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Reverted edits by Specialman (talk) to last revision by AK
The earth is 1 year old which is longer than u 40 year old Kkk dicks pupil
[[File:Blue Marble.jpg|thumbnail|200px|right|The historical and scientific evidence strongly indicates that the [[earth]] is approximately 6,000 years old.{{#tag:ref|cf.
*Age of the earth: 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe<ref name="101Evidences">{{cite web |title=Age of the earth; 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe |author=Don Batten |publisher= CMI |date= 4 June 2009 |url=http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth}}</ref>
*How old is the earth?<ref name="RefutingEvo">{{cite book |title=Refuting Evolution; How old is the earth? |author=Jonathan Sarfati |chapter =8 |url=http://creation.com/how-old-is-the-earth}}</ref>
*[http://creation.com/young-age-of-the-earth-universe-qa ‘Young’ age of the Earth & Universe Q&A]
*[http://creation.com/jesus-age-earth Jesus on the age of the earth]|group=note}}]]
''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 × 10<sup>9</sup> ± 1%).<ref name="101Evidences"/><ref name="RefutingEvo"/><ref>[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/22/opinion/polls/main965223.shtml polling]</ref>
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 [[Radiometric dating|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.<ref>http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899536205000138#bib6</ref> 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 [[order of magnitude|orders of magnitude]].
Much scientific evidence points to a [[young earth creationism|young age]] of the earth and the universe and the biblical creation organization [[Creation Ministries International]] published articles entitled ''[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe]'' and [http://creation.com/how-old-is-the-earth How old is the earth?] which summarize some of the evidence for a young age of the earth.
== Historical views ==
[[Image:Landscape.jpg|right|300px]]
=== Widespread Historical Acceptance of Biblical Account ===
For most of recorded history humans of many backgrounds, such as St. Barnabas and St. Irenæus,<ref>Burnet, p. 259.</ref> viewed the age of the Earth to be around 6,000 years.<ref>Burnet, p. 258.</ref>
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'',<ref>{{cite web
|title=Proglas
|publisher=sme.sk
|url=http://zlatyfond.sme.sk/dielo/93/Filozof_Proglas
|language=Slovak
|access date=05.05.2012
|quote=The parchment version of Proglas in Cyrillic from 13th century was discovered in 1858 by Russian Slavic scholar Hilferding}}</ref> dedicated to his works on translation of the four [[Bible|biblical]] [[Gospel]]s to Slavonic language, the following sentence that brings testimony about the perception of the age of the world that time:
{| class="wikitable"
| rowspan="4" |{{cquote|To the holy Gospels I am the Foreword:<br/> for as it was promised by the prophets long ago,<br/> Christ comes to gather the nations,<br/> for He sheds light on the world entire.<br/>That is what has happened ''in our '''seventh''' millennium.''}}
!''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'''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Proglas, the foreword to the Old Church Slavonic translation of the four Gospels|publisher=The Centre for Information on Literature, Slovakia|url=http://www.litcentrum.sk/36106|access date=05.05.2012|quote=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.}}</ref>
|}
Prior to the onset of [[totalitarian]] and [[uniformitarianism |uniformitarian]] (i.e. long-age) [[scientism]] promoted by [[Charles Lyell|Lyell]], [[Darwin]], [[T. H. Huxley|Huxley]], and others in the 19th century, when most people and scientists in [[Europe]] and [[North America]] had a [[Christian]] or [[biblical]] worldview, the [[atheist]]ic [[evolution]]ary concept of billions of years for the age of the earth was unknown to mainstream [[Western civilization|Western]] [[science]] beyond cursory [[philosophical]] speculations.<ref name="YECBritannica">{{cite web |title=Encyclopaedia Britannica: supporting a young earth! |publisher=creation.com |url=http://creation.com/encyclopedia-britannica-supporting-a-young-earth |quote=The concept of billions of years for the age of the earth was unknown to science (or to the church[4]) 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’.|accessdate=November 8, 2014}}</ref>
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 [[Scientific observation|observer]].<ref>{{cite book |title=The Harmony of the World |author=Johannes Kepler |publisher=American Philosophical Society |year=1997 |pages=IX, XXXVII, 391, 410 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=rEkLAAAAIAAJ&q=six+thousand#v=snippet&q=six%20thousand&f=false|quote=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.}}</ref> Kepler calculated a Creation date of 3992 BC, and [[Isaac Newton]] also strongly defended biblical chronology.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Greatest Hoax on Earth? Refuting Dawkins on Evolution |author=Jonathan Sarfati |publisher=Creation Books Publishers |year=2010 |place=Atlanta, Georgia, USA |pages=311 |isbn=978-1921-643064 |url=http://creation.com/the-greatest-hoax-on-earth/main.php |quote=Kepler calculated a Creation date of 3992 BC, and Isaac Newton (1643-1727), probably the greatest scientist of all time, also strongly defended biblical chronology.}}</ref><br>
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.<ref name="YECBritannica"/><ref>{{cite web |title= Encyclopaedia Britannica: supporting a young earth! |publisher= creation.com |url=http://creation.com/media-center?fileID=Rj4PFM_od9U |quote= 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. |accessdate=November 8, 2014}}</ref><br>
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.<ref>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.</ref>
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.
