How old is the universe?

Chi_Cygni · Jun 23, 2004

There are many forms of radioactive dating. Carbon 14 dating is only useful for organic material that processed atmospheric carbon dioxide into the tissue and of course is only useful for things less than about 65,000 years old.

But there are literally several dozen other radioactive nuclides that can be used for dating things far older since the half lives in question are often millions to billions (or more) years.

Commonly used ones for rocks are Potassium-Argon dating, Argon-Argon dating, Rubidium-Strontium dating,Uranium-Lead dating, Thorium-Lead dating etc etc etc.

Meteorites have been dated by several of these techniques and surprise surprise date, concordantly, at about 4.5-4.6 billion years ago. The oldest Earth rocks date at about 4.1 billion years and Moon rocks date up to about 4.3 billion years ago.

OneLastBreath · Jun 23, 2004

Thank you, as I've said I'm an OEC so it's nice having some fresh new proof of the fact.

Ave Maria · Jun 23, 2004

OneLastBreath said:
Remember Holly, what you just posted is the English translation of the original Scriptures. There are a number of Hebrew words which can be translated as day, yom being the one present in the originals. Yom can mean any period of time. The plural can be used to denote centuries. And there were days of such and such. The most important thing you have to remember is that Genesis is not intended to be a literal account of Creation. In the English language, we often repeat sounds in poetry. In Hebrew, they repeat ideas in poetry. The repeated, "On the...day" "And it was good" and just the constantly repeated structuring of the Creation account shows that its poetry. It's designed to show why God created the Universe (because it was good), not how, and certainly not when. If it were as clear as simply reading the verses of Genesis as you did, there wouldn't be any arguments about origins. The Bible is not a Science textbook.

Hi there OneLastBreath. I know that the KJV is an English translation of the original scriptures but I do believe it to be a literal, infallible, and inerrant translation of the scriptures. Anyway, here is an article from ChristianAnswers.net that discusses the terminology in Genesis regarding the word day plus some extra articles. The one at ChristianAnswers.net regarding the terminology about the word day is the first one.

Is the Bible clear about the age of the earth and the universe?
Should Genesis be taken literally?
Creation Science and the Early Church
Genesis means what it says according to great church father, Basil of Caesarea (AD 329-379)
How long were the days of Genesis?
A summary of evidence for literal 24-hour creation days in Genesis.
The Numbering Pattern of Genesis

Anyway, I hope that these articles clear up what I am trying to say. I am not an expert when it comes to things such as this but I do believe that these articles explain what I am trying to say rather well. Thanks!

Ron21647 · Jun 23, 2004

OneLastBreath said:
Chi_Cygi, correct me if I'm wrong here (and I very well could be), but I was under impression that the only useful form of radioactive dating is carbon-14 dating, since measuring the number of half-lives that have passed requires comparing it to another element/isotope that was found in equal amounts as the radioactive element/isotope in the thing being studied. Carbon-14 dating is can only be used to date the age of carbon-based lifeforms that obviously had to be living at some point, not meteors. And also, any form of radioactive dating, if there are others, tends to lose its accuracy as you start measuring things older than around 50 000 years, as measuring 0.00002% compared to the non-radioactive element is extremely difficult. Though by the way, I do agree with the idea of Old Earth Creationism, so I'm not being ambivalent in this issue.

edited to add context

Chi_Cygni mentioned several forms of radioactive dating. Here are a few details that may help.

Each radioactive element has what is called a "half-life". this is the amount of time that it takes for half the original sample to decay. For example, if I have a 10 pound sample of uranium, and so do you, but yours is divided into 10 1 pound samples. Then after 1 half life has occurred, my 10 pound sample will have decayed to only 5 pounds (the other 5 pounds has changed into something else), and your 10 1 pound samples have decayed to half a pound each, for a total of 5 pounds.

There is a fairly simple mathematical formula for all this, which can be solved on a scientific calculator. By using the formula, you can work problems where the time is not one half life, and the amount is a fraction other than one half.

