How old is the earth?

[coachsparky]

V here is more proof that no scientist NEVER believed the earth was flat.  You really messed up on this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Flat-Earth-Histor ... 0312382081

Garwood, historian of science at the Open University in England, presents a thoroughly enjoyable first book. Examining the belief that the world is flat from a wide array of perspectives, she makes some important points. She demonstrates quite convincingly, for example, that, contrary to what most people believe, the ancients knew the world was not flat: the earth has been widely believed to be a globe since the fifth century B.C. Only in the 19th century did acceptance of a flat earth spread, promoted largely by biblical literalists. Garwood does an impressive job of comparing those flat-earthers with modern-day creationists. She also makes the case that it's all but impossible to argue effectively with true believers. Modern believers assert that the space program is a hoax. In 1994, on the 25th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon, a Washington Post poll estimated that approximately 20 million Americans thought the landing was staged on Earth, underscoring that some outrageous beliefs still hold sway. Garwood is respectful throughout, analyzing the philosophical underpinnings of those who have doubted, and continue to doubt, the Earth's rotundity. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[coachsparky]

You do not accept the view of God as has been commonly understood by Christians in every century since the first

So a mass amount of Christian's understanding of gOd is acceptable but a mass amount of scientist's understanding of how old the Earth is is not acceptable?

Seriously I am not bias on my stance on how old the Earth is.  I have a bias regarding the existence of gOd, but my understanding of the age of the Earth is solely based in science.  gOd has zero bearing in that.  He is not part of that equation.

That is where the bias comes in. I'm not saying this as a criticism but just an acknowledgment of the way we think. Your worldview precludes the reality of God in creation and that in itself creates a bias.

If you are basing everything solely on science and you lived when standard scientific fare said the earth was flat would you have agreed the earth was flat? If so, you would have been wrong, but still in keeping with the accepted theory of the day.

Science reveals new information routinely which makes old theories obsolete so I think it a bit naive when people speak authoritatively regarding the earth's origins because contemporary science thinks they have it right.

Poor argument there cougar since no scientist ever believed the earth was flat.  You need to check your facts before you put forward these false claims.

Sparkles is wrong the "so called" scientist of their day did in fact think it was flat. Modern ones no. He actually makes a good arguement there.

For the sake of making the point let's pretend that the scenario as described was true. You know, just make believe. Either way the point is valid.

I heard Paul Harvey some years ago on the radio and I wish to this day I had a hard copy of it. He was referring to something like aspirin and documented over the course of the past 80-100 years that about every 15-20 years medical science went from "it's good for you" to "it's bad for you". Is was almost funny and all too predictable. Science is good and valuable but it is not without it's flaws.

No one said it was infallible it may not have the exact date right, but it is not off by 99.999999 percent off.  It could be 10 to 25 percent off in either direction but it still makes the universe some 3+ billion years old.  Can you at least admit that.  There is honestly 0 possibility of the earth being in the thousands of years old.  Truly and undeniably not possible, o percent chance.

[coachsparky]

More about the myth that educated people once believed in a flat earth.  I can keep posting these if you like, there are lots of them.

http://anadder.com/the-flat-earth-myth-revisited

The myth of the flat earth has only been around for about 150 years or so, and it seems to just refuse to die its death. This myth goes something like this. Until very recently, the whole world believed the world was flat. And not only “commoners” but scientists and ESPECIALLY the church. People have been burnt at the stake as heretics for proclaiming the contrary. And it was only dispelled with (here come different versions):

•Columbus — and before he sailed out, people thought he’d fall off the end of the flat earth.
•Magellan — when he sailed round and came out the other end people caught on.
•Copernicus (or better still Galileo) — and this was apparently the subject of Galileo’s trial!
All of these things are false. Not just untrue but quite astoundingly false, and the real story is much more interesting.

It’s true that most ancient cultures assumed some kind of flat earth (I don’t even know if there’s evidence of a major civilisation or tradition without this belief — if anyone knows, let me know) until the ancient Greeks. There were probably many people who came up with the idea of a spherical earth but the most famous is Eratosthenes (of the Eratosthenes’ Sieve fame, for those who have had to suffer through that in high school maths…). He (around 200 BCE) went on holiday over a thousand kilometres from his home and noticed that the local sundial made a different angle at midday than at home. He reasoned that the earth was spherical and therefore each place is at a slightly different angle to the sun. He made the fortuitous assumption that the sun was big and far away — not a little object just hovering over the earth. He even used the difference in angles to measure the earth’s circumference and got a surprisingly accurate result.