=== Evolutionists vs. Kelvin ===
{| class="infobox bordered" style="font-size:95%; width:25em;"
! style="font-size:120%; background:lightgray; text-align:center; padding:5px 0;" | Time as key hero for [[naturalistic]] ‘[[Fog displacement|explanation]]’
|-
| style="padding:15px;" | ''“Time is in fact the hero of the plot … given so much time the "impossible" becomes [[Logic of possibility|possible]], the possible probable and the probably virtually certainly certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs [[miracle]]s.”''
<div style="padding-left:40px;">— George Wald<ref>{{cite book |title= The Physics and Chemistry of Life|author=George Wald |publisher=G. Bell |year= 1957 |pages=12 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=IlCgnQEACAAJ }}</ref><ref name="West">{{cite web |title=Western culture and the age of the earth; Review of The Dating Game: One Man’s Search for the Age of the Earth by Cherry Lewis, Cambridge University Press, 2000 |author= Tas Walker |publisher= CMI |url= http://creation.com/cherry-lewis-the-dating-game-one-mans-search-for-the-age-of-the-earth-book-review |accessdate=13 June 2015
}}</ref>{{#tag:ref|Ad. “time itself performs miracles” - cf. [[Evolution of the gaps]]: An 'explanation' that has no other than philosophical implication and that cannot be tested is regarded for a key symptom of ideological thinking. Moreover, the Slovak poet Ondrej Fabrici maintained that [[idol]]s of the old [[pagan]] belief systems have been refurbished and disguised in the changed setting of the modern era under the new name of scientific endeavor.<ref>{{cite book |title=Prorok Daniel (Prophet Daniel)|author= Jozef Ondrej Markuš|publisher=Matica slovenská|year=2001|page=39|isbn=80-7090-600-6|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=zpnkAAAACAAJ|language=Slovak |quote=
Či zmenil dačo Chronos starý
na plánoch tých Babylonu,
hoci sa ako dieťa tvári
vek atómu, elektrónu?!
Len tváre figúr vymenené,
technika ťahov spresnená,
idoly staré postavené
odiali sa v nové mená!
Kulisy zmenil Chronos – čas
Babylon žije prostred nás!
(Ondrej Fabrici)}}</ref> For example, the “incomprehensibly vast periods of time” invoked by evolutionism is in fact nothing more than refurbished and masqueraded belief in creative power of elapsing time represented either by ancient [[Babylonian]] god, transposed into Greek mythology as [[Chronos]], or antique Aeon<ref>{{cite web |title= ЭОН |publisher= dic.academic.ru |url= http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enc_philosophy/3798/ЭОН |language=Russian |accessdate=14 June 2015 |quote= ЭОН (греч. ), термин др.-греч. философии, «жизненный век», «вечность», время в аспекте жизненного существования, как некая целостная самозамкнутая структура (ср. лат. aevum, рус. «век») в отличие от «хро-носа» как абстрактного, количественно-измерительного, объективного и аморфного времени. … В гностицизме зон – это силы, которые исходят от божества. … Эон в геологии длительный период времени, состоящий из нескольких эр.}}</ref>, a divine power constituting a [[gnostic]] belief system. <ref name="Skarsaune">{{cite book
|author=Oskar Skarsaune
|title=In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influence on Early Christianity
|publisher=IVP Academic
|year=2002
|location=Downers Grove, IL
|pages=246
|chapter=12:Orthodoxy and Heresy
|isbn=978-0-8308-2844-9
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=2q6qTb-A7GwC
|quote=There are several gnostic “systems,” with a great deal of variety in details, but one can newertheless discern a basic pattern that is common to most or all Gnostic texts: There exists a highest God, who within himself comprises several divine powers. The Gnostics called these powers aeons, and there were different systems of arranging aeons. … This aeon, confused and in despair, created the material world…
}}</ref>|group=note}}</div>
|}
George-Louis Lecrerc, Count of [[Buffon]], rejected [[Christianity]], adopted [[Evolutionism|evolutionary thought]], and thus searched for [[materialistic]] explanations for the [[origin science|origin]] of earth.<ref name="Larson">{{cite book
|author=E.J. Larson
|title=Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
|publisher=Modern Library
|location=New York
|year=2006
|pages=9, 13-18, 39, 58-62
|isbn=0-8129-6849-2
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=xzLRvxlJhzkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Larson+Evolution:+The+Remarkable+History&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PbZfVJugD83vaJengLgI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=rejected%20Christianity%20&f=false}}</ref> In 1778, he proposed that the Earth was about 74,832 years old<ref name="ingv">INGV</ref>, what was in line with thinking that pushed God as creator either back in time or out of the picture altogether.<ref name="Larson"/>
