The Earth is young

[mindlight]

Not true. Tiny, but readable, amounts of C14 may be present due to other causes.

It's possible that your analysis comes out saying: youngest possible age: 30,000 years / oldest possible age: infinity

But the moment you suggest contamination is possible you invalidate the test itself at great distances in time.

 

[mindlight]

Tree rings actually go back about 10,000 years. This is done by finding logs with overlapping ring patterns.

The oldest count of tree rings on a single tree is about 5000 years. But we have a problem here anyway due to how tree rings are formed. Basically in certain conditions you can get multiple in a single year. If there is no seasonal pattern in a year the rings may even be missed. So unstable weather patterns and changes in seasonal patterns might be factors that cannot be fully accounted for in the audit trail.

 

[mindlight]

Problem 1: the current oceans are only (at the oldest) about 175-180 million years old, not billions of years old. That's still more than the 12 million years claimed by by Snelling, but there's no source or calculation provided for that claim.

Source - supporting facts please

Problem 2: new seafloor is continuously created at mid-ocean ridges and terrestrial sediment rarely makes it much past the continental slope, so using the average sediment thickness for the entire seafloor is misleading. What matters is thickness on the continental shelf and continental slope.

Which is still too thin for an old ocean given current rates of deposition.

Problem 3: Snelling discusses the use of a "rescue device" by old-earth advocates of sediment accumulation being slower in the past, but just before that, he uses one of his own by handwaving away his own claim of 12 million years of accumulation with a claim of faster accumulation in the past in order to shoehorn it into a 6000 year old earth.

Catastrophism is the assumption that the Creationist model operates on while uniformitarianism is the one evolutionists use. Thus it is less of a problem for a Creationist to suggest massive variances in rates of deposition in the past and an explanation is built into the view with the global flood.

Folding occurs at depth, where rocks are subjected to high temperatures and pressures over long periods of time. Under these conditions, it is indeed possible to bend rocks without breaking them. That's not always the case though - we also see brittle deformation in the form of faults, where rocks are bent while too cold or are bent too rapidly and break instead. Soft-sediment deformation - what Snelling claims causes all folding - has specific characteristics that are not seen in most folded rocks. It's also important to note that most folds do exhibit some degree of fracturing and brittle deformation, even if only at the microscopic level.

Not sure that Snelling rules out the possibility that rocks may never be bent after hardening. But as you say if a rock has hardened and then bends then fractures (even microscopic ones ) are likely. Snellings study was of rocks in the Grand Canyon and did not have these fractures.

 

[gordonhooker]

The YEC view is that basically the earth is 6-10000 years old. Answers in Genesis list 10 strong evidences for this here.

These are basically the following

#1 Very Little Sediment on the Seafloor
#2 Bent Rock Layers
#3 Soft Tissue in Fossils
#4 Faint Sun Paradox
#5 Rapidly Decaying Magnetic Field
#6 Helium in Radioactive Rocks
#7 Carbon-14 in Fossils, Coal, and Diamonds
#8 Short-Lived Comets
#9 Very Little Salt in the Sea
#10 DNA in “Ancient” Bacteria

How would those of you who believe in an Old Earth counter these scientific arguments?

EDIT:

I thought my OP was clearly focused on the scientific arguments I listed. I will add the text of this post to my OP to clarify that. I have assumed since this is the Christians only section of the forums that everybody here is happy with the view God did it. But yes there is a variance on how he did it. I am happy to hear the opinions of Christians only as to whether the various scientific evidences I listed are credible or not with a focus on the age of the earth.

If the arguments are valid then a YEC position has some scientific credibility, if not then an Old Earth or TE position or day age theory may be better. But I would prefer to discuss the biblical evidences and positions elsewhere. This is focused on the scientific evidences listed. I hope the list is not too long but it gives people the opportunity to pick and mix the ones they are interested in.

I wouldn’t even bother to try, because life is too short to try and fix stupid.

 

[mindlight]

This has been explained since Snelling's article.

It does seem there has been some development of thinking on this one. So iron in the fossil basically facilitated the preservation of the organic material. But at a distance of 68 million years it still sounds far fetched that there would be any organic material left

 

[mindlight]

A 25% change in luminosity only results in a 7% change in temperature as explained by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, so Faulkner's claim of a 31 degree temperature change is flat out wrong. A 7% change would put the equator at about the same average temperature as the modern arctic. Harsh, but survivable, especially for simple single-celled organisms.

We also have plenty of evidence for several periods of extensive glaciation since then that life has managed to survive, so the sensitivity of life to temperature differences is not really an issue.

