Age of the Earth
See also Counterexamples to an Old Earth.
The Age of the Earth has been a matter of interest to humans for millennia. All verifiable evidence indicates that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. Yet with circular reasoning and implausible assumptions, liberals insist that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years (4.54 × 109 ± 1%).[2]
Old Earth advocates rely on one flawed assumption to the exclusion of other evidence, similar to how an investigator may mistakenly rely on one faulty eyewitness's opinion to the exclusion of all else. In fact, eyewitness testimony is proven to be less reliable to than other indicators, just as the assumption by Old Earth proponents that the rate of radioactive decay has always been constant is flawed. In fact, The rate of radioactive decay would slow down greatly as the universe cools. Moreover, a large number of physical processes, such as neutron capture and fluctuations in solar radiation, affect the rate of radioactive decay of elements in the Earth's crust and render radioactive dating measurements unreliable, depending upon the specific methods used.[3] Even so, such an error will not cause a calculation of the age of the Earth based on radiometric dating to be off by up to five orders of magnitude.
Much scientific evidence points to a young age of the earth and the universe, and the biblical creation organization Creation Ministries International published articles entitled 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe and How old is the earth? which summarize some of the evidence for a young age of the earth.
Historical views
For most of recorded history humans of many backgrounds, such as St. Barnabas and St. Irenæus,[4] viewed the age of the Earth to be around 6,000 years.[5]
Saint Cyril, who came into Great Moravia (present day Slovakia and Moravia in Czech Republic) from Byzantine Empire in 863 AD as Christian missionary, wrote in his poem Proglas,[6] dedicated to his works on translation of the four biblical Gospels to Slavonic language, the following sentence that brings testimony about the perception of the age of the world that time:
|
The seventh millennium since the Creation was calculated as follows: | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 508 years that had passed since the Creation till Jesus Christ’s birth plus | ||||
| 863 (the year when Constantine and Methodius had come to Moravia) | ||||
| results in figure of 6 371.[7] |
Prior to the onset of totalitarian and uniformitarian (i.e. long-age) scientism promoted by Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, and others in the 19th century, when most people and scientists in Europe and North America had a Christian or biblical worldview, the atheistic evolutionary concept of billions of years for the age of the earth was unknown to mainstream Western science beyond cursory philosophical speculations.[8]
For example, in his 1619 book the Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the World), Johannes Kepler, mathematician and astronomer, wrote that he does not care if his book will need to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for him as an observer.[9]
In 1771, the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest English-language general encyclopedia that was first published as a 3-volume set in Scotland, included a table of world events under the heading ‘Astronomy’ on page 493. These events begin with the creation of the world in the year 0, which they dated at 4007 years before Christ.[8][10]
In 1830, Dr. Hales published a list of 120 historical authorities from various cultures who had decided on an official date of creation. These ranged from 6984 B.C. to 3616 B.C.[11]
Included in Hales' list is James Ussher, who calculated the famous date of 4004 B.C. for creation. Young Earth creationists still consider this date to be close to the actual date.
In 1778 George-Louis Lecrerc, Count of Buffon, who rejected Christianity, adopted evolutionary thought and thus searched for materialistic explanations for the origin of earth[12], proposed that the Earth was about 74,832 years old.[13] James Hutton, while not proposing a date, dismissed the Biblical account and claimed in 1785 that there was not evidence of a beginning at all.[13] Charles Lyell supported Hutton's idea in 1830, in Principles of Geology.[13]
In 1854 Hermann von Helmholtz estimated an age of between 20 and 40 million years.[13] Around the same time Lord Kelvin put his mind to deriving an age, and came up with a range between 20 million years and 400 million years. He later refined that down to between 20 million and 40 million years.[13] More recent discoveries of radioactivity and mantle convection explain why the assumptions Helmholtz and Kelvin made resulted in dates that are much lower than current uniformitarian estimates.
The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica discussed dates up to 500 million years.[14]
By about 1930, J. H. Jeans was arguing for an age of the Earth of around two billion years.[15]
In his 1956 paper named Age of Meteorites and the Earth, Claire Patterson, using “certain assumptions which are apparently justified,” introduced for meteor age a figure of 4.55 ±0.07 × 109yr. and commented that since earth lead meets the requirement for definition of “the isotopic evolution of lead for any meteoritic body,” it is therefore “believed that the age for the earth is the same as for meteorites” and that "this is the time since the earth attained its present mass".[16] This figure gradually became a scientific dogma that rarely anyone has dared to question. Henry Morris explains that the unprovable assumptions are not the only problem with radiometric dating. One huge concern is that the results published are only a selected sample, chosen especially to agree with preconceived ideas about the earth, life, and evolution.[17]
When in 1972 N.H. Gale tried to corroborate this established figure, he discovered that U-Pb ages "showed apparent large excess of radiogenic lead compared with the amount expected from the decay of Uranium in the meteorites over 4.5AE. ... For each of the 4 meteorites there was an excess of radiogenic lead not supported by uranium decay over 4.5AE.” After short analysis:
- “The superior modern analytical methods used made it impossible that analytical contamination could explain the result.
- The circumstances ... make it extremely unlikely that terrestrial contamination could explain the results for this meteorites.