In the early nineteenth-century, the so called [[uniformitarian]]s conspired to overthrow the [[Biblical chronology]] that would measure geologic time in generations of man.<ref name="Richter">{{cite journal |title=Geological Notes: Kelvin and the Age of Earth |author=F.M. Richter |publisher=Journal of Geology |year=1986 |volume=94 |pages=395-401 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/30068713}}</ref> The dictum as a fundamental maxim for their geological speculation and worldview<ref name="PerryInAS">{{cite web |title=Kelvin, Perry and the Age of the Earth |author=Philip C. England, Peter Molnar, Frank M. Richter |date= |url=http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/page2/kelvin-perry-and-the-age-of-the-earth |accessdate=13 June 2015 |quote=Before dissecting Kelvin's arguments, it is worth describing the worldview that he was opposing.}}</ref> was expressed through [[James Hutton]]’s aphorism<ref name="ingv"/>, coming from his 1785 book ''Theory of the earth'': ''“The revolt, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find [[Singularity#Antipathy_to_the_idea_of_beginning|no vestige of a beginning]], [[Horror of a Divine Foot|no prospect of an end]].“''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics">{{cite web |title=On Geological Dynamics |author=W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) |publisher= Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow |year=1869 |url=http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/on_geological_dynamics.html |aaccessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Theory of the earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution and restoration of land upon the globe. |author=James Hutton |publisher=Royal Society of Edinburgh |year=1785 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=RjYAAAAAQAAJ}}</ref> Hutton's theory of the earth was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with [[Newton]]ian [[physics]].<ref name="GOULDinNYT">{{cite web |title=IT'S AN OLD, OLD , OLD, OLD WORLD |publisher= NYT |author=D. R. Wallace |date= June 14, 1987 |url=http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-arrow.html |accessdate=7 June 2015 |quote=Hutton's theory of the earth as a geological clockwork of eroding continents balanced against uplifting ocean basins was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with Newtonian physics....Hutton and Lyell were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state...The textbook legend of Hutton and Lyell seems dim and confused compared with that of Copernicus and Galileo. In demonstrating the shallowness of that legend}}</ref>
In 1822, [[Joseph Fourier|Fourier]] laid the groundwork for the mathematical analysis of the flow of [[heat]] in his treatise ''Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur''; and later, in 1827, he published arguments that the Earth must be cooling.<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique">{{cite journal | title=John Perry’s neglected critique of Kelvin’s age for the Earth: A missed opportunity in geodynamics |author=P. England, P. Molnar, F. Richter |journal=GSA Today |volume= 17 |number= 1 |date=January 2007 |doi=10.1130/GSAT01701A.1 |url=http://www.colorado.edu/GeolSci/faculty/molnarpdf/2007GSAT.England.PerryKelvinBlownOpportunity.pdf |accessdate=5 June 2015 |quote= Fourier ... made arguments that the Earth must be cooling (Fourier, 1827), with which Lyell was certainly familiar (Lyell, 1830, p. 140–141).}}</ref> This was in line with so called [[Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis]], under which the earth would have gradually cooled from its assumed molten beginnings to its current state.
In 1830 [[Charles Lyell]], despite being familiar with Fourier's arguments<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique"/>, supported, with a convert's zeal, the Hutton's idea of a
steady-state Earth of indefinite age in ''Principles of Geology''<ref name="ingv" />, a book that later influenced [[Darwin]]. Lyell started his book with a self-serving history of geology that [[Academician Burdenko syndrome|uncritically hailed]] any insight anticipating uniformitarianism and under the banner ''“to free the science from Moses”''<ref>{{cite book |author= Charles Lyell |title= Principles of Geology |Volume= 1 |year=1881 (1990)|publisher=University of Chicago Press (reprint) |pages=268 (XVII) |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=9WjnbzHpvfEC |quote=Most other geologists, whether or not they agreed with Lyell on specific issues, would in fact have considered themselves his allies in hoping “to free the science from Moses” (Lyell 1881, vol.1, p.268).}}</ref> [[Kerkut’s student syndrome|utterly dismissed]] the contributions of [[Catastrophism|catastrophists]] including [[Georges Cuvier]], the "lion of nineteenth-century French science" and founder of modern comparative anatomy and paleontology, who as early as 1796 announced ''"the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of catastrophe"'' and whose scientific arguments for the theory of special creation held back the tide of evolutionary thought for a generation.<ref name="Larson"/> Lyell shown up to be a disciple of Buffon, who resolutely refused to accept the notion of catastrophes, including the [[Noah's Flood|Biblical Flood]], which many of their contemporaries upheld. Before Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in 1831, his Cambridge tutor Adam Sedgwick, who had supplied just twenty-two years old Darwin with a reading list for the voyage, conspicuously omitted controversial Lyell’s ''Principles''. Darwin was however given a copy of the book by the ship's aristocratic captain Robert FitzRoy, who wished to have some scientific person on board.<ref name="Larson"/><ref>{{cite web |title=The Voyage of Charles Darwin, Part 1 |publisher=BBC |year=1978 |pages=7-part series Part 1, 46min:15sec |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hoDaxVIVPE&feature=youtu.be&t=2850 |accessdate=May 17, 2015 |quote=}}</ref> Darwin was fascinated by book, he dedicated his own writings about the voyage to Lyell, and in his letters claimed that ''"I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brains ... the great merit of the Principles, was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes."''<ref>{{cite web |title=Darwin Correspondence Database: Darwin, C. R. to Horner, Leonard 29 Aug 1844 |author=Ch.Darwin |publisher=Darwin Correspondence Project by Cambridge University Library |url=http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-771 |accessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref>
