How Old Is The Earth?

No one can prove that. It's just guesswork. The complete absence of dark matter and dark energy suggests that the earth/universe is much younger. This explains the desperate search for something that does not exist (70 years now if memory serves me right). Of course, evolutionists need billions of years to explain their "just so happened" theories of life. Sorry to disappoint you. The earth just aint that old.

Aussie Pete said:

Man is also prone to making mistakes. No one can assume anything about the age of the earth. How come we still have a moon? It's moving further away from the earth. It would be long gone by now if the earth was that old.

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"If the earth was that old"

It is not necessary for anyone to “assume” the age of the earth because, as has already been posted, the age of the earth has been accurately and definitively “measured”. The only people who are disagreeing with the measurement are doing so on the basis of their concept of what the Bible teaches. Moreover, their concept of what the Bible teaches has its roots in the old Roman Catholic tradition that says that Genesis 1-11 is an accurate account of historic events. However, the Roman Catholic Church now freely admits that that tradition is contradicted by the Bible itself. Indeed, as we saw in post #57, Genesis 1:6-8 explicitly tells us that the earth that God created was covered with a dome that separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. The word that God used in the story for the dome was the Hebrew word רָקִיעַ, the Hebrew word for the sky as it is observed from the earth, including the moon, the sun, the planets, the stars, and the galaxies. This sky separated the waters that were under the sky from the waters that were above the sky. The ancient Hebrew people believed that the sky that they saw was a dome in which were all of the celestial bodies, and that this dome had windows in it (Gen.7:11) that God opened during the flood to allow the waters that were above the dome to fall to the earth.

As much as the Roman Catholic Church loves its traditions, they found it necessary many decades ago to admit Genesis 1:6-8 is not an accurate account of historic events. The Protestant churches, of course, admitted this fact much sooner—that is, except for some Protestant churches who still tenaciously cling to the old Roman Catholic tradition but bend, twist, distort, fudge, garble, misinterpret, misrepresent, pervert, and warp Genesis 1:6-8 in innumerable different ways in a vain attempt to make it agree with reality.

PrincetonGuy said:

"If the earth was that old"

It is not necessary for anyone to “assume” the age of the earth because, as has already been posted, the age of the earth has been accurately and definitively “measured”. The only people who are disagreeing with the measurement are doing so on the basis of their concept of what the Bible teaches. Moreover, their concept of what the Bible teaches has its roots in the old Roman Catholic tradition that says that Genesis 1-11 is an accurate account of historic events. However, the Roman Catholic Church now freely admits that that tradition is contradicted by the Bible itself. Indeed, as we saw in post #57, Genesis 1:6-8 explicitly tells us that the earth that God created was covered with a dome that separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. The word that God used in the story for the dome was the Hebrew word רָקִיעַ, the Hebrew word for the sky as it is observed from the earth, including the moon, the sun, the planets, the stars, and the galaxies. This sky separated the waters that were under the sky from the waters that were above the sky. The ancient Hebrew people believed that the sky that they saw was a dome in which were all of the celestial bodies, and that this dome had windows in it (Gen.7:11) that God opened during the flood to allow the waters that were above the dome to fall to the earth.

As much as the Roman Catholic Church loves its traditions, they found it necessary many decades ago to admit Genesis 1:6-8 is not an accurate account of historic events. The Protestant churches, of course, admitted this fact much sooner—that is, except for some Protestant churches who still tenaciously cling to the old Roman Catholic tradition but bend, twist, distort, fudge, garble, misinterpret, misrepresent, pervert, and warp Genesis 1:6-8 in innumerable different ways in a vain attempt to make it agree with reality.

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Age of the earth measured? With what? a time machine? Only by making unprovable assumptions can the age of the earth be guessed at. Who knows what the speed of light was originally? It has to be assumed that it was constant. The universe is expanding faster than science's guesswork expects. There is far less visible matter than there should be. So science has to come up with ever change guesswork to account for the data that does not fit their current theory. All they can say is, "We will work it out one day. Give us more money for research". But if the fundamental premise is wrong, they are throwing billions away that could be used for worthwhile research.

Your dismissal of modern research by people who take God at his word is insulting. I've read Dr Walt Brown's take on Genesis. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but that could easily be because of my inability to understand.

One simple example. He claims that meteors are actually material blasted into space by the unleashing of water under enormous pressure. I find that hard to accept, given the escape velocity required. However, amino acids have been discovered on meteors. How did they get there? So maybe he is onto something.

The Catholic church makes things up as it goes along. It's hardly surprising that they fall in with the world's errors. To me, theistic evolution is even more ridiculous than atheistic evolution. I'm happy to explain why I believe that.

