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How Old Is The Earth?

Discussion in 'Creation vs. Evolution' started by Phillip Diller, Jun 6, 2020.

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  1. Phillip Diller

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    The age of the Earth has great significance in the debate between Creation and evolutionism. If the Earth is billions of years old then evolutionists will claim that life is just the result of natural chemical reactions and countless ages of gradual improvements guided by natural law. If, on the other hand, the Earth is relatively young then evolution doesn't have a leg to stand on. Both Creation and evolutionism have unavoidable religious implications: if Creation is true then there is a Creator with Whom we have to do, but if Creation is not true then life as we know it is a flash in the pan that will soon be extinguished in the Heat Death of the Universe and all that we have accomplished will mean nothing.

    So, a profound question lurks in the wings, demanding to be answered: What can science tell us about the age of the Earth? The simple answer is NOTHING! Obviously, there was no human witness to the beginning of the Earth, and in spite of the genius of man we cannot state with certainty how or when that happened. Science, guided by philosophical naturalism, has invested untold billions of dollars and man-hours attempting to answer the question. But try as they might they have not, and cannot. The branch of science that deals with unseen past events is called forensic science, which doesn't prove anything to be true or false. It attempts to narrow the field of possible answers to the one that seems most likely. Hard science deals with trying to establish the truth based on observation, testing and falsification. What I want to consider in this thread is the various methods that scientists use to try to chart Earths' past history, and why they fail.

    The two principle methods of dating artifacts are carbon and non-carbon radiometric analysis. Carbon dating is generally used to establish the age of a once-living specimen. Non-carbon dating is generally used to attempt to date objects that were not living things, or the fossilized remains of creatures that have completely mineralized.

    Today I'll deal with carbon dating. Carbon 14 is an unstable form of carbon that forms in the upper atmosphere when an energetic free neutron collides with a nitrogen atom and displaces a proton. Over time the carbon-14 atom will revert back to nitrogen, having a half-life of about 5,730 years. Carbon-12 is a stable form of atmospheric carbon and the ratio of C-14 to C-12 in our atmosphere is approximately 1 to 1 trillion. Since living things exchange carbon with their environment through breathing and eating, etc., they should contain in their tissues carbon at the same ratio as the air. So, if the C-14 to C-12 ratio in a specimen is 1 to 2 trillion, then it is assumed that the C-14 has gone through one half-life cycle and hence the specimen is about 5,730 years old. On the surface this seems to be reasonable, but there are a number of factors that call this method into question:
    1. We can't know what the ratio of C-14 to C-12 was at the time the specimen died. The amount of both forms of carbon are effected by above-ground nuclear explosions, volcanic eruptions, solar activity and the strength of Earths' magnetic field. All of these factors are variable, and with respect to the magnetic field we know that it is weakening with a half-life of about 1,400 years. That means that in the past the magnetic field would have been a far more effective shield against cosmic radiation, and consequently C-14 formation would have been less than it is today. It has been calculated that it would take about 30,000 years to go from zero C-14 to equilibrium, and we aren't there yet.
    2. We can't know if the rate of decay of C-14 has been constant over time.
    3. Even with AMS technology we can't detect the presence of C-14 in specimens more than 100,000 years old. And yet we find measurable C-14 in coal and even in diamonds, both of which are claimed to be hundreds of thousands to millions of years old.
    4. Tests have been done on specimens whose true ages were known, and with disastrous results. The shells of living snails gave a C-14 age of 26,000 years!

    So, the next question is: If the test method doesn't give you a correct result when you know the true answer, why would you ever trust the result when you can't know if it is right or wrong? And then there are the matters of specimen contamination and equipment calibration. The bottom line is that C-14 dating is inherently unreliable. Next time we'll consider the non-carbon radiometric methods and see if they are any more credible than C-14.
     
  2. Phillip Diller

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    Phillip: Now we'll consider the non-carbon methods of dating artifacts. There are many different mechanisms that can be used in this process, but we'll look at only two as they share many of the same issues as all the others. First we will discuss the uranium to lead method, considered to be the gold standard of dating methods. Then we'll look at potassium to argon. These two methods are widely used all over the world.