{| class="infobox bordered" style="font-size:95%; width:25em;"
! style="font-size:120%; background:lightgrey; text-align:center; padding:5px 0;" | About people who admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time
|-
| style="padding:15px;" |''If the question "When?" is asked, the natural reply is merely a look of astonishment, and persistent enquiry elicits '''nothing more definite than a vague "Long ago."'''{{#tag:ref|Ad. ''“nothing more definite than a vague ’Long ago’”'' cf. ''«I asked Ramsay how long a time he allowed for that history. He answered that he could suggest no limit to it. I said “You don’t suppose geological history has run through 1,000,000,000 years?” “Certainly I do.” “10,000,000,000 years?” “Yes.” “The sun is a finite body. You can tell how many tons it is. Do you think it has been shining for a million million years? ” “I am as incapable of estimating and understanding the reasons which you physicists have for limiting geological time as you are incapable of understanding the geological reasons for our unlimited estimates.” I answered, “You can understand the physicists’ reasoning perfectly if you give your mind to it.”»''<ref>{{cite journal |title=The Age of the Earth as an Abode Fitted for Life
|journal=Science |publisher= American Association for the Advancement of Science |volume=9 |issue=228 |date= May 12, 1899 |page=668 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1626214?seq=4#page_scan_tab_contents |acessdate=July 18, 2105}}</ref>|group=note}} Anything else, of course, could not be expected from a people whose conceptions of the development of the universe are limited to a recognition of the alternation of seasons and the [[Abiogenesis|insistent mysteries of life]] and death.''<div style="padding-left:40px;">— Arthur Holmes <ref name="Holmes1913">{{cite web |title= The age of the earth |author= Arthur Holmes |publisher= Harper |place=London |year= 1913 |pages=2|url= https://archive.org/details/ageofearth00holmuoft |accessdate=July 18, 2015 |quote= }}</ref></div>
|}
In his 1859 ''[[The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection|Origin of species by means of Natural selection]]'', Darwin declared that ''‘He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.’''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics"/><ref>{{cite book |title= On the Origin of Species |author= Charles Darwin |year=1859 |pages=282 |edition=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RdIp_XRopbcC&q=incomprehensibly+vast#v=snippet&q=incomprehensibly%20vast&f=false}}</ref> Darwin based his views on Hutton and Lyell who were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state.<ref name="GOULDinNYT"/> It is believed a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories was a factor that might have contributed to FitzRoy’s tragic decision to suicide on 30th April, 1865.<ref>{{cite web |title= FitzRoy's Bicentenary|publisher= The Friends of Charles Darwin |url=http://friendsofdarwin.com/articles/fitzroy/ |quote= The ridicule over the weather forecasts was probably the last straw that drove FitzRoy to suicide on 30th April, 1865. But there were numerous other factors that might have contributed to his tragic decision: his failed New Zealand governorship; a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories; his belief that suicide was a family trait; who knows what else might have helped push him over the edge? |accessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref><ref name="BBC67">{{cite web |title=The Voyage of Charles Darwin, Part 6&7 |publisher=BBC |year=1978 |pages=7-part series Part 6&7, 1h:49min:35sec |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXY-EWZU5qo&feature=youtu.be&t=6575
|accessdate=July 18, 2015 |quote=}}</ref>
The doctrine that the Earth was of unlimited age allowed Uniformitarian geologists to evade [[explanation in science|explaining]] any [[phenomenon|phenomena]] by laws of [[physics]] and resort to [[Fog displacement|blurring]] them by ''“reckless drafts on the bank of time”'' instead. For the legendary British physicist William Thomson, later known as [[Lord Kelvin]], this game without rules was simply not scientific. The speculations of uniformitarians on age of the Earth were forbidden by the laws of the thermodynamics, which he had helped in developing. He showed with the full force and prestige of mathematical physics, that, if one were to assume that the Earth is a solid body cooling from an initially high temperature, measurement of the rate of heat loss from its surface would clearly place limits on its age.
