Can an old earth be proven?

For my mind its a matter of how you approach evidence.
The Big-Bang version started with a problem - where did it all start. Then progressed to hypotheses that are tested in mathematics and physics models. And lastly progressed to those elements that can be actually measured eg the recent measurement of a gravitational wave as predicted by Einstein was quite a monumental advance.

Young earth relies on Genesis. Unfortunately this isnt able to be tested. We do not know who the author is (though ideas abound on this) and nor do we know when it was authored (though again ideas abound) and nor do we know if it was edited and in what way from the original author. This pushes Young earth more into the realms of faith ie believing what was written because we are told that the bible is infallible - Its a very difficult task to go the next step to question that infallibility.

Brian Mcnamee said:

are the universal constants constant?

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Yes, because the universal constants govern all interactions in the universe. If they were different in different times or different places, we'd see different interactions. Gravity, the formation of atoms and molecules, nuclear fusion, the expansion of space, all these things would look different as we looked in different directions or further into space. But we don't see this, meaning the constants are constant.

In fact, the careful balancing of the constants to produce a life-bearing universe used to be a creationist argument. If one believes the constants are variable, it becomes more believable that a life-bearing planet could appear by chance.

I would say this is a very complex question that can't really be answered in a single post. I've spend a substantial amount of time looking at the evidences and arguments etc but I can't possible summarize that here.

I would recommend you look at this site: BioLogos
The biologos institution is created by a very well known christian scientist that worked on the human genome project. And they have some very interesting articles which might answer this question perhaps/maybe to your satisfaction.

From a more personal side, and you don't need to take this, I really implore you to make up your own mind.
Firstly, the more I learn about how the universe works the more amazed I am! We live in a truly amazing universe and also in a time of discovery.
Secondly there is no doubt that in the scientific community at large the age of the universe at large being around 13.8 billion years is accepted to aligned with all the evidences we have currently.

One thing to remember perhaps is that science can give you certain answers and theology/bible can give you others, they don't always operate in the same sphere.
However as I understand it science it to evaluate evidences without holding a biased position over what the answer should be, but not only that but also to consistently look for ways to prove the theory wrong and then find a more correct theory.
What I've seen from most creation science stuff is that they violate this basic rule of science in that they begin with the answer, in fact most of them will even confess that regardless of what evidence is given they will not change their theory of creation. This is simply not science as that is not how science work, therefore it is a field unto itself and if you work in this field then you will definitely end with a different answer than all the hundreds of scientists that try to follow the scientific method.

So to answer your question, scientifically speaking there are significant evidence for the age of the earth that is accepted by many scientists that know their respective fields very well. You can simply google things like "age of the earth" and will find these answers. If you want to or are willing to accept them or if you are willing to spend the time to study all the things necessary to understand them... that is ultimately your choice.

Nothing in science is proven. Scientists work on evidence. Old earth models work in the field I'm working in. Young-earth models don't.

mindlight said:

Is the earth and universe old? Are there scientific evidences that can prove this?

Recently I started a thread examining evidences supplied by Answers in Genesis about a young earth. There were a lot of responses and discussions and I found overall that the science could neither persuade or dissuade me from a conviction that we live in a young universe which is in essence based on the bible and a belief in miracles.

But 2 arguments for an old universe really bother me.

1) Overlapping tree rings. Radagast used this one in the aforementioned thread. While the oldest tree trunk on which tree rings have been counted reaches only 5000 years. When you compare patterns of fossilised tree trunks from dead trees in the same forest you can go back a further 10000 years. This then becomes a problem for me holding the YEC viewpoint that the earth is only 6000 years old and there was a flood just 4500 years ago.

2) Starlight: We know that light travels 186000 miles a second. When Supernova 1985 exploded the speed of light was measured at 186000 miles a second there also by looking at how long it took to vaporize the rings around that star at measurable distances from the star itself. The star itself is 250000 light years away. So if light travelled at the same speed 250000 years ago then it is a constant and this event occurred 250000 years ago. Thus the YEC timescales become impossible.

Are these and other arguments proof that the YEC position is scientifically untenable?

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I do not have scientific proof my self but.......
Mr. Al Gore did refer to their also being rings in the ice on Greenland
and Antarctica that seem to indicate layers of ice building up
over a minimum of 600,000 years............
and I personally feel that this is not date that
we Creationists should just ignore?!