Other evidence available to the ancients:

•ships on the horizon seem to sink as they get further, but then they come back without falling off.
•as you change latitude, the elevation of stars changes as if you’re on a sphere.
•during a lunar eclipes, the shadow is always a circle and not an ellipse and the only shape that could cast such a shadow from all angles is the humble sphere.
Most educated Greeks came to accept this idea, although it was still hard to imagine an upside-down world on the other side of the earth (the Antipodes).

Along comes Aristotle, who among his million and one achievements comes up with an entire theory of the universe. The earth is a sphere at the centre and the planets and the rest move in concentric circles with the same centre. Also, because he believed a stone falls to the ground because all things naturally tend to the centre of the earth (which is also the centre of the universe), there was no problem of the Antipodes. The mythological peoples around modern day Australia, South America etc. may have been seen to be weird, but at least they, like all other things, tended to the centre of the earth and did not fall off.

This kookyness did not catch on universally but it grew. There were regular objections to the round earth theory from scholars and natural philosophers. However, these were more like individual voices in a growing tide of non-flatism. These voices became quieter and by I think the middle of the Dark Ages (!) they were not taken seriously. Instead, we have a Church with influence in the early period by Augustine who was a round-earther and in the medieval period by Thomas Aquinas who in effect “brought Aristotle to the church” and hence his cosmological view was very spherical indeed. Of course, in the early period, many clergymen were reluctant to accept this as a manifestation of the vain, heathen Greek science. Again, this attitude ended much sooner than people think.

The view that was entrenched was Ptolemy’s adaptation of Aristotle’s system with the shape of the earth unaltered. Others came to make observations and changes. There was Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Clavius, Galileo, Newton, etc etc. All of them took the spherical earth as a very natural, commonly held and firmly established belief. Here’s an ebook with more.

Whence the myth then? Historical consensus is that it it originated with the writer Washington Irving (possibly as a joke!) when he wrote a novel about Columbus. I haven’t read it but maybe he didn’t intend for it to be a serious historical novel. Or he did and screwed up as many of us do on our best days. All in all, in the novel, before Columbus sets out, people are worried he’ll fall off the edge. Another alternative is that this was concocted by anti-religious enlightenists to show the perceived ignorance of the church.

[Cougar1]

No one said it was infallible it may not have the exact date right, but it is not off by 99.999999 percent off. It could be 10 to 25 percent off in either direction but it still makes the universe some 3+ billion years old. Can you at least admit that.

I would agree that if the dating methods were reliable within 10 to 25% that this would be true. That's why I never but the billions and billions figures commonly propounded.

I know there are several methods of dating rock but here is an example of the problem. With dating methodology you cannot add historical science to the equation unless you have rock that is formed recently, such as in a volcano. That's why AKIN's comments should not have been randomly blown off.

We know that radioisotope dating does not always work because we can test it on rocks of known age. In 1997, a team of eight research scientists known as the RATE group (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) set out to investigate the assumptions commonly made in standard radioisotope dating practices (also referred to as single-sample radioisotope dating). Their findings were significant and directly impact the evolutionary dates of millions of years.3

A rock sample from the newly formed 1986 lava dome from Mount St. Helens was dated using Potassium-Argon dating. The newly formed rock gave ages for the different minerals in it of between 0.5 and 2.8 million years.4 These dates show that significant argon (daughter element) was present when the rock solidified (assumption 1 is false).

Mount Ngauruhoe is located on the North Island of New Zealand and is one of the country’s most active volcanoes. Eleven samples were taken from solidified lava and dated. These rocks are known to have formed from eruptions in 1949, 1954, and 1975. The rock samples were sent to a respected commercial laboratory (Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts). The “ages” of the rocks ranged from 0.27 to 3.5 million years old.5 Because these rocks are known to be less than 70 years old, it is apparent that assumption #1 is again false. When radioisotope dating fails to give accurate dates on rocks of known age, why should we trust it for rocks of unknown age? In each case the ages of the rocks were greatly inflated.

I'm not going to continue to argue this because it's a moot point to me. This is only one example of where the eruptions on Mt. St. Helen's and elsewhere provide real problems for accepted scientific theory. The petrified forests are another and I'm sure if you dug into it further you would find other challenged to accepted science. There are enough legitimate questions out there for me to say that it just isn't that simple to say we have such and such methods and the earth is "X" years old. If you want to believe it I'm good with that.

[coachsparky]

No one said it was infallible it may not have the exact date right, but it is not off by 99.999999 percent off. It could be 10 to 25 percent off in either direction but it still makes the universe some 3+ billion years old. Can you at least admit that.

I would agree that if the dating methods were reliable within 10 to 25% that this would be true. That's why I never but the billions and billions figures commonly propounded.