If someone considers God's word from an entirely natural point of view, it will not make sense. The Bible says so.

"The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." 1 Corinthians 2:14

The spiritual man has faith.

"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." Hebrews 11:3

To dismiss God's word is folly and plays into the hands of Antichrist forces. Twisting Genesis in order to fit the world's ideas is foolish and unnecessary. When God's word and the world disagree, I'll stand on God's word every time. It's never let me down and never will.

Aussie Pete said:

Age of the earth measured? With what?

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Please see post #45 in this thread. In the article linked to, your question is answered in great detail by an evangelical Christian scientist and scholar.

Aussie Pete said:

Your dismissal of modern research by people who take God at his word is insulting. I've read Dr Walt Brown's take on Genesis. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but that could easily be because of my inability to understand.

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I do not dismiss old or modern research that has been conducted by scholars who have been internationally recognized for their contribution to their field. By researching creationist Walter T. Brown, I have learned that he has not earned any graduate degrees in any field of science and that his B.S. degree is in an area of study that is of no relevance to the book of Genesis or any of his published writings. I have also learned that Walter Brown does not know so much as the Hebrew alphabet, and that he relies upon substandard translations of the Bible.

Aussie Pete said:

Twisting Genesis in order to fit the world's ideas is foolish and unnecessary. When God's word and the world disagree, I'll stand on God's word every time. It's never let me down and never will.

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Prayerfully and accurately translating the Word of God does not twist it; it makes it accessible to readers who cannot read the Bible in the languages in which God chose to give it to us. That the Hebrew word רָקִיעַ is most accurately translated “dome” is supported by all of the relevant linguistic and cultural data, and there is no data supporting the notion that the Hebrew word רָקִיעַ can be accurately translated as “atmosphere.” The evidence for the correctness of this translation is found in the use of this word in ancient Hebrew literature. Based upon this usage, the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Brown, Driver, and Briggs published by Oxford University (the standard Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament used in Christian colleges, seminaries, and universities) gives us the following meaning of it in Gen. 1:6, 7, and 8, “the vault of heaven, or ‘firmament,’ regarded by Hebrews as solid, and supporting ‘waters’ above it.” (p. 956)

John Skinner, Principal and Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature, Westminster College, Cambridge (in his commentary on Genesis, page 21) writes,


Claus Westermann, in his 636-page commentary on the Hebrew text of Genesis 1-11, writes on page 116 regarding the Hebrew word רָקִיעַ,


Gerhard von Rad, in his commentary on Genesis, writes,


Even more substantial evidence for the correctness of this translation is found in the translation of it in the Septuagint. There, the Hebrew word רָקִיעַ is translated using the Greek word στερέωμα which expresses the concept of “the sky as a supporting structure, the firmament.” (BDAG [Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, Third Edition, the University of Chicago, 2000], the italics are theirs). This Greek word is also found in the New Testament to express the concept of a “state or condition of firm commitment, firmness, steadfastness” (BDAG, the italics are theirs),

Col. 2.5. εἰ γὰρ καὶ τῇ σαρκὶ ἄπειμι, ἀλλὰ τῷ πνεύματι σὺν ὑμῖν εἰμι, χαίρων καὶ βλέπων ὑμῶν τὴν τάξιν καὶ τὸ στερέωμα τῆς εἰς Χριστὸν πίστεως ὑμῶν. (NA28)

Col. 2.5. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ. (NRSV)

Very much more evidence could be cited, but I have been researching and studying the first 11 chapters of Genesis since January 2015, and I have learned that young earth creationists typically believe what they want to believe, and that they view all evidence against their view to be “worldly” and an assault against God and His word. I have also learned that young earth creationists typically lack sufficient interest in God and His word to invest their money and their time in studying the Bible, and yet they eagerly invest their money and their time in worldly pursuits. Every year, thousands of young people come to the conclusion that the Bible contains more fiction than it does truth—and consequently they reject it and the Jesus that it proclaims. My research into this lethal problem has shown me that young people who are raised in churches that are pastored by men with an excellent university education very seldom come to such a conclusion because they learn growing up that the theory of evolution does not and cannot contradict God’s acts of Creation because the natural sciences and religion do not intersect but run parallel to each other and independently of each other with a line clearly drawn between the two. Scientists are especially careful to avoid crossing that line. When Drs. Rhine and Pratt of Duke University came very close to crossing that line in the 1930’s, they were severely castigated by their peers. However, young earth creationists—including their so-called “scientists”—routinely cross that line—and the consequences to evangelical Christianity have been catastrophic while the teachings of science have triumphed!

