This is all from another thread and I didn't want to derail it because it was focused more on evolution rather than geology. But someone brought up Earth chronometers and I felt compelled to debunk them.
I applaud anyone who reads all this.
"As evolutionists are so filled with scientific fact you will no doubt be able to answer the following:"
I'll give it a shot even though I know its futile to make YECs value the scientific method and the idea of an awesome universe, created by God with incredible physical laws to govern it.
Your main answer to most of these questions is simply "God did it, case closed". And theological evolutionists would agree that God did do it: using natural, physical processes that are discoverable by the scientific method.
"How do you explain many of the earths chronometers many of which scientifically preclude any possibility of the earth being millions never mind billions of years old"
A quick google search gave me the following list of Earth chronometers: oceanic elemental concentrations, sediment infill into the ocean, magnetic decay, internal thermal gradients in planets, moon and ring drift and Earth's decreasing angular velocity.
1) Oceanic elemental concentrations: When ocean water evaporates (which is a constant ongoing process) salt and other ions are left behind and therefore are naturally removed from the hydrologic cycle in a neat little balance. This is why you get large salt domes forming in areas such as the Gulf of Mexico and the WCSB (Western Canada Sedimentary Basin) which serve as excellent oil and gas traps.
2) Sediment infill: oceanic crust is more dense (basaltic) rather than continental crust (silicic). As such, oceanic crust always subducts beneath continental crust during tectonic collisions. These "slab graveyards" of old oceanic crust have been extensively mapped such as this data based on P-wave velocities under the island of Honshu in Japan where the Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Eurasian landmass: http://www.diggles.com/pgs/2005/NE_Japan.jpg.
This recycling of old oceanic crust also recycles sediments deposited on the sea floor.
3) Magnetic decay: the magnetic field has been decaying since the 1800s at a more and more rapid rate. It has been hypothesized that we are entering a magnetic reversal in which the south pole becomes the north pole and vice versa. http://www.astrosciences.info/magfli...s/image007.jpg
When magma comes up along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge it is liquid rock containing large quantities of iron. Iron is a magnetic metal which, upon solidification will orientate itself parallel to the magnetic field. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge has many definitive bands where these iron grains are orientated in opposite ways suggesting the magnetic field was at one time swapped. http://blue.utb.edu/paullgj/physci14..._Reversals.JPG
4) Internal Thermal Gradients in Planets: If the internal temperature of Earth was cooling without heat production for billions of years, it is true that the Earth and all the other planets would be cold, dead, balls with no tectonic activity. But the Earth produces its own heat which throws off the projected thermal gradient. Radiogenic heating via radioactive decay within the Earth's core, mantle and crust. In the upper crust, radiogenic heating contributes about 65mW per unit area. Also, Lord Kelvin first used thermal gradients to estimate the age of the Earth, he did not take into account radiogenic heating and still came up with an age of 100 million years, which is a lot longer than 6000 as purported by strong creationists.
5) Earth's decreasing angular velocity: Tidal friction is the main source of the Earth's decreasing angular velocity. According to satellite-to-ground-based measurements, the Earth's day is increasing by approximately 2.4 milliseconds per century. A bit of math tells you that this means that 1 billion years ago the Earth-day would have been about 18 hours instead of 24. There are other effects other than tidal friction mind you, if mass is closer to the axis of rotation (for example, if large icecaps cover the poles) then this increases the angular velocity thereby decreasing the length of day. During the last ice age, the fact that so much mass was concentrated at the poles obliterated several million years of slowing due to tidal friction because the Earth's day sped up in a similar way as a figure skater who pulls her arms (mass) towards her will speed up while spinning.
6) Moon and Ring Drift: The moon is drifting away from the Earth at approximately 3.7 cm per year. This is mainly because of tidal friction and tidal lag (the moon is about 12 minutes "ahead" of the "bulge" of high tide). Conservation of angular momentum stipulates that if Earth's angular velocity decreases then the radius between the Earth and moon must increase.
(moment of inertia)(omega)+ [(mass of earth)(mass of moon)/sqrt(mass of earth + mass of moon)]*(sqrt((gravitational constant)*(distance from earth to moon))) = constant
This is happening at such an incredibly slow rate that it hasn't had much effect. At the rate of 3.7 cm per year it would have drifted 37000 km from Earth in a billion years (less than 10 percent the current Earth-moon distance of 384000 km). And based on the above equation the rate that the radius increases isn't linear so if the Earth was rotating faster the relative rate of Earth-moon distance increase would be slower.
None of these so called "Earth chronometers" debunk the Old Earth. In fact, most of the Earth chronometers listed have been used to study the Earth's age!
Most of this information came from "Fundamentals of Geophysics, 2nd Edition" by William Lowrie.
The Earth is older than YECs say it is. That should not detract from the reality of Jesus Christ or God. But the math supports it, the evidence supports it, the theory supports it. There is honestly no legitimate reason to believe in YEC except for the chronological list of Noah's descendants in the Bible. Even taking a literal reading of Genesis 1 doesn't definitively make any claim to when all this took place. According to Genesis 1 you can hypothesize that God created the world in 7, 24 hour days and he did this 16 trillion years ago. So Genesis 5 is the single chapter of the entire Bible which YEC is grounded upon. If people want to ignore God's glorious creation and the evidence therein and instead live ignorantly under the assumption that Genesis 5 must be literally true in order for God and Jesus and salvation to exist, then I have nothing more to say to those people.
I applaud anyone who reads this and I will applaud louder to anyone who attempts to debunk it. And if no one replies I'm forced to assume that either no one read it, or no one can say anything against it.