In the case of Carbon-14, because we are working with small samples to begin with, it is generally used to go out to 10 half lives. By taking a sample, and dividing it in half 10 times, we have a fraction of 1/1024. Of course, the percent error that any measurement of the mass of Carbon present, and what percentage of that is C-14, have to be taken into account in order to come up with the margin of error in the date.

C-14 has a half-life of about 5730 years, so 10 half lives would be 57,300 years. C-14 is normally not used to attempt to date things which are older than this.

Uranium-238 has a half life of about 4.5 billion years, eventually decaying through 14 intermediate steps until it is lead. Potassium - Argon has a half life of 1.27 billion years. So these two methods would be used to date fossils that were possibly hundreds of millions of years old. Actually, the fossils are not usually dated, lava above and below the fossil would be dated, and the age of the fossil would then be between those two dates.

C-14 is useful for dating archeological items, because its date range covers prehistoric and historic human activity.

I, and probably a lot of the others reading this, could write a lot more on the subject, but I may have gone too deeply into it already. There are also a lot of good web sites explaining this.

If you want more info, please ask.

Ron

OneLastBreath · Jun 23, 2004

Thanks Ron, I don't doubt you could write more, but I catch your point. As I said, I knew I was probably wrong in that particular part of my original post.

Holly3278 said:
I know that the KJV is an English translation of the original scriptures but I do believe it to be a literal, infallible, and inerrant translation of the scriptures. Anyway, here is an article from ChristianAnswers.net that discusses the terminology in Genesis regarding the word day plus some extra articles. The one at ChristianAnswers.net regarding the terminology about the word day is the first one.

And I respect your point of view (it's nice being part of a debate on CF in which someone doesn't jump down your throat if they disagree with something you said), it's just that I have a problem with the idea of "perfect" translations. Languages are just so intrinsically complicated, that translating from one to the other requires taking so many liberities in the words you use. Translating, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," into Russian and back without taking any such liberties results in something like, "The alcohol is arranged, but the meat is rotten." Humans have to tweak the original wording, always, just so it makes sense. Another example is my grandpa. He, like the rest of my grandparents, was born and raised in Holland. And whenever something happens that reminds him of something else he'll say, "Oh, it's like we used to say back in the Netherlands..." and then say something completely beyond comprehension in Dutch. On asking him to translate it he'll say that he can't, it would lose it's meaning if you translated it into English, there're just no words for it. Not only does it seem a perfect infallible translation is impossible (remembing it was humans who translated it, not God himself), but also that some of the original meaning is lost. Of course theologists still debate the issue of origins and they can read the original texts, however my point is just that believing any English translation of the Bible is completely without error seems to be a dangerous assumption.

Sinai · Jun 23, 2004

Holly3278 said:
(KJV) Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.....

God said it, that settles it! The universe was created in 6 literal 24 hour days! I personally believe Creation Science like those at AIG. But then again, I realize that science is not perfect. All I know is that according to Genesis Chapter 1 in the KJV it says that the evening and the morning was each day and I believe it!

God may have inspired it, but it is a translation of the Bible that says what you posted. I have reprinted the first five verses of what you posted (above). What the Bible itself actually says in those five verses is:
א בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.
ב וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם.
ג וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, יְהִי אוֹר; וַיְהִי-אוֹר.
ד וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאוֹר, כִּי-טוֹב; וַיַּבְדֵּל אֱלֹהִים, בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ.
ה וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם, וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה; וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם אֶחָד.

Since most of us would have a certain amount of difficulty reading what the Bible actually says (in Hebrew), we turn to a translation in which the Hebrew is translated into a language we can read. OneLastBreath has done a good job of outlining some of the problems involved in trying to translate one language into another language.

I know that the KJV is an English translation of the original scriptures but I do believe it to be a literal, infallible, and inerrant translation of the scriptures.