I do have what I think is a pretty good philosophical
argument for Old Earth plus Gap Theory:

NDE of Dr. Richard Eby verifies old earth and gap theory.

mindlight said:

You do not know how much parent and daughter isotopes were present in the original sample. Also there is research that suggests that solar neutrino emissions may influence the rate of decay. There is no audit trail by which to test the constancy of rates over time and to check for contamination.

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The initial mass quantity does not matter. I am not making a point about dating an item only but making the point that the half lives of isotopes must be constant. You can quantify the mass of any isotopes that emits gammas, alphas, beta particles, or neutrons regardless of its initial mass.

There is an audit trail. You can very the half life of the parent isotope regardless of its half life using its progeny, that is, so long as its progeny is in secular equilibrium with its parent. It doesn't matter what the initial mass was in the past or the age of the half life. The half life of the parent must be constant for this to work. This can be shown mathematically or in the laboratory with nuclear spectroscopy methods such as gamma or alpha spectroscopy.

I will try to post the mathematical proof later today, assuming I have time to derive it.

The idea of half life changing over time is pure nonsense and no change can be verified using multiple methods that are both theoretical and applied .

mindlight said:

Are these and other arguments proof that the YEC position is scientifically untenable?

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Every miracle in scripture is scientifically untenable.
To be scientific one must be able to reproduce
the miracle on demand.

jhwatts said:

The initial mass quantity does not matter. I am not making a point about dating an item only but making the point that the half lives of isotopes must be constant. You can quantify the mass of any isotopes that emits gammas, alphas, beta particles, or neutrons regardless of its initial mass.

There is an audit trail. You can very the half life of the parent isotope regardless of its half life using its progeny, that is, so long as its progeny is in secular equilibrium with its parent. It doesn't matter what the initial mass was in the past or the age of the half life. The half life of the parent must be constant for this to work. This can be shown mathematically or in the laboratory with nuclear spectroscopy methods such as gamma or alpha spectroscopy.

I will try to post the mathematical proof later today, assuming I have time to derive it.

The idea of half life changing over time is pure nonsense and no change can be verified using multiple methods that are both theoretical and applied .

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This can be taken further. They amount of U-238 in a rock sample can be assayed using gamma spectroscopy. No initial mass value is needed. The quantity of measured U-238 depends on the numbered of gammas measured per unit time, knowing the specific activity, the mass value can be quantified. The specific activity is a direct function of the half life. We can compare this mass value to another analytical laboratory method such as inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry or something else that does not rely on the half life to determine the U-238 value and get the same value both ways. In short, the mass value that is dependent on the constant half life is verified with a method that doesn't.

Again, the idea of the half life changing in the past is completely wrong.

DW_in_AR said:

Yes, because the universal constants govern all interactions in the universe. If they were different in different times or different places, we'd see different interactions. Gravity, the formation of atoms and molecules, nuclear fusion, the expansion of space, all these things would look different as we looked in different directions or further into space. But we don't see this, meaning the constants are constant.

In fact, the careful balancing of the constants to produce a life-bearing universe used to be a creationist argument. If one believes the constants are variable, it becomes more believable that a life-bearing planet could appear by chance.

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what is the speed of light in a black hole? Here is a short TED talk by a guy on this subject that is thought provoking. This talk was taken down from the TED talks and is buy a scientist named Rupert Sheldrake who asks questions on this subject.

mindlight said:

Here I ask only is the earth young or old?

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Current best estimate is

The age of the Earth is approximately 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%).[1][2][3][4] This dating is based on evidence from radiometric age-dating of meteorite[5] material and is consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples.

Of course maybe it was created this morning and we all have some embedded memories given by God.

Not like you can debunk this theory but it, like most of the Biblical myths , seems bit far fetched, have no proof whatsoever and some people get paid by organizations like Answers in genesis to twist the current theories to pretzel but never seem get any believable theories of their own that would stand up to scrutiny by their peers.

“How do you explain starlight and distance ?

Well in black hole starlight has some interesting properties so genesis must be true”

Pretzels.........

mindlight said:

Is the earth and universe old? Are there scientific evidences that can prove this?