I applaud anyone who reads all this.
"As evolutionists are so filled with scientific fact you will no doubt be able to answer the following:"
I'll give it a shot even though I know its futile to make YECs value the scientific method and the idea of an awesome universe, created by God with incredible physical laws to govern it.
Your main answer to most of these questions is simply "God did it, case closed". And theological evolutionists would agree that God did do it: using natural, physical processes that are discoverable by the scientific method.
"How do you explain many of the earths chronometers many of which scientifically preclude any possibility of the earth being millions never mind billions of years old"
A quick google search gave me the following list of Earth chronometers: oceanic elemental concentrations, sediment infill into the ocean, magnetic decay, internal thermal gradients in planets, moon and ring drift and Earth's decreasing angular velocity.
1) Oceanic elemental concentrations: When ocean water evaporates (which is a constant ongoing process) salt and other ions are left behind and therefore are naturally removed from the hydrologic cycle in a neat little balance. This is why you get large salt domes forming in areas such as the Gulf of Mexico and the WCSB (Western Canada Sedimentary Basin) which serve as excellent oil and gas traps.
2) Sediment infill: oceanic crust is more dense (basaltic) rather than continental crust (silicic). As such, oceanic crust always subducts beneath continental crust during tectonic collisions. These "slab graveyards" of old oceanic crust have been extensively mapped such as this data based on P-wave velocities under the island of Honshu in Japan where the Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Eurasian landmass: http://www.diggles.com/pgs/2005/NE_Japan.jpg.
This recycling of old oceanic crust also recycles sediments deposited on the sea floor.
3) Magnetic decay: the magnetic field has been decaying since the 1800s at a more and more rapid rate. It has been hypothesized that we are entering a magnetic reversal in which the south pole becomes the north pole and vice versa. http://www.astrosciences.info/magfli...s/image007.jpg
When magma comes up along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge it is liquid rock containing large quantities of iron. Iron is a magnetic metal which, upon solidification will orientate itself parallel to the magnetic field. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge has many definitive bands where these iron grains are orientated in opposite ways suggesting the magnetic field was at one time swapped. http://blue.utb.edu/paullgj/physci14..._Reversals.JPG
4) Internal Thermal Gradients in Planets: If the internal temperature of Earth was cooling without heat production for billions of years, it is true that the Earth and all the other planets would be cold, dead, balls with no tectonic activity. But the Earth produces its own heat which throws off the projected thermal gradient. Radiogenic heating via radioactive decay within the Earth's core, mantle and crust. In the upper crust, radiogenic heating contributes about 65mW per unit area. Also, Lord Kelvin first used thermal gradients to estimate the age of the Earth, he did not take into account radiogenic heating and still came up with an age of 100 million years, which is a lot longer than 6000 as purported by strong creationists.
5) Earth's decreasing angular velocity: Tidal friction is the main source of the Earth's decreasing angular velocity. According to satellite-to-ground-based measurements, the Earth's day is increasing by approximately 2.4 milliseconds per century. A bit of math tells you that this means that 1 billion years ago the Earth-day would have been about 18 hours instead of 24. There are other effects other than tidal friction mind you, if mass is closer to the axis of rotation (for example, if large icecaps cover the poles) then this increases the angular velocity thereby decreasing the length of day. During the last ice age, the fact that so much mass was concentrated at the poles obliterated several million years of slowing due to tidal friction because the Earth's day sped up in a similar way as a figure skater who pulls her arms (mass) towards her will speed up while spinning.
6) Moon and Ring Drift: The moon is drifting away from the Earth at approximately 3.7 cm per year. This is mainly because of tidal friction and tidal lag (the moon is about 12 minutes "ahead" of the "bulge" of high tide). Conservation of angular momentum stipulates that if Earth's angular velocity decreases then the radius between the Earth and moon must increase.
(moment of inertia)(omega)+ [(mass of earth)(mass of moon)/sqrt(mass of earth + mass of moon)]*(sqrt((gravitational constant)*(distance from earth to moon))) = constant
This is happening at such an incredibly slow rate that it hasn't had much effect. At the rate of 3.7 cm per year it would have drifted 37000 km from Earth in a billion years (less than 10 percent the current Earth-moon distance of 384000 km). And based on the above equation the rate that the radius increases isn't linear so if the Earth was rotating faster the relative rate of Earth-moon distance increase would be slower.
None of these so called "Earth chronometers" debunk the Old Earth. In fact, most of the Earth chronometers listed have been used to study the Earth's age!
Most of this information came from "Fundamentals of Geophysics, 2nd Edition" by William Lowrie.
The Earth is older than YECs say it is. That should not detract from the reality of Jesus Christ or God. But the math supports it, the evidence supports it, the theory supports it. There is honestly no legitimate reason to believe in YEC except for the chronological list of Noah's descendants in the Bible. Even taking a literal reading of Genesis 1 doesn't definitively make any claim to when all this took place. According to Genesis 1 you can hypothesize that God created the world in 7, 24 hour days and he did this 16 trillion years ago. So Genesis 5 is the single chapter of the entire Bible which YEC is grounded upon. If people want to ignore God's glorious creation and the evidence therein and instead live ignorantly under the assumption that Genesis 5 must be literally true in order for God and Jesus and salvation to exist, then I have nothing more to say to those people.
I applaud anyone who reads this and I will applaud louder to anyone who attempts to debunk it. And if no one replies I'm forced to assume that either no one read it, or no one can say anything against it.