Yes life can survive colder conditions. This is something that can be tested even today where temperatures range enormously. Also yes there may be not be a 1-1 correlation between luminosity intensity and earth temperature. Indeed the assumptions of Stefan-Boltzmann equation make sense and account for heat coming from the earth itself also. Add in green house gases and other variables we cannot fully account for and the earth could have been hotter with less sunlight. Indeed from a Creationist viewpoint that would explain the higher vitality of life in the past, longer life spans etc as less harmful radiation was coming from the sun and also more harmful effects were being deflected by a stronger magnetic field. This whole argument and indeed the ones against it seems quite speculative to me.

 

[mindlight]

I'd suggest reading this article (written after the article that Snelling claims "addresses all issues") for a good discussion of the issues with this claim. In short:

1. They misidentified the rocks they were studying (which will throw off calculations)

2. They crushed their biotite samples, which can lead to helium loss, and the samples were described as "impure". Biotite diffusion rates (and therefore helium concentrations) are an important part of the models that were used in the study.

3. Measurements from the original Gentry paper were changed with no documentation or explanation other than that they had been "typographical errors."

4. Diffusion modelling requires a precise measurement of the zircon radius, but Humphreys just assumes that it is 30 microns for all samples. No measurements are provided. Similar issues are present with some of his other numbers as well.

I do not have an answer for this one. It seems the Creationist argument is deeply flawed

 

[Tom 1]

The bible is not a science textbook, so it doesn't matter how old the earth is.

Yeah this is the crux of it for me. The few people I have spoken to who were militant atheists, based on their education in science based principles of what constitutes evidence, rejected the bible because it doesn't offer a scientific explanation of creation. I don't think it's an argument that holds much water; it seems fairly obvious that God's aim in sharing his word with us is so that we can learn about who he is and how to have a relationship with him. If he had set out to explain the process of creation then it would have to be asked, firstly why, why would he do that? And secondly where would he draw the line? Presumably if God set out to explain this in a way that all people of all times would have some chance of grasping, then the amount of data involved would be difficult to imagine, and who would be able to understand even a fraction of it, never mind put any of it to the test. Trying to extrapolate from Genesis some scientific basis for the age of the earth and universe seems rather pointless, like trying to figure out the biological basis for human attraction from a love letter.

 

[mindlight]

The only thing that matters in all of this is the belief God created it!

Actually yes but this OP is really about testing what works in terms of scientific argumentation. Some arguments work, some do not, most probably leave us not sure how helpful scientific argumentation regarding something no one can test and demonstrate is.

 

[mindlight]

If there was no source for new comets, we would expect all comets to be the same age. They're not. Not being able to directly observe the Oort Cloud does not preclude its existence as new comets (which exist) have to come from somewhere. Interestingly, creationists also used to make the same arguments about the Kuiper Belt, but that has since been observed and Faulkner seems to have accepted that it can be a source for short-period comets.

Theoretically that would be an answer if we have evidence that these are generating new comets, which we do not. The answer in the article to this criticism has to do with the composition of comets contrasted with the composition of what has been found in the Kuiper Belt. I guess we need an expedition to Pluto and a comparison with each comet that passes by to test this fully. There is a lot of guess work about the Oort cloud which remains a hypothesis at a distance from the sun which no one has yet travelled or investigated.

Yet there is no evidence for the supposed Oort cloud, and there likely never will be. In the past twenty years astronomers have found thousands of asteroids orbiting beyond Neptune, and they are assumed to be the Kuiper belt. However, the large size of these asteroids (Pluto is one of the larger ones) and the difference in composition between these asteroids and comets argue against this conclusion.

Must admit this whole discussion is highly speculative. I think that comets do not actually prove anything as we do not know enough about them.

 

[mindlight]

A detailed analysis of sodium in the oceans shows that the input and removal rates are virtually identical, within margin of error. Morton's letter does not (as Snelling claims) ignore the exchange of sodium from seafloor basalts because that is already included in the cited list of input methods.

In criticism of Snellings article this seems quite damming. But overall I wonder how on earth we can even talk about this beyond the distance of a few thousand years with any precision or certainty. To say that salt exchange is broadly constant at present says nothing about what the situation was 10000 years ago let alone 1 billion years. This is not an argument that would convince me either way.

 

[mindlight]

I'll admit that I don't have a good explanation for this one. However, I'm not a biologist. I do know that bacteria are amazingly hardy and can survive in some pretty extreme conditions. I'm not ruling out the possibility of it being a random modern bacterium either. No need to jump immediately to the conclusion that the Earth is young though as that would ignore a whole host of evidence to the contrary.

The Lazarus bacteria seems a strong argument to me as the DNA is the same as in the modern era - (so no evolution) and its amazing survival implies that the contextual arguments use to cite an age for the bacterium were probably wrong and that it can be far more recently dated.

