Is there evidence for a young earth? (An experiment)

Correct. I am not either. (I like the little pun in there, BTW. ) Would not want to be and would not claim to be. I made the original statement to point out that it is not infallible God with whom I disagree, as was asserted, but the fallible man making the interpretation.

There are many areas in which good Christian men and women disagree and we will not know the correct answer this side of heaven.

But we are fortunate that we have God's own creation which can be used to tell us which interpretation of the creation account is correct. And God's own creation tells us in no uncertain terms that He used long periods. Therfore the YE interpretation cannot be correct.

Look at this own thread. The OP was to find any evidence that points specifically to a young earth. None was found.

 

There is something I have always wondered about. It has to do with this topic, so I guess I can post it here.

Before I get to it, let me say that I am a believer in the "young earth" view. There has been no millions of years, 6-10,000 years is what has been, a literal world wide flood, God created all that is when He *spoke*, and it was, etc. I believe all of that works scientifically, anthropologically, hydrologically, and all other "polologies" as well.

But I dont fall out with brothers and sisters who believe different, nor do I consider them to be lessor christians than myself.

(I do wish they would come to the truth, however. )

I dont know if I have heard this somewhere in the past and cant remember where, or if this is something I just thought up on my own, but here is what I am wondering about...

We all know that the sun is actually a "dwarf" star, meaning it is in the process of...over(supposedly) millions of years...getting smaller and dying. Meaning of course, that in the distant past it was much larger and hotter than it is today.

I have also heard it said that if earth were just a fraction closer to the sun we would burn up instantly, and if we were just a fraction further away we would freeze to death.

If all of that is so, then it seems to me that if their have indeed been..(in Carl Sagan tones)..billions and billions of years in the past, then the earth wouldnt be here because the sun, being so much larger and hotter that far back, would have incinerated the earth and it never would have been here for us to populate.

Is that a logical conclusion or are some of my assumptions wrong?

Thanks,

Mike

 

Good morning, Mike.

Let me see if I can help.

The shrinking sun argument has at its source an abstract published in 1979 called "Secular Decrease in the Solar Diameter, 1836-1953" and written by astronomers John Eddy and Aram Boornazian and the accompanying paper. As the paper went through the reveiw process, errors were found and the paper itself was never published.

So the data is not only at odds with published data but the data did not stand up to the reveiw process and was never published itself.

There are some problems evven beyond this. The sun is a dynamic system and SHOULD be expected to change in measureable ways with time. But, even if the data had not been found to be incorrect, it would still be a mistake to extend a short term trend in such a complex system as the sun indefinately into the past.

Which, as much as AIG and ICR rail against "uniformitarianism," it is a bit hypocritical to do such. It is also against the true form of uniformitarianism as practiced in science which merely says that the same physical and chemical processes are at work today as in the past. It says nothing about gradualism or about unchanging rates for processes or any of the other things that are attributed to "uniformitarianism" in the YE press.

As it turns out the sun would have been larger at the very beginning until it settled into a balance between the force of gravity seeking to contract the mass and the fusion energy attempting to push it apart. The sun has been relatively stable for most of its life. It has been getting slowly more bright, however. I have read estimates that in a few hundred million years, the brightness will be something like 10% higher which will pretty much be the end of life on earth.

 

UTEOTW sez:

Well, here is something that we CAN agree on! (Is that distant rumble the sound of the sky falling? )

Tell you what UTEOTW, if after we get to Heaven we find out you were correct (not really a chance though ), I'll buy you a cuppa coffee; I'll expect the same from you when(!!) you find out I'm right! DEAL, OK?

MARANATHA

 

I'll take that deal. I just have to learn to drink coffee now.

 

"Dr. Larry Vardiman's technical monograph, The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere, published in 1990, is the most recent survey of the helium problem.9 The atmosphere now contains..."

As already pointed out - your use of outdated research does not nullify recent findings.

I am sorry that you missed that salient point. If you read the entire post I am sure you will get it next time.

Bob

 

UTEOTW,

You said...(my bolding)

Thanks for the reply. It sounds like I might be wrong about what a "dwarf" star is. It seems like I remember being taught in school growing up that a "dwarf" star, like our sun, is at the very end of a long long decline, and is actually close to basically fizzling out.

You seem to be saying that there is lots of fluxation...hotter, cooling off some...getting a bit hotter...cooling of more, etc going on.

Is that correct?

Mike

 

Any adult with a high school education and average or better intelligence can easily enough learn for them self that the Ark described in Genesis was very much too small to do the job that it is literally portrayed as doing. You can either rely upon presumption and call it faith, or you can sit down with a calculator and the data and learn the truth for yourself. And once YOU have established in your own mind beyond any doubt whatsoever that the account of Noah’s Ark in the book of Genesis is not a literal account, you will be free to study Genesis and the rest of the Bible with an open mind and learn more about God and the Bible than you ever dreamed possible.