Recently I started a thread examining evidences supplied by Answers in Genesis about a young earth. There were a lot of responses and discussions and I found overall that the science could neither persuade or dissuade me from a conviction that we live in a young universe which is in essence based on the bible and a belief in miracles.

But 2 arguments for an old universe really bother me.

1) Overlapping tree rings. Radagast used this one in the aforementioned thread. While the oldest tree trunk on which tree rings have been counted reaches only 5000 years. When you compare patterns of fossilised tree trunks from dead trees in the same forest you can go back a further 10000 years. This then becomes a problem for me holding the YEC viewpoint that the earth is only 6000 years old and there was a flood just 4500 years ago.

2) Starlight: We know that light travels 186000 miles a second. When Supernova 1985 exploded the speed of light was measured at 186000 miles a second there also by looking at how long it took to vaporize the rings around that star at measurable distances from the star itself. The star itself is 250000 light years away. So if light travelled at the same speed 250000 years ago then it is a constant and this event occurred 250000 years ago. Thus the YEC timescales become impossible.

Are these and other arguments proof that the YEC position is scientifically untenable?

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Yes, the earth is very old. This is a scientically proven fact.

mindlight said:

Works for starlight but not tree rings

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The Lord could make it work for tree rings.

mindlight said:

so a literal historical supernatural beginning. View shared by majority of worlds population including Jews , Muslims and Christians.

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Got any actual global data on this ?

Might be still correct but even if it is the younger generations are getting more education and knowledge so that percentage is dropping as people accept the evidence instead of blindly adhering to their parents worldview.

mindlight said:

Is the earth and universe old? Are there scientific evidences that can prove this?

Recently I started a thread examining evidences supplied by Answers in Genesis about a young earth. There were a lot of responses and discussions and I found overall that the science could neither persuade or dissuade me from a conviction that we live in a young universe which is in essence based on the bible and a belief in miracles.

But 2 arguments for an old universe really bother me.

1) Overlapping tree rings. Radagast used this one in the aforementioned thread. While the oldest tree trunk on which tree rings have been counted reaches only 5000 years. When you compare patterns of fossilised tree trunks from dead trees in the same forest you can go back a further 10000 years. This then becomes a problem for me holding the YEC viewpoint that the earth is only 6000 years old and there was a flood just 4500 years ago.

2) Starlight: We know that light travels 186000 miles a second. When Supernova 1985 exploded the speed of light was measured at 186000 miles a second there also by looking at how long it took to vaporize the rings around that star at measurable distances from the star itself. The star itself is 250000 light years away. So if light travelled at the same speed 250000 years ago then it is a constant and this event occurred 250000 years ago. Thus the YEC timescales become impossible.

Are these and other arguments proof that the YEC position is scientifically untenable?

Click to expand...

Two things that might help. Number one. The Biblical timeline is more like 8000 years old not 6000. First century Christians were complaining that a small group of very anti christ rabbis were altering the Old Testament. The group that supposedly gave us the Maseratic text. Outside the LXX we had no written proof of this since the oldest OT text we had was 9th century. Until the Dead Sea Scrolls that is. I’ll post an article on this tonight.

The other, and I have spent many an hour debating these things. Cosmetology is in its infancy. No one knows jack. This includes a constant\ unaformitarian speed of light. Every scientific conjecture that gets tested only creates even more questions. So it’s quite natural for secularists and old earthers to want to debate in that arena and quote tabloid science to validate thier positions. They vast majority of the evidence out there as far as earth sciences fits much better with a young earth. Which is why the debate is focusing on cosmetology.

SkyWriting said:

Every miracle in scripture is scientifically untenable.
To be scientific one must be able to reproduce
the miracle on demand.

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To God nothing is a miracle. To God there IS an explanation of how God does what he does.

To those who don't know how God does things, many things may appear to be supernatural when in fact we just don't know how things are done. Healing, water to wine, multiply fish and bread etc.

If the earth is not old, it was made to look old. If there were not many ages of evolution, the fossil record was made to look as if there was.

In contemporary culture we can sometimes revive a person who had a heart attack. If we went to the Bantu tribe deep in the jungle and preformed CPR, they might see that as some sort of super natural witch doctoring!