    Uranium 238 decays into lead 206, a stable isotope, with a calculated half life of 4.5 billion years - approximately the age of the Earth by evolutionary reasoning. The basic idea is to measure the amount of U238, the amount of Pb206 and the quantities of the 13 intermediate daughter products and calculate how long it would have taken for the decay process to have produced them.
    The first problem with this method is that we don't know the initial conditions of the specimen. So scientists are left with having to estimate what amount of the thorium, radon, radium, lead, polonium and other elements in the sample are the result of uranium decay, or are incidental.
    Secondly, scientists have to assume that the rock in question has effectively been a closed system the entire time if its existence. This is a very serious issue as many elements can be leached into or out of rocks quite easily. Is it possible to know with certainty that no Pb206 has been added to the specimen over the course of thousands or millions of years? I think not. And if even a tiny amount of lead has been added or removed then the result of the researcher's calculations will be wrong.
    Third, can we know with certainty that the decay rate of U238 has remained constant through out Earth's history? The answer is NO! One evolutionist put it this way: "There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and the events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man".
    Lastly, can we know with certainty that all of the daughter products in the specimen are the result of uranium decay? Again, the answer is NO. Of course, in the formulation of scientific hypotheses, some assumptions are unavoidable and necessary, and testing is supposed to eliminate the guesswork. And some of the radiometric methods involve more than ten assumptions. So, how is that working out...

    What about K-Ar (Potassium to Argon). The process is similar, although potassium has a shorter half-life and decays into Argon 40 and Calcium 40, but all the same problems must be dealt with. In fact, in one respect, K-Ar is even more questionable than U238 in that one of the daughter products (argon) of potassium is a gas which leaches very easily.

    So, can we know whether these or any of the other methods is reliable? The simple answer is YES, we can know, and NO they are not reliable. It's really simple, we subject specimens of known age to the test and see if the test comes up with the right answer.

    Specimens of lava from an eruption of Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand about 60 years ago produced these results:
    K-Ar age range: 270,000 to 3.5 million years old.
    Rb-Sr age: 133 million years old.
    Pb-Pb age: 3.9 billion years old.

    Hawaiian Institute of Geophysics tested samples of lava from an eruption approximately 200 years ago. The result: The samples dated 3 billion years old.

    Dr. Steven Austin harvested samples from the lava dome that formed on Mt. St. Helens after the 1980 eruption and asked a lab to date them. He was told by the lab that they would not perform the tests unless he first told them how old he thought they were. He simply responded that he thought that they were not old. The lab results gave an age range of 350,000 to 2.8 million years.

    But wait, it gets worse: Joan C. Engles said "It is now well known that K-Ar ages obtained from different minerals in a single rock may be strikingly discordant". So, which, if any, of the ages produced is right? A. Hayatsu (Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada) said: "In conventional interpretation of K-Ar age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or too low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geological time scale". So there you have it, using the presumed old age of the Earth as your guide to estimate the age of the Earth. This is not good science; it is circular reasoning.

    So the question naturally follows: If a test doesn't give accurate results when you know what the correct age is, why would you trust the test when you can't know if the results are right or wrong? (Hint: you will trust it as long as it tells you what you want to hear). The sad truth is that evolutionists have sold out to an unscientific philosophy of Earth history and will accept anything that seems to validate their belief, even if they have to manipulate the results.

    There is much more that could be said on this subject. I recommend Vernon R. Cupps book "Rethinking Radiometric Dating" subtitled "Evidence for a Young Earth from a Nuclear Physicist". Great Book.

    Phillip
     
  3. 37818

    37818 Well-Known Member

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  4. timtofly

    timtofly Well-Known Member

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    How can a non earth rock date the earth? Only in a sci-fi, romantic comedy.

    Can you date the time this non earth rock met the earth?

    We all can agree that this earth has a mature date. That date is not when the earth was created.

    There was 1000 years without any death or decay. Now try to prove how any dating method works if there was 1000 years of change without any death or decay. All radioactive decay or carbon buildup has only happened in the last 6000 years following a period of 1000 years of change without any death or decay. What change can happen for a 1000 years of perfection? Trees can add rings. Designated areas can be used to pile up "waste". Humans can themselves be constantly arranging and re-arranging geography because that is about all they can do, in doing what they do. It really does not matter what they did for the first 1000 years. It is what they did the next 1500 years, when things could die. But for 2500 years, they played with geography. The Flood itself turned their world upside down. All 2500 years of geographic sculpturing was totally changed by a global flood. We have spent the last 4500 years digging out some of what they buried, while even our own waste materials have buried many post flood civilizations under dozens of feet of dirt.
     
  5. Phillip Diller

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    Phillip: I would like very much for you to explain your cryptic comment about a non-earth rock. I am not going to buy and read a book to try to understand something that seems on the surface to be ridiculous. And the Smithsonian is not a reliable source for the age of the Earth, or why radiometric dating would work on a rock supposedly from some place other than Earth when those dating methods are demonstrably unreliable. Please explain.

    Phillip
     
  6. RighteousnessTemperance&

    RighteousnessTemperance& Well-Known Member

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    What book? What cryptic comment? It was clear as day. He provided two links, and the first does not support OEC, but rather YEC.
     
