Age of the Earth

2008-06-07T05:11:28Z

Twilightredemption: /* Increasing ages */

The '''age of the Earth''' has been a matter of interest to humans for millennia, and today still causes debate, particularly between [[young Earth Creationism|young-Earth creationists]] who hold to a date of 6,000 years or so, and [[uniformitarianism|uniformitarians]] who hold to a date of about 4,500 million years.

== Increasing ages ==

This site has no real data to prove any of this information and should consider researching this area before posting any of this information on the internet. Since there is far more than 6,000 years of history for humans, and if some Dinosaurs were killed off during the Great Flood, then there would be other animals that could be easily identified near these giant animals. I know that no one but the admistratores will read this edit, but you should at least know this, you're a bunch of idiots with your heads stuffed up your asses. Early Jews and even some "heathens" believed that the total age of the Earth would be around 6,000 years.<ref>Burnet, p. 258.</ref>

Similarly, people such as St. Barnabas and St. Irenæus held that the Earth would be 6,000 years old.<ref>Burnet, p. 259.</ref>

In 1830, Dr. Hales published a list of 120 historical authorities from various cultures who had decided on a [[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.

In 1778 George-Louis Lecrerc, Count of Buffon, proposed that the Earth was about 74,832 years old.<ref name="ingv">INGV</ref>
[[James Hutton]], whilst not proposing a date, dismissed the Biblical account and claimed in 1785 that there was not evidence of a beginning at all.<ref name="ingv" />
[[Charles Lyell]] supported Hutton's idea in 1830, in ''Principles of Geology''.<ref name="ingv" />

In 1854 [[Hermann von Helmholtz]] estimated an age of between 20 and 40 million years.<ref name="ingv" />
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.<ref name="ingv" />

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 2,000 million years.<ref>Universal History of the World, p.76.</ref>

The currently-proposed age is 4,500 million years, based in part on rocks dated by [[Potassium-argon dating|Potassium-argon (K:Ar) dating]] at about 4,400 million years.<ref>Peck, 2000, p.376.</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.

== Notes ==
<references />
[[Category:Geology]]

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Age of the Earth