 

[Radagast]

The oldest count of tree rings on a single tree is about 5000 years.

But we can go back further with old logs that have overlapping ring patterns, like this:

Basically in certain conditions you can get multiple in a single year.

Experts can recognise it when that happens.

So unstable weather patterns and changes in seasonal patterns might be factors that cannot be fully accounted for in the audit trail.

No, experts are pretty good with unstable weather patterns and changes in seasonal patterns.

 

[Radagast]

But the moment you suggest contamination is possible you invalidate the test itself at great distances in time.

I wasn't suggesting contamination; I was saying that other processes can produce C-14 in tiny amounts.

That doesn't invalidate the test; it just means that the errors become large at the useful limit. Like I said, it's possible that your analysis comes out saying: youngest possible age: 30,000 years / oldest possible age: infinity. That's still a useful result.

 

[mark kennedy]

Marvin Knox said: ↑

Like most of us I suppose, I'm no scientist.

I'm not sure how you mean that. But if you are giving me permission - thank you.

I only meant you don't have to be a scientist to understand the subject matter. Most of this is pretty basic.

Actually no. It says quite a bit more.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen. 1:1)​

All it says in reference to time is that it was in the beginning, that is literally all it says.

While it is true that (linguistically speaking) there could be a long period before God created light and separated light from darkness that first day - it specifically tells us that whatever was created before that first day was "formless and void".

The way it's described is covered in water and darkness. We just don't know if God started creation right away or waited billions of years, it doesn't effect the doctrine of creation one way or the other. The creation of life is another matter altogether since it's inextricable linked to multiple genealogies, the resurrection, the incarnation and the promise of eternal life.

That leaves out the possibility of it being the earth as we know it. The earth as we know it is what we are talking about - not just some kind of physical mush.

Immediately after telling us that God was moving over a "formless and void non-earth as we know it" - He starts with clear statements concerning the various days of creation. But until those days start - there was no earth as we know it - which is what we are talking about.

Vain (H8414 - tohuw תֹּהוּ tôhûw) From an unused root meaning to lie waste; a desolation (of surface), i.e. desert; figuratively, a worthless thing; adverbially, in vain

Empty (H922 bohuw בֹּהוּ bohuw) From an unused root (meaning to be empty); a vacuity, i.e. (superficially) an indistinguishable ruin.​

Again - we are not talking about some physical "mush" which was created to be available to make into the earth as we know it when God got around to it. We are talking about the earth as we know it and it's age as such.

“Or who shut in the sea with doors,
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;
When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band;
When I fixed My limit for it, And set bars and doors;
When I said, ‘This far you may come, but no farther,
And here your proud waves must stop!’ (Job 38:7-11)​

Where were you Job, the Lord demands, when I broke up the clouds and restrained the waters? Tell me because your so old and know so much. I can't read that without thinking ouch, the sarcasm here is searing. Still I've always liked how this dialogue, actually more of a monologue, ends. Then the Lord looks to Job's friends and says you have not spoken right of me, like my man Job. Anyway, the description of the earth is identical with the Genesis account. The earth was devoid of life, God created life, that is at the heart of the emphasis. The word translated created was also used in Isaiah to speak of the creation of Israel. The word Israel was a man's name, Isaac was named Israel, which means she laughs. He wanted Isaac named that because Sarah laughed in the privacy of her own heart at the promise of having a child. God produced Isaac, the child of promise by a miracle, Israel was and is a miracle. Just as salvation, redemption and our hope of the resurrection is a confidence that the one who makes the promise is faithful. God created life, God promises us eternal life through the person and work of Christ.

We are talking about a world devoid of life, plain and simple. Covered in water and thick clouds

The OP is talking about the earth as we know it - as anyone can see by looking at the particular "proofs" being considered.

I agree.

I never thought you disagreed.

But we aren't considering the literal genealogies here - even though I will say that the straight forward way God presents the genealogies tends to lead one to think of those earlier statements about the creation of earth as being very straight forward as well.

The age of the material the earth was formed from - yes.

But not so the age of the earth as we know it (the topic of this thread).

Science has everything to do with what the OP lays out for us to consider.

What that is is the age of the earth as we know it.

God creates the heavens and the earth, the universe. Some time later, perhaps minutes perhaps billions of years later God forms the earth in such a way as it's suitable for life. Then God creates life. It's really as simple as that.

You are absolutely incorrect that the doctrine of creation has only to do with the "creation of life" and not the creation of all things.

The doctrine of creation has to do with God speaking all things created into existence ex nihilo - meaning out of nothing. It has to do with the eternality and aseity of God Himself vis a vis His contingent creation.