But do I expect that you will accept this challenge—no, of course not, because then you would really KNOW the truth, and some people choose not to know it.

 

Craig,

I have heard highly educated people, way beyond high school or even general college, speak of how its no problem whatsoever for the entire earth to be repopulated with the animals and insects that would have been on the Ark, as decribed in Genesis.

Its not in the least bit unreasonable, and the same can be said for the young earth, young universe, world wide flood, etc etc etc.

I'm not a scientist but I have read and heard so much...in writing and on tapes, dvd's, etc....from speakers who are scientist level people who have no problem with any of this.

The debate is between two reasonable views, not between a reasonable view and the myths of "those gullible bible believers". (I'm not saying you have used that terminology, but I have heard it from time to time)

As a matter of fact, to multitudes of exceedingly learned and bright people, the whole concept of "billions and billions" of years, and fish magically turning into birds who magically turn into apes who magically turn into men is the ridiculous view.

Just FWIW,

God bless,

Mike

 

As already pointed out - your use of outdated research does not nullify recent findings.

I am sorry that you missed that salient point. If you read the entire post I am sure you will get it next time.

Bob</font>[/QUOTE]So maybe you can point out just where Vardiman cites a more recent value for the amount of helium removed by the polar wind? I'll even make it easy on you, here is the paragraph where Larry discusses the topic.

Now tell me what more recent source he cites and what the value is from that source for the amount of helium removed by the polar wind. He makes an asertion but he does not support it. Since he did not, maybe you can tell us the errors in the paper I originally cited.

 

Mike

If you will indulage me, I will attempt to shed a little more light. Please take into consideration that I am doing this from memory and I am not an astronomer. But Ithink the general thrust is correct.

You are not too far off. Dwarf stars can be considered close to fizzling out but not because of age but because of size. Let's back up.

As a cloud of gas collapses to form a star (and I can show you pictures of a star at any stage of this process) temperature and pressure increase because of the collapse. When sufficiant temperature and pressure are reached, the star begins to fuse hydrogen into helium and release energy.

Now, as you can imagine, the more temperature and pressure, the faster this fusion takes place. So as star will continue to collapse until the energy from the fusion is just enough to balance the force of gravity and prevent any further collapse.

In the case of a star like our sun, it only has about 10 times the minimum mass to start fusion. So it piddles along turning relativelt small amounts of hydrogen into helium. Red dwarfs are even smaller and consume even less hydrogen. These dwarf stars live a life just above the minimum. This is a good thing, though, because it gives them a nice long and relativelt stable life. But it would not be bad to say that they life their life not to far above that point where they would fizzle out.

Now we know of stars that are at least 100 - 150 times as massive as our sun. The pressure and temperature they create is very intense and the fusion proceeds at an astounding rate. Even though they have much more hydrogen fuel than our sun, they burn it so quickly that they exhaust their supply in less than 1/1000th the time it will take our sun to go through its fuel. They then explode when the fuel runs out and the massive star completely collapses in upon itself, often forming a black hole.

Now once a dwarf protostar finishes collapsing and becaomes a stable main sequence star, it is fairly stable. Now for some reason I cannot remember, they do get brighter with time. That is what I alluded to before. But even though they are stable, it does not mean that there are not short term changes. For instance, there was a period a few hundred years ago called the Maunder Minimum. (The spelling is something close to that.) The activity of the sun dropped a bit for a few decades and had a major effect on the earth's weather. We can even measure the difference in the generation of radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere in items from that period. But even that was only a change of like 0.1%.

Sorry for the wordiness, but I hope it helps. When I get a moment, I can look up further information if you want.

 

PlainSense

Didn't think so. I'll check back in a week or so and see if they have done it, yet.

 

rlvaughn

I tried to figure out that Peter didn't walk on water stuff ... WHAT was that Craig trying to say? He doesn't believe in miracles? Peter can't walk on water? I tho't we all knew that Peter can't ... and that we knew that Jesus can?

If you breathe air, you must believe in miracles ... Maybe I should have used "should" instead of "must" ...

I guess I need to go back to second grade and start all over again ...

 

So have I. But I am not that gullible. I took out my calculator and learned that the Ark was not even close to large enough. If you would do the same, you would learn for yourself the truth.

You have basically three choices:

• Believe the very large majority of scientists who know that the Ark would not have been large enough.

• Believe the few “scientists” who say that the Ark was large enough but who ignore almost all of the data.

• Do your own calculations.

I was a scientist (a biologist doing research at a major university) before I my career change, and I know better than to pay attention to a bunch of quacks on tapes. But I have read their claims and so-called research, and I have studied them as individuals, and I have found them to be so obsessed with defending a literal interpretation of Gen. 1 -11 that they have lost all sight of reality and common sense.

You can surely use a calculator. Start crunching the numbers for yourself. For all you know, I am just another quack!

The debate is between scientists and Bible scholars on one side, and phony scientists and uneducated laymen and clergy on the other side.