Kelvin started to advance his arguments under the title ''“Note on Certain Points in the Theory of Heat”'' first in 1844 in ''Cambridge Mathematical Journal''. After clarifying some of Fourier’s mathematics related to the conduction of heat and the dissipation of energy, he presented the upper boundary for the age of the Earth in his 1863 classic paper ''On the Secular Cooling of the Earth'' as '''98 millions of years'''.<ref name="OnSecularCooling">{{cite web |title= On the Secular Cooling of the Earth |author=W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) |publisher= Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh |year=1864 (Read 1862) |volume= XXIII |pages= 167-169 |url= http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/on_the_secular_cooling_of_the_earth.html |aaccessdate=June 14, 2015}}</ref> The figure was based i.a. on following assumptions and considerations:
{| class="infobox bordered" style="font-size:95%; width:25em;"
! style="font-size:120%; background:lightblue; text-align:center; padding:5px 0;" | On the Kelvin's calculations
|-
| style="padding:15px;" | ''I have sometimes been asked by friends interested in geology to criticise Lord Kelvin's calculation of the probable age of the earth. I have usually said that it is hopeless to expect that Lord Kelvin should have made an error in calculation.''
<div style="padding-left:40px;">—John Perry<ref>{{cite journal |title= On the Age of the Earth |author=John Perry |journal=Nature |date= 3 January 1895 |issue=51 |pages=224-227 |doi=10.1038/051224a0 |url= http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v51/n1314/pdf/051224a0.pdf
}}</ref> </div>
|}
* The ‘celebrated’ '''Poisson’s hypothesis''', that the present underground heat of Earth is due to a passage, at some former period, of the Solar system through hotter stellar regions, would not serve uniformitarians and evolutionists right, since it either grants only short time periods with moderate temperature on earth’s surface or, if the transition from hot region to cold region is shifted further back in time, it leads to extreme temperatures that must have destroyed all animal and vegetable life.
* The '''Leibnitz’s theory''', which simply supposes the earth to have been at one time an incandescent liquid, without explaining how it got into that state, is the best for view of the geologists who require the longest periods.
* The initial temperature of molten blob to be 7000°F or 3888°C, respectively, corresponding to a high estimate of generally assumed temperature of melting rock. Later Kelvin explained that he could take lower value as more probable, but was most anxious not to underestimate the age of the earth based on the very meager information then available.<ref name="KelvinNature1895"/>
* The measurements of underground temperatures near Edinburgh served as basis for the estimated “general increase of temperature in the Earth downwards” alias mean geothermal gradient of 1/50th of a degree Fahrenheit per foot (~ ca 36°C/km).
After taking into account the estimated uncertainties in thermal gradient and thermal conductivity, Kelvin broadened an upper limit for the age of the Earth to interval between 20 and 400 millions of years (20 ~ 400 Ma). In a later paper, based on experimental results performed by Carl Barus (who found out that diabase, a typical basalt of very primitive character, melts between 1100°C and 1170°C and is thoroughly liquid at 1300°C)<ref name="KelvinNature1895">{{cite journal |title=On the Age of the Earth |author= Lord Kelvin |journal= Nature (reprint in SA)|date= January 3, 1895 |pages= 334-337 |url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lord-kelvin-on-the-age-of-the-earth/ |accessdate=14 June 2015 |quote= Carl Barus (Phil. Mag., 1893, first half year, pp. 186, 187, 301-305) that diabase, a typical basalt of very primitive character, melts between 1,100° C. and 1,170° and is thoroughly liquid at 1,300°.}}</ref>, he modified the value for supposed initial molten rock temperature to 1200°C<ref name="Richter"/>, thus by the end of the 1800s narrowed down the interval to 20 ~ 40Ma<ref name="chemeu">{{cite web |title=William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin |publisher=chemeurope.com |url=http://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/William_Thomson%2C_1st_Baron_Kelvin.html |accessdate=14 June 2015 |quote= Thomson ultimately settled on an estimate that the Earth was 20-40 million years old }}</ref>, with personal preference for the lower value which is also the most quoted one.<ref>{{cite book |title= The Dating Game: One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth |author= Cherry Lewis |publisher= Cambridge University Press |year= 2012 |pages= 39 |isbn= 978-11076-59599 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=vU1yZQ03Kz0C }}</ref><ref name="West"/>
Many scientists liked these values, since they appeared to be consistent with calculations made by [[Hermann von Helmholtz]], who in 1854 estimated the age of sun to be between 20 and 40 million years,<ref name="ingv"/><ref>{{cite web |title= Trial balloons and the age of the earth |author= Tas Walker |publisher=CMI |url= http://creation.com/trial-balloons-geochronology |accessdate= 14 June 2015}}</ref> but for both evolutionists in biology as well as uniformitarians in geology they were distastefully low.<ref name="KelvinRevisited">{{cite web |title= Lord Kelvin revisited on the young age of the earth |author= John Woodmorappe |publisher=CMI |url= http://creation.com/trial-balloons-geochronology |accessdate= 14 June 2015}}</ref>
== The game changer: Radioactivity mythmaking==
{| class="infobox bordered" style="font-size:95%; width:25em;"
! style="font-size:120%; background:lightblue; text-align:center; padding:5px 0;" | The age of the earth is definite
|-
| style="padding:15px;" | ''"We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more, or less, but we say it is not indefinite. And we can say very definitely that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of years."'' ''"We feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever as they have done for the last six thousand years."''