You, of course, have every right to believe whatever you wish, and may place the KJV upon that kind of pedestal if you want to do so--but you may wish to carefully consider whether any translation (even one as beautiful and majestic as the KJV) is really capable of being "literal, infallible, and inerrant." Keep in mind that no word-for-word translation can be fully "literal" and still express all the nuances of the original language.

ElElohe · Jun 23, 2004

@ 6000 Give or Take: I'm not a detail oriented person, and no one of us was there to document it for histories sake!

Chi_Cygni · Jun 23, 2004

ElElohe said:
@ 6000 Give or Take: I'm not a detail oriented person, and no one of us was there to document it for histories sake!

So I take it you are actively campaigning for the release of all people in prison convicted where an eyewitness was not present.

After all no one was there and forensic science must not be trusted.

Ron21647 · Jun 24, 2004

Chi_Cygni said:
So I take it you are actively campaigning for the release of all people in prison convicted where an eyewitness was not present.

After all no one was there and forensic science must not be trusted.

I don't know, it worked for O.J., didn't it?

Ron

ElElohe · Jun 24, 2004

So you are equating Justice and Science? Things that make me go hmmm . . .

Chi_Cygni said:
So I take it you are actively campaigning for the release of all people in prison convicted where an eyewitness was not present.

After all no one was there and forensic science must not be trusted.

Bushido216 · Jun 24, 2004

No, that's not what he was doing at all. What's he's saying is that we don't need someone there to document the Big Bang (or whathaveyou) because there are other evidences, namely scientific evidences, of the same sort used in criminal cases all the time.

jgarden · Jun 24, 2004

"The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestial chronology." (Henry Morris, ICR president, 1974)

Perhaps God chooses to speak to Henry Morris much more "plainly" than the rest of us. I always thought that a God inspired creation was Christianity's main concern and that timelines and mechanics were largely irrelevant.
If we knew the age of the world, to 3 decimal places, would it really make any difference.

Bushido216 · Jun 24, 2004

Heh. What Henry Morris forgets is both (a) the age of the earth was estimated by adding up the ages of key figures in the Bible and that (b) God's creation is a method of communication from He who is Most High.

Excellent post, though.

Asar'el · Jun 25, 2004

Chi_Cygni said:
I'm sorry you just don't understand science.

I'm sorry, you just don't understand people.

Chi_Cygni said:
How often does it have to be spelled out - some things are not matters of opinion.

All things are matter of opinion. Even your opinion that some things are not matters of opinion.

Chi_Cygni said:
The Earth being 6000 vs approx. 4.5 billion years old is not the same as 'Hmm do I like strawberry or chocolate ice cream the best?'

That is an opinion.

I never said it was. Nor do I know anyone else that did - except folks like you that try to give it as an example...

Chi_Cygni said:
6000 vs. 4.5 billion is not an opinion. Approx. 4.5 billion is real data, 6000 is the junking of scientifc data to fit several thousand year old mythology from a bunch of nomadic goatherders.

6000 vs. 4.5 billion is not an opinion. 4.5 billion is a conclusion drawn from opinions about data gathered. 6000 is a conclusion drawn from different opinions about data gathered. Neither is more 'scientific' than the other - and you calling one 'mythology from a bunch of nomadic goatherders' adds nothing to your stance.

Neither 4.5 billion nor 6000 is more 'real'. No data is more real than other data. The opinion is the interpretation of that data. That is all.

When one scientist says, 'This means that', it is an opinion, which some agree with, some disagree. Some are strong. Some are weak. Each tries to strengthen their opinion, and prove wrong the opinion of the other. But that's the beauty of science - there is room for different opinions.

L'Anatra · Jun 25, 2004

Asar'el said:
4.5 billion is a conclusion drawn from opinions about data gathered. 6000 is a conclusion drawn from different opinions about data gathered. Neither is more 'scientific' than the other - and you calling one 'mythology from a bunch of nomadic goatherders' adds nothing to your stance.

This is simply not correct. Until you actually understand the methods, you can not make a judgment. The age given to the Earth, 4.5 billion years, is not an opinion. It is a fact. It is no less a fact than the sky's being blue, or the sun's being a typical run-of-the-mill G-type dwarf star, or the speed of light being 186,000 miles per second. There is no room for any type of "opinion."