  7. Konstantin

    Konstantin Member

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    Radiometric dating methods




    The official “science” calls the age of the Earth 4,600,000,000 years. It is determined by radiometric dating. Indeed, the age of any item can be determined if it contains radioactive decay products. To do this, conduct a study on the content of a particular isotope with a known half-life. The method is based on comparing two values. It is relatively accurate and reliable for radiocarbon dating, provided:

    First, we know what the initial amount of the isotope was in the subject. Its initial amount is determined by indirect methods.

    Secondly, the system must always be closed.

    Thirdly, the age of the item should not exceed the number of years that have passed since the Flood, because we do not know the decay rate of this isotope before the flood, and the number of isotopes in the environment at that time is unknown. In other words, during the Flood, the “clock” was replaced and a different time was set on it.

    Common radiometry methods are:

    · potassium argon (K, Ar)

    · thorium-lead-uranium (U, Th, Pb)

    · carbon-14 (C-14)

    For the first time, a carbon isotope was used as a “clock”; it is carbon-14. Any living organism always contains a certain amount of radioactive carbon-14, and it ceases to accumulate with the death of the organism. Thus, radiocarbon dating determines the time of death of the body. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5700 years; and after another 5700 years, half of the remaining atoms of the isotope will decay.

    Carbon 14 is formed high in the atmosphere when cosmic rays collide with nitrogen nuclei. But before the flood, the “water” shell protected the Earth from this collision. But when this protection did become unavailable, the amount of carbon isotopes 14 in the environment increased sharply. And this global change in the amount of carbon 14 is not taken into account when dating age. So there is a huge mistake in dating the age. For example, if an object does not contain carbon 14, then it will be determined the age of about a million years, since there is always background radiation; it will be measured. By the way, coal and oil have a very low carbon content of 14.

    Can you imagine what fantastic results can be obtained if an isotope with a very long half-life is used in radiometric dating? Potassium 40 has a half-life of 1 billion 238 million years! And it is used in potassium-argon dating. Given that this method is used to date the age of rocks, and is able to give out a fantastic age, it is a convenient tool that helps evolutionists to tailor their data to the desired result. But scientific evidence of evolutionary theory, of course, is not.

    The uranium thorium-lead method is based on the conversion of isotopes of uranium 235, uranium 238 and thorium 232 into lead isotopes.

    The half-life of uranium-235 is 704 million years.

    The half-life of uranium-238 is 4 billion 468 million years.

    The half-life of thorium-232 is 14 billion 10 million years.

    As you can see, isotopes with unacceptable half-lives are used, which also puts an end to this method, as well as to the previous one. No wonder this method is considered “the gold standard” of geochronology. The half-lives of isotopes in this method fully meet all the requirements of evolutionists. By the way, using this method, a geologist from the University of Chicago, Claire Cameron Patterson, for the first time “accurately determined” the age of the Earth in 1953.

    Evolutionists believe that lead is solely a product of the decay of uranium. While, this element received an independent existence simultaneously with uranium. The whole amount of lead in nature is not a decay product at all, as they think. Therefore, they measure the time that was set on the “clock” initially. And in order to see the movement of the hands on such a “clock”, a couple of hundreds of millions of years must pass.

    "Civilization of “Ancient Greece” and “Ancient Rome” "
     
  8. Centrist

    Centrist Active Member

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    I say 4.6 billion years old.
     
  9. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    Maximum would seem to be about 50,000 years!
     
  10. Phillip Diller

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    Phillip: Here's my frustration. The post in question made an emphatic statement without an explanation, but included a link to a lengthy article. The article included a scant three and a half lines related to the statement, but the article did not conclude that the age of a moon rock establishes the age of the Earth. As I pointed out earlier in this thread radiometric methods of dating are demonstrably unreliable, and that would be true for moon rocks just as they are for Earth rocks. Also, the assumption that the age of a moon rock would be more reliable because they would not have been subject to erosion and sedimentation is completely absurd since we can't show that the moon is the same age of the Earth in the first place. If the post by 37818 had accurately portrayed the information from that link I would have simply ignored it.
     
  11. Centrist

    Centrist Active Member

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    I disagree.
     
  12. Salty

    Salty 20,000 Posts Club
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    Ask Jon - he was there
     
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  13. timtofly

    timtofly Well-Known Member

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    99% do not agree with God on the age of the earth. God gave the earth a mature age. God knew that Satan would decieve humankind. God already planned it all out. Some people do not accept a God that planned everything out either.
     