- ... a considerable excess of radiogenic lead in most fractions ...is difficult to attribute to contamination,“
rather than starting to reckon with possibility to challenge the established figures and methods, after recalling that “Patterson was the first to show that several stony meteorites yield a ... model of 4.5AE,” he proposed the new explanation for discovered discrepancy: "discordant results can be attributed to contamination." Consequently, his research of the Earth’s age turned into calculation of "the correct sample ratios" from "observed ratios" so that the Table in his paper could finally show the “correct” preconceived age, established in this field of research.[18]
Using circular logic -- assuming that decay rates remained constant despite necessarily changing physical characteristics as time approached the origin -- Old Earth proponents insist that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old based on an assumption of constancy in Potassium-argon (K:Ar) decay rates and other radiometric methods.[19]
Geology
William R. Corliss is a cataloger of scientific anomalies (observations and facts that challenge prevailing scientific paradigms) and has published many works on the subject.[20] He also wrote 13 books for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a dozen educational booklets for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and a dozen articles for the National Science Foundation (NSF).[21] The science magazine New Scientist had an article which focused on the career of William Corliss.[22] New Scientist wrote regarding Corliss's work: "All I can say to Corliss is carry on cataloging". [23] Arthur C. Clarke described Corliss as "Fort's latter-day - and much more scientific - successor."[24]
Corliss's work on geological anomalies catalogs scores of anomalies which challenge the old-earth paradigm.[25]
Bibliography
- Burnet, Thomas, The Sacred Theory of the Earth, chapter V, 1691.
- Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911). On-line page facsimiles.
- Hammerton, J.A. (Ed.), "Universal History of the World" (8 volumes) The Educational Book Co., London, c1930.
- Batten, Don, Old-earth or young-earth belief: Which belief is the recent aberration?, Creation 24(1):24–27, December 2001.
- The age of the Earth (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)).
- Peck WH, Valley JW, Wilde SA, and Graham CM (2000) Ion microprobe Evidence for Pre-4.4 Ga Continental Crust and Low Temperature Water/Rock Interaction. Geol. Soc. Am. Abstr, vol 32, no. 7.
External Links
- Age of the earth by Creation Ministries International
- How old is the earth? - Refuting evolution - Chapter 8 by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati at Creation Ministries International
- Age of the Earth and Universe by Creation Ministries International
Notes
- ↑
- ↑ [1] polling
- ↑ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899536205000138#bib6
- ↑ Burnet, p. 259.
- ↑ Burnet, p. 258.
- ↑ Proglas (Slovak). sme.sk. “The parchment version of Proglas in Cyrillic from 13th century was discovered in 1858 by Russian Slavic scholar Hilferding”
- ↑ Proglas, the foreword to the Old Church Slavonic translation of the four Gospels. The Centre for Information on Literature, Slovakia. “Explanations: in our seventh millennium – it means the seventh millennium since the Creation. It was calculated as follows: 5 508 years that had passed since the Creation till Jesus Christ’s birth plus 863 AD (the year when Constantine and Methodius had come to Moravia) added to the year 6 371 -- that is seventh millennium.”
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Encyclopaedia Britannica: supporting a young earth!. creation.com. Retrieved on November 8, 2014. “The concept of billions of years for the age of the earth was unknown to science (or to the church4) before the rise of uniformitarianism in the 19th century. This is strong evidence that modern long-age views of creation do not originate in Genesis, but are a misguided attempt by some Christian leaders to try to reconcile what God has said with the atheistic pronouncements of evolutionary ‘science’.”
- ↑ Johannes Kepler (1997). The Harmony of the World, IX, XXXVII, 391, 410. “O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee! ... The book is written, to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which. It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.”
- ↑ Encyclopaedia Britannica: supporting a young earth!. creation.com. Retrieved on November 8, 2014. “The notion that the world in billions of years old has only been popular for about 200 years. Before that time most scientists understood that Noah's Flood was responsible for laying down the rocks which today are associated with millions of years. Richard Fangrad and Calvin Smith discuss the details.”
- ↑ Batten 2002 quotes from "Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Holy Bible", 1879 8th Edition, 1939, which relates this, and reproduces the selection of the dates from Young.
- ↑ E.J. Larson (2006). Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory. New York: Modern Library, 13-18, 39. ISBN 0-8129-6849-2.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 INGV
- ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica, pp 650-651.
- ↑ Universal History of the World, p.76.
- ↑ Claire Patterson. Age of meteorites and the earth.
- ↑ Michael J. Oard. Once upon a time … A Review of The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods by John Woodmorappe. Retrieved on November 9, 2014.
- ↑ Gale, N.H., Arden, J. and Hutchison, R. (1972). . Nature Phys. Science.
You must specify title = and url = when using {{cite web}}. Available parameters:
{{cite web |url = |title = |accessdate = |accessdaymonth = |accessmonthday = |accessyear = |author = |last = |first = |authorlink = |coauthors = |date = |year = |month = |format = |work = |publisher = |pages = |language = |doi = |archiveurl = |archivedate = |quote = }} - ↑ Peck, 2000, p.376.
- ↑ Science Frontiers (Corliss' web-site)
- ↑ Corliss, 2002
- ↑ Adrian Hope, Finding a Home for Stray Fact, New Scientist, July 14, 1977, p. 83
- ↑ Quoted on the Science Frontiers web-site
- ↑ Clarke, Arthur C. (1990) Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography. Gollancz. Page 110
- ↑ Geological Catalogs (Science Frontiers)
