Difference between revisions of "Age of the Earth"

Revision as of 16:38, December 1, 2014

the earth is 4.5 billion years old

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-[[File:Blue Marble.jpg|thumbnail|200px|right|The historical and scientific evidence strongly indicates that the [[earth]] is approximately 6,000 years old.<ref>
+the earth is 4.5 billion years old
-*[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth: 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe]
-*[http://creation.com/how-old-is-the-earth How old is the earth?]
-*[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]</ref>]]
-''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>[http://www.interacademies.net/10878/13901.aspx] [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 [[young earth creationism|points to a 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]]
-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 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’.|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 |pubilisher=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><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.
-In 1778 George-Louis Lecrerc, Count of [[Buffon]], who rejected [[Christianity]], adopted [[Evolutionism|evolutionary thought]] and thus searched for [[materialistic]] explanations for the 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=13-18, 39
-|isbn=0-8129-6849-2
-|url=http://books.google.no/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>, proposed that the Earth was about 74,832 years old.<ref name="ingv">INGV</ref>
-[[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.<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" />  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.<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>
-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> 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]].<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."'' 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>
-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>
-== 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 />
-[[Category:Geology]]

Difference between revisions of "Age of the Earth"

Revision as of 16:38, December 1, 2014

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