  14. Centrist

    Centrist Active Member

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    Where, in what book, does it say that God states a given number for the age of the Earth?
    And I gotta ask, where, in what book, does it say that it matters any?
    I ask this as I have reached out to churches before where they consider the young Earth theory mandatory to being saved.
     
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  15. Salty

    Salty 20,000 Posts Club
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    fully agree

    Would not surprise me a bit.
     
  16. timtofly

    timtofly Well-Known Member

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    What is your question? The finite age that is reality or the mature age that is written in the rocks since creation?

    God created the earth in 6 days is in Genesis 1. Then God skipped a day and placed the Garden in Genesis 2. That is 8 days. We know this earth is finite, because in Genesis it has a beginning and in Revelation it has an end. The length is 8 Lord's Days. The first 1000 years were perfect, with no change at all. If there were test of half lives they would not work. Nothing decayed. Nothing died. There really was not any waste. Now how could things go perfect for 1000 years? Genesis 2:4-6

    4 Here is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created. On the day when Adonai, God, made earth and heaven,
    5 there was as yet no wild bush on the earth, and no wild plant had as yet sprung up; for Adonai, God, had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no one to cultivate the ground.
    6 Rather, a mist went up from the earth which watered the entire surface of the ground.

    That is all the info we have on the first 1000 years. Living things multiplied. We do not even know what that means. It was not biological. God gave everything a certain age. We do not know what age that was, but we do know that aging was different for 1000 years. Why 1000 years? Revelation gives a another 1000 years. Revelation states that Adam was punished for 6000 years. Yes, recorded history states that modern humans remember the last 6000 years. Some even think it was longer than that, but it was not shorter than 6000. The 6000 years represent the 6 days of labor by God. God planned it out for 6000 years of labor by Adam's descendants. God will rest and labor will rest the last 1000 years. Even Satan who just messes things up is put to rest 1000 years. The first 1000 years was God’s rest, and a perfect 1000 years. 8000 finite years are found in the two Lord's Days with 6000 years between them.

    Does observation of the build up of waste reveal 4 billions years of a build up of waste? What would that look like? God declares perfection and a perfect age, but God did not declare what a perfect age is. Some say Adam was created with an age of 30. If the earth looked like it was only 6000 years what would that look like? Pristine, or should the earth look 4 billion years old? What would that even look like?

    The only thing that shows time is that which already had decay built in as a perfect looking planet. Since the dating cannot be wrong, then a perfect planet would give a 4 billion year time stamp, but would it have to look like it had been around that long, or does it only show change in the last 6000 years? If the earth only dated 6000 years, would it even have elements that we need? Would it seem out of date in a huge universe, or would that even matter?

    About the universe. God claims in Revelation that the stars are only angels. So this universe it just a bunch of very well placed angels and Satan used math to plot out these angel's positions. In fact the ancients were decieved in making prognostications because the stars were very predictable. Now they are just used to create a virtual universe that works just fine with a perfect earth that dates perfectly to 4 billion years. God gave the earth a perfect age, with the foreknowledge that modern technology would, through math and Satan's deception, fit in a 14 billion year old virtual universe. Revelation 6 shows that God on the throne will soon shatter this virtual reality because it is now time to begin the last 1000 years.
     
  17. Centrist

    Centrist Active Member

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    But, does it really matter what the age is? I see what you're saying and I'm not disagreeing with what the Bible says, I only question how and why it is calculated.
     
  18. Salty

    Salty 20,000 Posts Club
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    The only reason it "matters" is that for years - we only considered that the Earth was created the same week as Adam - thus it had to be in 4004 bc (which is really off anyways) - that is what taught - years ago - and continued to be taught.

    But now there are Christian groups who are not so convinced about creation in 4004 BC
     
  19. timtofly

    timtofly Well-Known Member

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    There is still not a clear question. Which age? The one in the Bible or the one scientist think? Neither have much importance whatsoever. Some have argued that humanism has taken over the church and that if there is only nature, how did humans come to believe in a God to begin with? So the Bible was set aside to figure out where God came from. In the meantime science figured out an age for the earth and universe. Then when the church found out, they lost both God and God's Word. It has been a fight to get back to any original position. The church itself, in modern terms, had to be told by an outsider that the Bible did indeed declare God was transcendent, and outside of creation itself. Thus God is not a product of creation. Why does anyone want to know why God did what God did? If God is outside of creation, and created the world as finite, the only importance is that God is about to shake things up and turn the world upside down again. That is why time and dates are important to the church. The world only does their research as environmental conditions direct the course of human life. Then folks on all sides pass the time debating about the facts.
     
  20. Centrist

    Centrist Active Member

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    If you read my post you would see the answer. Going back to #14....
     
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