KomatiiteBIF said:

I think it's fair to say that, if we think of every single molecule that makes up earth, we could recognize that such molecules are far older than 4.5 billion years.

However, if we think of earth as an objects which orbits the sun, meteorites also orbit the Sun and are trapped in our solar system. We live in a collective system of objects that orbit the sun. Meteorites do not have plate tectonics and magnetic convection, So they won't be recycled in the same way that Earth is. And meteorites tend to have ages around 4.5 billion years old. So if we consider the idea that Earth itself started out as an object much like a meteorite, then we could come to understand that the Earth is probably in this ballpark of the same age as these other objects in our solar system.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html#:~:text=There are more than 70,and 4.58 billion years ago.

Before the solar system formed, we could say that Earth existed in the form of pieces that had not yet coalesced that perhaps came from other bodies of rock or meteorites. But people usually don't refer to Earth in that sense but rather refer to Earth as an object that orbits the Sun and is part of our solar system.

If we wanted to talk about the molecules of Earth, we could say that the atoms that make up Earth are over 13 billion years old, if we really wanted to. But that's just not what people typically consider to be "earth".

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Can we really say it is 4+ billion years old?

We live in a universe increasing in acceleration when God “stretched out the heavens”. So if we accept the only science that deals with time and length changes as velocity increases then these decay processes must have happened faster in the past.

But they instead use a constant rate to calculate backwards. This causes a vast overestimation of the amount of time that has passed. It is similar to taking a pipe with a decreasing rate of flow over time. Then by looking at the amount of water in the pool (parent/daughter ratios), using a constant flow rate to calculate how long it took the water to reach its current level. Without adjusting for an increasing rate the further back one calculated, the amount of time would be vastly overestimated.

This is why astronomers are constantly surprised to find fully formed galaxies and galaxy clusters where they shouldn’t exist. These processes happened faster in the past. But since people only give lip service to Relativity, instead of those mature galaxies being an express prediction, they turn into anomalies and falsifications...

But neither can our current rate of days be calculated at a constant rate backwards. For not only does time and decay rates change, but lengths as well. This would affect orbital distances, planetary sizes, etc. So that using a constant rate of days backwards leads to an underestimation of the amount of time that has passed.

IMO both sides of the debate ignore the one and only science we have that concerns time and length in a universe increasing in acceleration, or when God “stretched out the heavens”.

Personally I am of the belief that it is impossible to determine the earths true age as it is impossible to determine our absolute velocity through space and therefore the amount of dilation that has occurred due to our change in velocity.

Justatruthseeker said:

Can we really say it is 4+ billion years old?

We live in a universe increasing in acceleration when God “stretched out the heavens”. So if we accept the only science that deals with time and length changes as velocity increases then these decay processes must have happened faster in the past.

But they instead use a constant rate to calculate backwards. This causes a vast overestimation of the amount of time that has passed. It is similar to taking a pipe with a decreasing rate of flow over time. Then by looking at the amount of water in the pool (parent/daughter ratios), using a constant flow rate to calculate how long it took the water to reach its current level. Without adjusting for an increasing rate the further back one calculated, the amount of time would be vastly overestimated.

This is why astronomers are constantly surprised to find fully formed galaxies and galaxy clusters where they shouldn’t exist. These processes happened faster in the past. But since people only give lip service to Relativity, instead of those mature galaxies being an express prediction, they turn into anomalies and falsifications...

But neither can our current rate of days be calculated at a constant rate backwards. For not only does time and decay rates change, but lengths as well. This would affect orbital distances, planetary sizes, etc. So that using a constant rate of days backwards leads to an underestimation of the amount of time that has passed.

IMO both sides of the debate ignore the one and only science we have that concerns time and length in a universe increasing in acceleration, or when God “stretched out the heavens”.

Personally I am of the belief that it is impossible to determine the earths true age as it is impossible to determine our absolute velocity through space and therefore the amount of dilation that has occurred due to our change in velocity.

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I'm pretty sure you brought this idea up long ago.

It's true that time is relative and that time can change between objects based on their acceleration in space and distance from mass.

However, for objects traveling at generally the same speed and in generally the same location, such as the earth and all objects on earth, time is roughly the same. Which is really what matters to us.

So for example, people in space may age slower than people on earth because they're moving at a greater speed and because they've gained distance from the gravitational mass of earth.

However, two people on earth, even if one rides a hot air balloon, is practically the same despite changing rates of motion and distance from the earth.

Your idea is interesting, but there is no practical argument behind what you're saying. At least no scientific argument.