Neither 4.5 billion nor 6000 is more 'real'. No data is more real than other data. The opinion is the interpretation of that data. That is all.

Not really. That's like saying the first chapter in Genesis that discusses a "firmament" is no more real than the modern model of the heavens. I'm sorry, but the sun, moon, planets, stars, and galaxies do not exist inside a solid dome-shaped enclosure. This is what is written in Genesis 1... go learn the Hebrew. Well, unless you don't take that part literally.

When one scientist says, 'This means that', it is an opinion, which some agree with, some disagree. Some are strong. Some are weak. Each tries to strengthen their opinion, and prove wrong the opinion of the other. But that's the beauty of science - there is room for different opinions.

There is room for other hypotheses... and indeed room for other theories. However, a 4 billion year old rock simply can not fit into the Young Earth Creationist theory. A visible star 10,000 light-years away can not fit into that theory. The data (not the opinion) falsifies the theory. There is no room in science for falsehoods.

Chi_Cygni · Jun 25, 2004

asar'el said:
All things are matter of opinion. Even your opinion that some things are not matters of opinion.

Absolute nonsense. That is typical 60's feelgood rubbish.

Water is wet is not an opinion.
Computers exist is not an opinion.
Baseball sucks is not an opinion. Well OK that is an opinion but you get the idea.

Sinai · Jun 25, 2004

jgarden said:
"The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestial chronology." (Henry Morris, ICR president, 1974)

Anyone have any idea when and where God told us this so very plainly???

Starstreak M86 · Jun 27, 2004

Sinai said:
2. Those who reconcile scientific evidence with the Bible by considering the biblical scriptures regarding creation as a figurative or nonliteral story that is intended to teach spiritual truths rather than to give a scientifically accurate account of creation.

This is almost what I believe. I believe in what this option states, expect for the last phrase about "rather than to give a scientifically accurate account of creation."

I am an Old Earth Creationist/Theistic Evolutionist. I don't see how the account of Creation in the Bible contradicts recent Modern Science at all. In fact, the Creation account is not to be taken literally (at least in the English translation), and I believe that scientific accuracy and the Creation story go hand in hand.

You are welcome for my vote and imput. Thank you!

Starstreak M86 · Jun 27, 2004

lucaspa said:
3. The Bible states in plain Hebrew that the earth is immovable. Job 26:7, I Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Psalm 104:5. These Biblical verses were used in Galileo and Copernicus' day to deny that the earth orbits the sun (and thus moves). Now, do you accept "secular science" that the earth really does move?

Lucaspa,
I don't think it was meant to be taken literally.

For instance, the book of Job says that the earth is controlled by the heavens (that sounds to me like it means that the earth moves).

You might want to take a look at this site:
http://www.raycomfort.com/various/science/

Bushido216 · Jun 27, 2004

Very good. You got the point.

How old is the universe?

How old is the universe? Which option most closely says what you believe?

@11-20 billion years. Although I am a Christian, I totally disbelieve the biblical account of creat

@11-20 billion years. Scientific evidence does not really conflict with the Bible, since the script

@11-20 billion years. Since the Bible does not say that the six days are consecutive, I believe that

@11-20 billion years. Since the Hebrew word for âdayâ (yom) can mean an indefinite period of tim

@11-20 billion years. Although I may largely concur with the day-age theory, I also agree with the t

@11-20 billion years. Some combination of theories 3, 4 and 5.

@11-20 billion years. Gap theory. Since the Hebrew verb hayethah (generally translated "it was") ca

@6,000 years. Creation took 144 hours, and any scientific evidence to the contrary should be disreg

@12,000 years. Creation took 6000 years, and any scientific evidence to the contrary should be disr

@7-50 thousand years. I disagree with some of the assumptions required for the time since "creation

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@11-20 billion years. Since the Hebrew word for âdayâ (yom) can mean an indefinite period of tim