<div style="padding-left:40px;">— William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)<ref name=" OntheMiracleofLife">{{cite web |title= “On the Miracle of Life” [Actual title unknown.] Excerpt from an address at the annual meeting of the Christian Evidence Society |author=W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) |publisher= as quoted in Heros of the Telegraph by J. Munro.|year= 1889 |url= http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/on_the_miracle_of_life.html |accessdate=July 18, 2015 |quote= I may refer to that old, but never uninteresting subject of the miracles of geology. Physical science does something for us here. St. Peter speaks of scoffers who said that ‘all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation;’ but the apostle affirms himself that ‘all these things shall be dissolved.’ It seems to me that even physical science absolutely demonstrates the scientific truth of these words. We feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever as they have done for the last six thousand years. ... The science of dead matter, which has been the principal subject of my thoughts during my life, is, I may say, strenuous on this point, that the age of the earth is definite. We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more, or less, but we say it is not indefinite. And we can say very definitely that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of years.}}</ref></div>
|}
By the end of the nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin had completely demolished all opposition.<ref name="West"/> He made uniformitarian geological community to accept that the age of the earth must be finite and that estimating the age by quantitative reasoning instead of supporting steady-state theory with [[Horror of a Divine Foot|philosophical bias]] should be crucial part of the geological endeavor. Even ‘''Darwin’s bulldog''’ and [[T. H. Huxley|musketeer of Darwinism Huxley]], who previously attacked Kelvin by making indirect allusions about ''“the first passer-by who fancies that our house is not so well built as it might be”'', ventured to suggest, in front of the Geological society of London, that ''“limitation of the period during which living beings have inhabited this planet to one, two, or three hundred million years, may be admitted, without a complete revolution in geological speculation.”''<ref name="KelvinOnDynamics"/> Materialistic philosophers, such as the British analytical [[Bertrand Russell]], realized that the Hutton's materialstic concept ''”no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”'' is further unmaintainable, and de facto denounced it while starting to proclaim Biblically compatible apocalyptic views: ''“all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of Solar System”''. These things should be regarded, ''“if not quite beyond dispute,”'' ''“yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.”''<ref name="Signature">{{Cite book
| author = Meyer, Stephen C.
| title = Signature in the Cell
| publisher = HarperOne
| location= New York
| year= 2008
| isbn = 978-0-06-147279-2
| pages = 450
| url=http://books.google.com/books?id=RUGKBdKawDUC| quote= }}</ref>
But T.C. Chamberlin, head of the Department of Geology at the [[University of Chicago]], was not prepared to concede defeat. While defending his faith in long-ages, he speculated, without any observational basis whatever, that there might yet be discovered new sources of energy that would allow more time than Kelvin had calculated.<ref>{{cite book |title=Earth |author= Frank Press, Raymond Siever |publisher=W. H. Freeman |edition=4 |year=1986 |pages=40 |isbn=978-0716717430 |url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Earth-Frank-Press/dp/0716717433}}</ref> Thus, the quest for the age of the earth as a subjective, arbitrary and erratic pursuit, was set for an fascinating turn.<ref name="West"/> This came in 1896, when [[radioactivity]] was discovered by Henri Becquerel and when in 1903 [[Marie and Pierre Curie|Pierre Curie]] and Albert Laborde demonstrated that [[radioactive decay]] releases heat. Before long, several people argued that this source of heat was great enough to overturn Kelvin’s conclusion about the boundary for the age of the earth. Among them was [[Ernest Rutherford]], who in 1904 suggested, in the Royal Institution, that ''“Lord Kelvin had limited the Age of the Earth, ‘provided no new source of heat was discovered.’ That prophetic utterance refers to what we are considering tonight, [[radium]]!”'' Later, Rutherford often repeated his tale of thinking on his feet in front of the “old bird” Kelvin who “beamed” at him. This episode and pleasing form of the anecdote, boosted by the eminence of its author, who was considered the father of nuclear theory, provided a ready vehicle for mythmaking and uncritical acceptance of proposition that because the discovery of radioactive heat undermined an assumption behind Kelvin’s calculation, it also undermined his conclusion.<ref name="PerryKelvinCritique"/> As the half-life of radium's dominant isotope is 1600 yr, heat given out by radium obviously could not be the wanted missing energy. Nevertheless, later assumptions of equilibrium in decay series of [[uranium]] and [[thorium]] allowed to consider heat sources with half-lives in gigayears (Ga; 1 Ga = 10<sup>9</sup> years).
The 1911 edition of the [[Encyclopedia Britannica]] discussed dates up to 500 million years.<ref>Encyclopædia Britannica, pp 650-651.</ref>
By about 1930, J. H. Jeans was arguing for an age of the Earth of around two billion years.<ref>Universal History of the World, p.76.</ref>
The inclusion of radiogenic heat makes however only insignificant difference in terms of age limit inferred from the time required for the surface gradient to reach its present-day estimated value of 20°C/km supported by observational evidence.