For all practical purposes, time has unfolded generally the same throughout history. Maybe some alien 100 million light years away could argue that our solar system is now closer to the black hole at the center of the milky way, and time therefore is now moving faster for us. But for us here on earth, this idea is irrelevant because we are traveling together and are equally changing in time.

And we care about how we experience time. When we say that the earth is millions or billions of years old, that's time as we experience it. Maybe an alien billions of light-years away in the middle of empty space could say "well they are only 10,000 years old!" (Because time for us is passing faster than it is for them). But such a statement would have no meaning to us as we have personally experienced billions here on earth. And when I say "we" have experience billions of years, that includes everything in our solar system, including molecules and atoms and everything we use to derive our age of the earth.

KomatiiteBIF said:

I'm pretty sure you brought this idea up long ago.

It's true that time is relative and that time can change between objects based on their acceleration in space and distance from mass.

However, for objects traveling at generally the same speed and in generally the same location, such as the earth and all objects on earth, time is roughly the same. Which is really what matters to us.

So for example, people in space may age slower than people on earth because they're moving at a greater speed and because they've gained distance from the gravitational mass of earth.

However, two people on earth, even if one rides a hot air balloon, is practically the same despite changing rates of motion and distance from the earth.

Your idea is interesting, but there is no practical argument behind what you're saying. At least no scientific argument.

For all practical purposes, time has unfolded generally the same throughout history. Maybe some alien 100 million light years away could argue that our solar system is now closer to the black hole at the center of the milky way, and time therefore is now moving faster for us. But for us here on earth, this idea is irrelevant because we are traveling together and are equally changing in time.

And we care about how we experience time. When we say that the earth is millions or billions of years old, that's time as we experience it. Maybe an alien billions of light-years away in the middle of empty space could say "well they are only 10,000 years old!" (Because time for us is passing faster than it is for them). But such a statement would have no meaning to us as we have personally experienced billions here on earth. And when I say "we" have experience billions of years, that includes everything in our solar system, including molecules and atoms and everything we use to derive our age of the earth.

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That’s exactly what the twin on the spaceship thinks.... that his time isn’t changing at all. The problem with this thinking is that we know his time is changing.... we are in no position to deny what we know....

Except Relativity demands that we are unable to say which object has the actual velocity. To those furthest galaxies it is us that is accelerating through space at fractions of c.... we are not discussing mere minute changes in velocity but velocity at fractions of c and accelerating.... In fact it must be us as that light is from 13 billion years ago so that it would be us that is accelerating at fractions of c in the present....

It isn’t just the twins clock that changes.... but the twin, his spaceship and everything on it.... Just as we share our galaxies velocity of fractions of c and continuing to accelerate....

But most continue with the flawed viewpoint of the twin who believed his time was not changing.... even as it changed. For what is he to measure this changing clock with, another click changing at the same rate?

In fact the twin on the spaceship could get not one single observation correct because of his motion.... His devices just like ours says he is stationary.... he thinks his clock isn’t changing, yet it is slowing. He thinks the stationary twins clocks slow.... yet their is no cause for this twins clocks to slow.... he is stationary. He thinks he is older than the stationary twin... he is in fact younger....

Are you sure you want to keep thinking like the twin in motion thought even when everything he believed was wrong?

Justatruthseeker said:

That’s exactly what the twin on the spaceship thinks.... that his time isn’t changing at all. The problem with this thinking is that we know his time is changing.... we are in no position to deny what we know....

Except Relativity demands that we are unable to say which object has the actual velocity. To those furthest galaxies it is us that is accelerating through space at fractions of c.... we are not discussing mere minute changes in velocity but velocity at fractions of c and accelerating.... In fact it must be us as that light is from 13 billion years ago so that it would be us that is accelerating at fractions of c in the present....

It isn’t just the twins clock that changes.... but the twin, his spaceship and everything on it.... Just as we share our galaxies velocity of fractions of c and continuing to accelerate....

But most continue with the flawed viewpoint of the twin who believed his time was not changing.... even as it changed. For what is he to measure this changing clock with, another click changing at the same rate?

In fact the twin on the spaceship could get not one single observation correct because of his motion.... His devices just like ours says he is stationary.... he thinks his clock isn’t changing, yet it is slowing. He thinks the stationary twins clocks slow.... yet their is no cause for this twins clocks to slow.... he is stationary. He thinks he is older than the stationary twin... he is in fact younger....

Are you sure you want to keep thinking like the twin in motion thought even when everything he believed was wrong?

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The twin isn't wrong, he's merely describing his own experience. In reality, the twins description is perfectly accurate and true with respect to what he is experiencing.