I know there are several methods of dating rock but here is an example of the problem. With dating methodology you cannot add historical science to the equation unless you have rock that is formed recently, such as in a volcano. That's why AKIN's comments should not have been randomly blown off.

We know that radioisotope dating does not always work because we can test it on rocks of known age. In 1997, a team of eight research scientists known as the RATE group (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) set out to investigate the assumptions commonly made in standard radioisotope dating practices (also referred to as single-sample radioisotope dating). Their findings were significant and directly impact the evolutionary dates of millions of years.3

A rock sample from the newly formed 1986 lava dome from Mount St. Helens was dated using Potassium-Argon dating. The newly formed rock gave ages for the different minerals in it of between 0.5 and 2.8 million years.4 These dates show that significant argon (daughter element) was present when the rock solidified (assumption 1 is false).

Mount Ngauruhoe is located on the North Island of New Zealand and is one of the country’s most active volcanoes. Eleven samples were taken from solidified lava and dated. These rocks are known to have formed from eruptions in 1949, 1954, and 1975. The rock samples were sent to a respected commercial laboratory (Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts). The “ages” of the rocks ranged from 0.27 to 3.5 million years old.5 Because these rocks are known to be less than 70 years old, it is apparent that assumption #1 is again false. When radioisotope dating fails to give accurate dates on rocks of known age, why should we trust it for rocks of unknown age? In each case the ages of the rocks were greatly inflated.

I'm not going to continue to argue this because it's a moot point to me. This is only one example of where the eruptions on Mt. St. Helen's and elsewhere provide real problems for accepted scientific theory. The petrified forests are another and I'm sure if you dug into it further you would find other challenged to accepted science. There are enough legitimate questions out there for me to say that it just isn't that simple to say we have such and such methods and the earth is "X" years old. If you want to believe it I'm good with that.

Cougar dating methods are at least good to within 10 to 25 percent or better.  There is a lot of substantiated evidence to prove it.  

http://www.tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html

The real heart of the age-of-the-earth debate (if "debate" is the right word) is always radiometric dating. There are lots of ways to guesstimate ages, and geologists knew the earth was old a long time ago (and I might add that they were mostly Christian creationist geologists). But they didn't know how old. Radiometric dating actually allows the measurement of absolute ages, and so it is deadly to the argument that the earth cannot be more than 10,000 years old.

Radiometric methods measure the time elapsed since the particular radiometric clock was reset. Radiocarbon dating, which is probably best known in the general public, works only on things that were once alive and are now dead. It measures the time elapsed since death, but is limited in scale to no more than about 50,000 years ago. Other methods, such as Uranium/Lead, Potassium/Argon, Argon/Argon and others, are able to measure much longer time periods, and are not restricted to things that were once alive. Generally applied to igneous rocks (those of volcanic origin), they measure the time since the molten rock solidified. If that happens to be longer than 10,000 years, then the idea of a young-Earth is called into question. If that happens to be billions of years, then the young-Earth is in big trouble.

As of January, 1999, The oldest rocks found on earth are 4.031 ± 0.003 billion years old (meaning it has been that long since the molten rocks solidified and thus reset their internal clocks). This is reported in the paper Priscoan (4.00-4.03 Ga) orthogneisses from northwestern Canada by Samuel A. Bowring & Ian S. Williams; Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology 134(1): 3-16, January 1999. The previous record was 3.96 billion years, set in 1989.

The putative age of the Earth, about 4,500,000,000 years is based on the radiometrically measured age of meteorites, and is also about 500,000,000 years older than the oldest rocks. But regardless of the accuracy of this age for the earth, the existence of rocks circa 4,000,000,000 years old puts the squeeze on a 10,000 year old Earth.

So the natural response from a young-Earth perspective is to claim that radiometric dating is inaccurate or untrustworthy. Unfortunately, while the young-Earthers are long on criticism, they are short on support. It's easy to assert that radiometric methods don't work, but it's quite another thing to prove it. This the young-Earth creationist regularly fails to do.

I am not going to try to write a web-treatise on radiometric dating myself, simply because much better qualified writers have already done a much better job than I could. This is a list of resources, some on the web, some not, which can be consulted by anyone interested in learning more about how radiometric dating is done, or in responding to arguments criticising radiometric dating. My purpose is to show, through these resources that young-Earth creationist criticisms of radiometric dating are inadequate at best. So long as radiometric dating stands as scientifically valid, then the assertion of a young-Earth is falsified by direct observation. The argument from radiometriic dating is the strongest scientific argument that can be brought to bear on this issue, in my opinion.

[ctc]

Oh yes, the rocks have a date printed on their underneath side.   :wink:

[crossface cradle]

Not a very good comeback on your part ctc.