As a matter of fact, it is freely acknowledged that radioactive heat sources within the earth do not account for its present internal temperatures if the earth had really existed for 4.5 Ga. The statements such as ''"Thanks to Madame Curie, the inexhaustible energies of the atom of the globe … are potentially available to geological speculation"'' and ''"Kelvin overthrown"''<ref name="KelvinRevisited"/> are logically incorrect; Kelvin's conclusion would be undermined by that discovery only if incorporation of the Earth's radioactive heat into his calculations produced a substantially different age limits for the earth.
The general conclusion is that, even if Kelvin had included a reasonable radiogenic heat production in his thermal calculations, he would still have found grounds for arguing that the age limit of the earth was of the order of 10<sup>8</sup> years and his estimate would have been virtually unaffected.<ref name="Richter"/>
=== The Scientific Dogma of 4.5 billion years ===
{| class="infobox bordered" style="font-size:95%; width:25em;"
! style="font-size:120%; background:lightgray; text-align:center; padding:5px 0;" | Subjective biased approach to data selection
|-
| style="padding:15px;" |''"In general, dates in the correct ballpark are [[Paleoscience#Paleoscience.2C_worldview_of_the_scientists.2C_sociological_and_psychological_factors.2C_political_pressure|assumed to be correct]] and are published, but those in disagreement with other date are seldom published, nor are the discrepancies fully explained."''
<div style="padding-left:40px;">— Richard K. Mauger<ref>{{cite journal |title= K-Ar ages of biotites from tuffs in Eocene rocks of the Green River, Washakie, and Uinta basins, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado |author= Richard L. Mauger |journal= |publisher=University of Wyoming |year=1977 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=17-42 (37)|url= https://geobookstore.uwyo.edu/sites/default/files/download/ConttoGeo_TOC.pdf |accessdate=13 June 2015 }}</ref> </div>
|}
In 1943 R.A. Daly of Harvard University published his authoritative paper ''“Meteorites and an Earth model,”'' where he studied the analogies between [[Rock (material)|terrestrial rocks]] and [[meteor]]ites, coupled with deductions on the probable nature of the Earth’s interior. He hypothesized that the latter ones originated by disruption of a planet once situated between Mars and Jupiter, in the region now occupied by [[asteroid]]s. At first textbooks have quoted his theory approvingly, but later it has been disfavored due to mineralogical discontinuities between different groups of meteorites which were interpreted as evidence against a single parent body hypothesis. Nevertheless, the meteorites, “enigmatic bodies,” have managed to attract the great resurgence of interest in scientific research.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Meteorites |author=Brian Mason|journal=American Scientist |volume=55| issue=4 |year=1967|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/27837038?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents}}</ref>
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 × 10<sup>9</sup>yr.''' 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"''.<ref>{{cite web |title= Age of meteorites and the earth |author= Claire Patterson |url=http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Patterson1956.pdf |accessdate= }}</ref> In spite of cautions and skepticism advised by the authors, this figure gradually became a scientific dogma that rarely anyone has dared to question.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Ralph W. Matthews |title=Radiometric dating and the age of the Earth |date=December 1982 |publisher=Creation |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=41–44 |quote=In spite of cautions and skepticism advised by the authors this number has been widely and enthusiastically accepted and is usually quoted as if the evidence was decisive and conclusive. It has assumed something of the status of a universal constant to which all other data must be fitted, thus it has become common practice to assume that data which does not fit this result is either wrong or unintelligible. |accessdate=December 30, 2014}}</ref> 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]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Once upon a time … A Review of The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods by John Woodmorappe |author=Michael J. Oard |url=http://creation.com/once-upon-a-time |accessdate=November 9, 2014}}</ref>
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."''{{#tag:ref|The claim on the contamination explaining the "discordant result" is in direct contradiction with previous statements that neither analytical nor extremely unlikely terrestrial contamination could explain the results. According to Ryan Dobson, author of a book on [[moral relativism]], a person that holds conflicting opinions about something and starts disagreeing with himself of herself is in trouble.<ref name="Dobson">{{cite book
|author=Ryan Dobson, Jefferson Scott
|title=Be Intolerant in Love: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid
|publisher=Tyndale House Publishers
|location=Sisters, OR, USA
|year=2007
|isbn=978-1590-521526
|page=23-26
|pages=121
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=yvSEGgAACAAJ
|quote= You can't recognize that you hold conflicting opinions about something and hang on to both of them for very long. When you start disagreeing with yourself, you're in trouble.}}</ref> The trouble maintaining a train of thought in logical and coherent manner is regarded by [[medical science]] as symptom and characteristic of [[schizophrenia]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Types, Causes, and Early Warning Signs |publisher=helpguide.org |url= http://www.helpguide.org/articles/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-signs-types-and-causes.htm |accessdate=13 June 2015 |quote=Fragmented thinking is characteristic of schizophrenia. Externally, it can be observed in the way a person speaks. People with schizophrenia tend to have trouble concentrating and maintaining a train of thought. They may respond to queries with an unrelated answer, start sentences with one topic and end somewhere completely different, speak incoherently, or say illogical things.}}</ref>|group=note}}
{| class="infobox bordered" style="font-size:95%; width:25em;"
! style="font-size:120%; background:lightgray; text-align:center; padding:5px 0;" | Assault on scientific [[Socratic principle]]
|-
| style="padding:15px;" |''"Most advocates do not defend their theses out of conviction that they are true, but rather because they once declared them to be true."''