The phrase, 'heaven and the earth', is a Hebrew expression meaning the universe. All we really get from this passage is that the cosmos and earth were created, 'in the beginning'. The perspective of creation week is from the surface of the earth, starting with the Spirit of God hovering over the deep (Gen. 1:2). In the chapter there are three words used for God's work in creation. The first is 'created' ('bara' H1254) a very precise term used only of God.

Create ‘bara’ (H1254) - 'This verb has profound thological significance, since it has only God as it’s subject. Only God can create in the sense implied by bara. The verb expresses the idea of creation out of nothing...(Vines Expository Dictionary)​

It is used once to describe the creation of the universe (Gen 1:1), then again to describe the creation of life (Gen 1:21). Finally, in the closing verses, it is used three times for the creation of Adam and Eve (Gen. 1:27). The word translated, 'made' (asah 6213) , has a much broader range of meaning and is used to speak of the creation of the 'firmament' (Gen 1:7), the sun, moon and stars (Gen 1:16), procreation where offspring are made 'after his/their kind' (Gen 1:25) and as a general reference to creation in it's vast array (Gen 1:31).

Made ‘asah’(H6213) "A primitive root; to do or make, in the broadest sense and widest application" (Gen 1:7, Gen 1:16, Gen 1:25, Gen 1:31, Isa. 41:20, 43:7, 45:7, 12, Amos 4:13). (Strong’s Dictionary). "The verb, which occurs over 2600 times in the Old Testament, is used as a synonym for “create” only about 60 times…only when asah is parallel to bara…can we be sure that it implies creation." (Vine 52).​

Then there is a third term when God 'set' (nathan H2414), the lights of the sun, moon and stars so that their light is regularly visible from the surface of the earth. In this way the narrative shifts from the very precise word for 'created' to the more general 'made', and then the much broader use of 'set'.

Set (nathan H5414) A primitive root; to give, used with greatest latitude of application (Gen 1:17, Gen 9:13, Gen 18:8, Gen 30:40, Gen 41:41). Elsewhere translated ‘put’, ‘make’, ‘cause’, etc.​

The creation account has great significance for the rest of Scripture and how these terms are used in the original and their natural context is essential to really following the text as it was intended to be understood.

The term translated 'created' is used five times in the Genesis account of creation. Once with regards to the creation of the universe, once with regards to the creation of life in general and three times with regards to the creation of Adam and Eve. At the heart of the emphasis the writer of the creation account tells us God created the universe, life in general and man in particular. God created life and promises us eternal life in Christ. That makes the doctrine of creation inextricably linked to the gospel and the actual age of the earth irrelevant to the doctrine of creation.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[Goatee]

If the earth is 'young' then the moon is definitely made out of cheese!

 

[Radagast]

It reminded me of when they landed on the moon. Scientists expected several feet of cosmic dust due to billions of years, but were shocked when they found only a couple inches, suggesting the moon has been around less than 10,000 years as well.

Never happened. When they landed on the moon, they knew that the dust layer would be thin. That's why Snelling recommends not using this argument.

 

[JacksBratt]

I wouldn’t even bother to try, because life is too short to try and fix stupid.

It's always nice to come on to a Christian forum and read something as loving as this post.

You do realize that I'm being sarcastic.

You do realize that when you stop debating with facts and start attacking the opponent, themselves, you just lost any credibility, right?

In any debate, one side stating that the other side is "stupid", is not a tangible point. It usually signifies that you have no solid valid rebuttal for their argument.

 

[DarkSoul999]

The first "day" really was a day I think, with a morning and evening. A real day. Not a 1000 hour day or whatever. Just my own viewpoint (not gospel) So, since it was a real day, it did not start until after light, which I feel sure is from the sun because all six of the days have a morning and evening, and all are normal days. This is my view point. So you can see how it follows from that then that verse 1 would be before the first day, not part of the first day. I can't imagine any reason to think verse 1 would be during verse 3 or simultaneous to it. That seems artificial to impose onto it. It seems more reasonable to me God created the Universe and the Earth, our solar system, and then, later, we have verse 3, and the first of the 6 days is observed in the vision. This is merely my view, however well or not informed. It's not gospel anymore than a view which is different would be. It does fit the text perfectly though.

The issue is so serious that if you are unsure about it then I would suggest learning ancient Hebrew so you can get an exact answer.

 

[DarkSoul999]

Source - supporting facts please



Which is still too thin for an old ocean given current rates of deposition.

I'm just going to start with this one. Did you do calculations to come to this conclusion or are you running on gut feelings?

I have never met a young earth creationist who had more than 4th grade math skills. I mean no offense it's just that people don't always know how little they know.