[ctc]

Not a very good comeback on your part ctc.

I didn't intend to "comeback".  Seems how you were disappointed.  I'll give you an article.  Here is the teaser.  You can click on the link for the full article.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... ting-prove

The presupposition of long ages is an icon and foundational to the evolutionary model. Nearly every textbook and media journal teaches that the earth is billions of years old.

Using radioactive dating, scientists have determined that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, ancient enough for all species to have been formed through evolution.1
The earth is now regarded as between 4.5 and 4.6 billion years old.2
The primary dating method scientists use for determining the age of the earth is radioisotope dating. Proponents of evolution publicize radioisotope dating as a reliable and consistent method for obtaining absolute ages of rocks and the age of the earth. This apparent consistency in textbooks and the media has convinced many Christians to accept an old earth (4.6 billion years old).

What Is Radioisotope Dating?
Radioisotope dating (also referred to as radiometric dating) is the process of estimating the age of rocks from the decay of their radioactive elements. There are certain kinds of atoms in nature that are unstable and spontaneously change (decay) into other kinds of atoms. For example, uranium will radioactively decay through a series of steps until it becomes the stable element lead. Likewise, potassium decays into the element argon. The original element is referred to as the parent element (in these cases uranium and potassium), and the end result is called the daughter element (lead and argon).

[crossface cradle]

answersingenesis doesn't do it for me.  I know you believe in a literal biblical translation, but the majority of scientists do not share your view.  Nothing from aig is peer reviewed nor is accepted by the scientific community.

[coachsparky]

answersingenesis doesn't do it for me.  I know you believe in a literal biblical translation, but the majority of scientists do not share your view.  Nothing from aig is peer reviewed nor is accepted by the scientific community.

You are correct Cross face.  AIG has no real scientist associated with them.  They make the claim to be scientist because they have scientific degrees but the reject the premise of real science which is to let the evidence lead to the conclusion.  Instead they all accept the creed that no evidence will ever be allowed to contridict the accounts of the Bible.  In other words they reject the use of the logical reasoning portions of their brains to concoct all sorts of odd spins to the evidence to cling to wild claims of a young earth.

[ctc]

MINDLESS VORTEX WARNING

Hey cross face,
They cannot play because their skin is the wrong color.

3.   Darwinist Richard Lewontin of Harvard wrote:
 “Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural.  We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite f its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of its failure to scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Enjoy "Once upon a time....."

[coachsparky]

MINDLESS VORTEX WARNING

Hey cross face,
They cannot play because their skin is the wrong color.

3.   Darwinist Richard Lewontin of Harvard wrote:
 “Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural.  We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite f its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of its failure to scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Enjoy "Once upon a time....."

I love it that ctc continually posts this quote of Lewontin.  The crazy texas coach does not even realize that Lewontin is pointing out how superior scientist are to the average person who cannot see that, although their position seems absurd, seems to go agaist intuition or commen sense, it is necessary for the superior mind to stay the course and recognize the truth of the natural explainations.


CTC is the only one telling people once upon a times! :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

[ctc]

"unsubstantiated just-so stories" = "Once upon a time...."

[coachsparky]

"unsubstantiated just-so stories" = "Once upon a time...."

The MINDLESS VORTEX which is the crazy texas coach is working in overdrive when it tries to claim that the unsubstantiated just-so stories = "Once upon a time..."  The one is real science which is the whole truth of the natural world and the other is the fair tales which is what the creation story of the Bible is.  A literalist is far more into believing fair tales than a scientist who seeks hard truth. :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :roll:

[sine mora]

The arguments "scientists once believed" used in the context it is here is not a valid argument. A steadfast belief of the church put Galileo in quite a bit of trouble.

To refute current scientific beliefs and accept alternatives with no predicative abilities is useless.

1) The current scientific view may change, but it will be to take into account more subtleties. When they update the current view of gravity it won't change anything you learned in high school or introductory college physics. It will potentially reconcile the quantum and cosmos scales, but for virtually all observations you would be interested in, gravity will remain the "same".

2) You have every right to disagree with radioactive dating, but if you are raising these concerns you should understand the underlying mechanisms. Are you arguing that the method is completely useless or that in isolated cases it does not work. When you get in your car in the morning, more often than not the car starts when you turn the ignition. Every once in a while, the battery or alternator has died and this is not the case. To say that every car does not start based on this isolated incident is wrong, to learn why it doesn't start and the relevant circumstances is just as important for science as it reveals limitations. There is good reason to utilize a tool which works overwhelmingly more often than not, and to understand its limitations. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.