. But he does say the 6009 thing is absurd.

I suppose this thread is about presenting some evidence. Saying what you believe in is well and good, but some kind of factual thing that actually proves the age of the earth is what we are looking for.

Any other layman facts people know of one way or the other? Can just be a simple little thing like burrows in the strata, or lack of, or something like that. I read briefly about how noah was supposed to have used some kind of petrochemical pitch or tar to seal the ark - which wouldn't have been around before the flood made fossil fuel deposits? Anyone know anything on that story?

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QED
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Post #13

Post by QED »

hannahjoy wrote:
Are there any actual creationists in the forum?
I'm a Creationist, but not a scientist.
I simply believe "The Expert" over the "experts" - the infallible Creator over His fallible creation.
What about your own experiences? Would you still believe the writings of men (after all, nobody has an original manuscript penned by God's own hand!) over your own observations? You say you're not a scientist, but we are all scientists really. Every time you pick up a tape measure or weigh some butter you are engaging in the scientific method. When it comes to the age of the Earth I assume you believe it to be of the order of 6000 years is this so?

If you do, then first you have to be sure about the authority of this estimate. You must certainly know that it is not stated explicitly in the bible, instead it was inferred by Bishop James Usher (1581-1656 Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland) who totted-up the ages of the people described by the bible. Of course we are all at liberty to choose our own authority when we must rely on others for our information.

But what about when you can see people working to a different script and see them getting results? An example might be the wonderful work that NASA do in probing the distant planets of our solar system. The relevance of this to the age of the Earth is highly significant. In order to plan and successfully execute the likes of Voyagers "Grand Tour" to the outer planets the distances must be known to considerable accuracy. The calculations have been thoroughly vindicated by the success of the missions (you have no doubt seen many of the photos like the one below of Neptune). Now one of the features of long-range communication is the delay due to the finite speed of light (you will have experienced this yourself if you've ever spoken by satellite phone to someone on a ship for example).

Image

In the case of Voyager a signal sent to the craft as it passed by Neptune returned 8 hours later -- such is the distance that must be covered in a round trip. This should give you a feel for the relationship of time and distance. Looking at Neptune through a telescope here on Earth is literally looking back in time. But our solar system is just one of many that collectively form the Galaxy -- the star city that we live in. This city is huge. It takes signals 100,000 years to cross from one side to another. But there is not only one Galaxy. We see many others and we see them in clusters. The nearest large one being the Virgo Cluster some 60 million light years away.

So there is not just a slight discrepancy between the supposed age of the Earth, but many orders of magnitude of disagreement. Light has been travelling from these distant objects for millions of years in order for you to see it. How can this be so if the world is so young?

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Glee
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Post #14

Post by Glee »

As an amendum to that, http://www.troybrophy.com/projects/sola ... index.html has a to scale representation of the solar system in html format. Simple, yet effective at showing the distances even within our solar system, just to show the accuracy of their computations...

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Post #15

Post by Jose »

hannahjoy wrote:
Are there any actual creationists in the forum?
I'm a Creationist, but not a scientist.
I simply believe "The Expert" over the "experts" - the infallible Creator over His fallible creation.
But tell me, how do you know what The Expert actually said? The majority of Christian denominations accept the great age of the earth, and recognize the inconsistencies in Genesis as clues that it is not to be taken "literally." Even if we do take it literally (at least, parts of it), why should we believe the fallible "expert" who decided that creation occurred on Oct. 26, 4004 BC? Wasn't he just as fallible as anyone else? Maybe he got it wrong.

...and why would The Expert make his actual creation different from his supposed description of it? All we have to do is go outside and look. Well, maybe we have to look in several different places, but nonetheless, looking seems to be enough for many people to see the differences.
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Post #16

Post by McCulloch »

hannahjoy wrote:I'm a Creationist, but not a scientist.
I simply believe "The Expert" over the "experts" - the infallible Creator over His fallible creation.
Jose wrote:But tell me, how do you know what The Expert actually said? The majority of Christian denominations accept the great age of the earth, and recognize the inconsistencies in Genesis as clues that it is not to be taken "literally." Even if we do take it literally (at least, parts of it), why should we believe the fallible "expert" who decided that creation occurred on Oct. 26, 4004 BC? Wasn't he just as fallible as anyone else? Maybe he got it wrong.