<div style="padding-left:40px;">— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg </div>
|}
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.<ref name=GALE>{{cite web |title=U-Pb studies of the appley bridge meteorite |author=Gale, N.H., Arden, J. and Hutchison, R. |publisher=Nature Phys. Science |year=1972 |volume=240 57 |url=http://www.springerlink.com/content/r741164v5162r447}}</ref> This methodological flaw is known as [[data torturing]].
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 dating|Potassium-argon (K:Ar) decay rates]] and other radiometric methods.<ref>Peck, 2000, p.376.</ref>
In 1978, ''Geotimes'' magazine published by American Geological Institute quoted John Eddy, a famous astronomer, who argued that due to ''“some new and unexpected results“'' scientists could live with bishop Ussher’s 4004 B.C. value for the age of Earth and Sun, ''a fortiori'' since there is not much in the way of [[Scientific observation|observational]] [[Scientific evidence|evidence]] in [[astronomy]] to conflict with his calculations.<ref>{{cite journal |author=John Eddy quoted by R.G. Kazmann |title= It’s About Time: 4.5 Billion Years (report on Symposium at Louisiana State University)|publisher= Geotimes magazine (from 09/2008 renamed to Earth magazine) of American Geological Institute |year=1978 |issue=23 |pages=18-20|quote=I suspect that the Sun is 4.5 billion years old. However, given some new and unexpected results to the contrary, and some time for some frantic recalculation and theoretical readjustment, I suspect that we could live with bishop Ussher’s value for the age of Earth and Sun. I don’t think we have much in the way of observational evidence in astronomy to conflict with that.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |author=Jon Covey |title= Age of the Universe |publisher= Creation In The Crossfire |date= January 3, 2013 |url=http://www.creationinthecrossfire.com/documents/AgeOfUniverse/AgeOfTheUniverse.html |accessdate=December 30, 2014 |quote= Evolutionary astronomers confidently argue the universe is 12-20 billion years old, although there is no certainty about any astronomical observations. John Eddy, a famous astronomer, once said that there isn’t much in the way of observational astronomy that proves the universe is old. He said that with “frantic theoretical readjustment” if new evidence showed that astronomers have been wrong, they could live with Bishop Ussher’s date of 4,004 B.C.}}</ref>
== Geology ==
[[Image:516XZRGNCKL AA240 .jpg|right|300px]]
[[William R. Corliss]] is a cataloger of scientific [[Anomaly|anomalies]] (observations and facts that challenge prevailing scientific [[paradigm]]s) and has published many works on the subject.<ref name="sf">[http://www.science-frontiers.com/ Science Frontiers] (Corliss' web-site)</ref>
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).<ref>Corliss, 2002</ref> The science magazine ''[[New Scientist]]'' had an article which focused on the career of William Corliss.<ref>Adrian Hope, "Finding a home for stray fact", ''New Scientist'', July 14, 1977, p. 83</ref>
''New Scientist'' wrote regarding Corliss's work: "All I can say to Corliss is carry on cataloging". <ref>Quoted on the [http://www.science-frontiers.com/sourcebk.htm Science Frontiers web-site]</ref> [[Arthur C. Clarke]] described Corliss as "[[Charles Fort|Fort]]'s latter-day — and much more scientific — successor."<ref>Clarke, Arthur C. (1990) ''Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography''. Gollancz. Page 110</ref>
Corliss's work on geological anomalies catalogs scores of anomalies which challenge the [[old-earth]] [[paradigm]].<ref>[http://www.science-frontiers.com/sourcebk.htm#Geology Geological Catalogs] (Science Frontiers)</ref>
== Bibliography ==
* Burnet, Thomas, [http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/ste/ste36.htm The Sacred Theory of the Earth, chapter V], 1691.
* Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911). [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Tim_Starling On-line page facsimiles].
* Hammerton, J.A. (Ed.), "Universal History of the World" (8 volumes) The Educational Book Co., London, c1930.
* Batten, Don, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/417 Old-earth or young-earth belief: Which belief is the recent aberration?], ''Creation'' 24(1):24–27, December 2001.
* [http://www.ingv.it/~roma/SITOINGLESE/activities/geomagnetismo/analysistheory/historicalresearch/age.html 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 ==
*[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth] by [[Creation Ministries International]]
*[http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-8-how-old-is-the-earth How old is the earth?] - ''Refuting evolution'' - Chapter 8 by Dr. [[Jonathan Sarfati]] at [[Creation Ministries International]]
*[http://creation.com/young-age-of-the-earth-universe-qa Age of the Earth and Universe] by [[Creation Ministries International]]
== Notes ==
<references group=note/>
== References ==
{{Reflist}}
[[Category:Geology]]