Hogwash!

 

Craig,

When did I say anything about quacks on tapes? I mentioned highly educated, very bright, scientist level people.

Good grief, have you been living on a desert island your whole life until now? I dont see how you can claim that 100% of all the highly educated and exceedingly bright people in the science community believe as you do, and none of them believe our view, and consider it exceedingly reasonable, and exprect us to take you seriously.

Mike

 

I did not claim that 100% of all the highly educated and exceedingly bright people in the science community believe in an old earth; however there is absolutely no doubt that such a claim could be made with 100% confidence of it being 100% accurate.

Every single so-called scientist whose name has been posted on this message board as a believer in a young earth has been conclusively shown to be not only grossly ignorant of the facts, but in almost every case also a liar and a deceiver. I know that this sounds harsh, but any softer words would be a distortion of the truth.

As a former research biologist, I can say with absolute certainty that the events described in Genesis 6 – 8 did not literally occur, and I have never encountered nor heard of a biologist who earned his Ph.D. from a major university that believes that those events did literally occur. Indeed, for a biologist to believe that those events did occur would require that he disbelieve the very foundations and principles of the biological sciences.

It is absolutely impossible in the 21st century for anyone to be highly educated and exceedingly bright and not be aware of the fact that the earth is at least millions of years old. According to the chronology of Bishop Usher, Noah began building the ark 4,353 years ago. However, in 1964 a specimen of Pinus longaeva (the Bristlecone Pine) was cut down as part of a research project to date the time of the last Ice Age, and it was discovered that the tree that was cut down was 4,950 years old. 10,000 feet up in California's White Mountains there are a number of these ancient trees, and their tree rings prove that their ecological conditions have not changed significantly in the past 5,000 years. This discovery, and thousands more of them, have forced most creationists to push back the age of the earth by an additional 4,000 years, but an additional 4,000 does not even begin to deal with the readily observable chronology of the earth.

Those who defend the story of Noah’s Ark in the name of science not only disgrace the very nature of science, but, much more significantly, they radically disgrace the character of Christianity and make a most ridiculous sham of the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And the discerning reader can see the deception at a glance, because those who defend the story of Noah’s Ark in the name of science absolutely ignore all but less than one tenth of one percent of the contradictory arguments and focus on one, two, or three of them, and when we compare their stories with one another, we see that they contradict each other over and over again.

 

Mike, earlier in this thread I posted a few facts regarding Noah’s Ark that must be considered in evaluating the literalness of the account in Gen. 7 – 8. For your convenience, here they are again:

• The ark as literally described in Genesis was much too small because the amount of water that it would be capable of displacing would weigh less that the animals on board making it impossible for the ark to float.

• The floor space on the ark was too small to hold any more than a tiny fraction of the cages that would be necessary to keep the animals in place (and from eating each other).

• The amount of food required for the animals would weigh nearly as much as the animals and would require a vast amount of storage space.

• Many of the animals aboard the ark would have required specific FRESH fruits, vegetables, leaves, grass, bark, roots, etc.

• Most of the genetically discrete populations of fish (including many VERY large fish) would have to be taken aboard the ark and kept in tanks of water that met their very specific water chemistry needs in order to survive.

• The weight of the water on the earth would have crushed to death any of the land plants that did not drown in the water.

• After 150 days when the water abated, there would be no vegetation on the earth for the herbivores to eat, and no meat for the carnivores to eat, therefore a vast mount of food would necessarily have been kept on the ark to sustain the animals AFTER the flood.

• Many of the herbivores would have had very specific dietary needs, including fresh fruits and berries that are produced only on MATURE plants. Therefore these mature plants would necessarily have been kept and maintained on the ark and subsequently planted in the ground after the flood.

• The Animals could not all be released at once or in the same place because they would eat each other.

• Collecting the animals from all over the earth would have been a physical impossibility no less impossible than Santa Clause delivering presents to every boy and girl on the night before Christmas. The polar bears and penguins, not to mention all of the unique kinds of animals in Australia, would have posed a few special difficulties.

• After the flood, the animals could not be returned to their original habitat because all habitats would have been destroyed by the flood.

• Many of the necessary habitats would take 50 years or more to be reestablished and their reestablishment would have required the effort of many thousands of persons.

• Until all the necessary habitats could be reestablished, the animals requiring these habitats would have to be kept and cared for by Noah and his family.

• There was not enough water to cover the entire earth, and even if there was, where did it go after the flood.

• If the reported sightings of the Ark are correct, the Ark came to rest on a VERY high mountain on VERY rugged terrain from which the vast majority of the animals would not have been able descend.

Any rational man or woman can see at once that the story of Noah’s Ark can NOT be a literal account of an historic event. Indescribably huge miracles would have been necessary, and a literal interpretation of Genesis does not allow for these miracles because the whole point of the narrative is that through the natural means of an ark built by Noah and his family, mankind and all the kinds of animals were saved from the water.