...and why would The Expert make his actual creation different from his supposed description of it? All we have to do is go outside and look. Well, maybe we have to look in several different places, but nonetheless, looking seems to be enough for many people to see the differences.

The good Irish bishop used passages such as this one in Genesis
Seth lived one hundred five years, and became the father of Enosh. ... Enosh lived ninety years, and became the father of Kenan. ...
Kenan lived seventy years, and became the father of Mahalalel. ... Mahalalel lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Jared. ... Jared lived one hundred sixty-two years, and became the father of Enoch. ... Enoch lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Methuselah. ... Methuselah lived one hundred eighty-seven years, and became the father of Lamech. ... Lamech lived one hundred eighty-two years, and became the father of a son, and he named him Noah
to calculate his age of the earth. If you take this passage literally, you still cannot achieve the precision that would be required. If you assume that each of these men became fathers precisely on their birthdays, then the minimum length of time between the birth of Seth and the birth of Noah would be nine hundred and twenty six years. But the passage would still be literally true if, for instance, Seth became a father any time shy of his one hundred and sixth birthday. So the maximum length of time between the birth of Seth and the birth of Noah would be nine hundred and thirty four years. So, if they were being honest, the literalists would have to say that the length of time between the birth of Seth and the birth of Noah is nine hundred and thirty years plus or minus four years. (please ignore any arithmetical errors I make). Now, if you take all of the inconsistencies, ambiguities, overlaps etcetera in the timetable, there has to be a margin of error. This is why most modern people (literalists, figurative believers and non-believers) tend to mock the level of accuracy Ussher pretended to have.
That being said, the margin of error is still many many orders of magnitude too small to reconcile the literal understanding of the biblical record with the evidence of science.
Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
First Epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians
The truth will make you free.
Gospel of John

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Post #17

Post by Cathar1950 »

I agree with the difference between the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus. I always smile when I hear a Protestant complaining about the fallen Catholic church and going with a "bible alone" dogma. What they do not realize is they were the ones who decided what was their scriptures and the doctrines they follow paid in full and ordered by Constantine.
Many do not see the switch from an anthropomorphic God of a 3 layer universe to a spirit God in a hellinistic universe and then back again.

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Post #18

Post by hannahjoy »

:confused2: I didn't hear myself say anything about Usher (I didn't see myself write anything about him either). I really must learn to pay more attention! I thought I was just responding to juliod/DanZ's question. :confused2:
"Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood;
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!"
- Philip P. Bliss, 1838-1876

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Post #19

Post by micatala »

hannajoy wrote: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't hear myself say anything about Usher (I didn't see myself write anything about him either). I really must learn to pay more attention! I thought I was just responding to juliod/DanZ's question.
Yes, it did seem to me that a lot of assumptions about your position were being made. :confused2:

After all, creationism does come in many flavors.

Personally, I accept evolution as the most logical explanation for the history of life as we know it, the standard estimates for the age of the earth and the universe, and the plausibility of the big bang. I also believe in God as the ultimate source of the created universe, so in that sense I could say I am a 'creationist,' although this use of the term would be rather unusual and probably most other 'creationists' would not be too welcoming of me into the group.

I don't see it as a 'God says versus science says' controversy. This is partly because, although I believe in the Bible as God-inspired, I am not a literalist or an inerrantist (if that is a word). I just don't see the theological need to deny that evolution has occurred.

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Post #20

Post by hannahjoy »

I don't see it as a 'God says versus science says' controversy.
Neither do I - it's "God says versus scientists say". I am so sick and tired of creationism being falsely defined as "God versus science". I challenge anyone who thinks it is so to find one creationist who will agree that science (not scientists) and God are at odds. Any Biblical creationist will tell you that science accurately and honestly studied will support God's Word.
"Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood;
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!"
- Philip P. Bliss, 1838-1876

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