Young earth evidence.

[seebs]

I was actually hoping to find specific evidence that the earth is around 10k years old, perhaps.

I'm not comfortable with the "we don't know of a way for comets to form, so they must be young" argument; is there any specific evidence that they have to be primordial?

 

[lucaspa]

I was actually hoping to find specific evidence that the earth is around 10k years old, perhaps.

I'm not comfortable with the "we don't know of a way for comets to form, so they must be young" argument; is there any specific evidence that they have to be primordial?

Seebs, you missed the point. The argument runs:
1. Comets lose mass on each orbit thru the inner solar system.
2. There is no way to replenish comets.
3. If the earth were 4.5 billion years old, then all the comets would be exhausted by now.

It's not an argument for a 10K old earth so much as an attempted falsification for a 4.5 billion year old earth.

Again, you are approaching this backwards. What you want to look for is falsification of a 10K year old earth. You can always find supporting evidence if that is what you are looking for.

Supporting evidence advocated by creationists are:
1. The amount of lunar dust.
2. Extrapolation of human population going backwards gives 2 people ~ 10K years ago.
3. Linear extrapolations of the decay of the magnetic field give an age of 10K of the earth before the magnetic field is so large that it interferes with life.

Now, there are independent tests to question and refute these supports.

 

[Bushido216]

I wouldn't even give the time of day to #2. Anyone who says that in 10,000 years Adam & Eve could have populated the earth is entirely forgetting the Flood.

 

[lucaspa]

The fact is that we've observed galaxies that show the theory used to say spirals don't degrade is scientificly questionable at best.

The paper was done in 2002. So what "observed galaxies" are you referring to? I gave a specific source. What is yours?

you are aserting unprovable, and highly questinoable theory as a verafied fact... i can *theorize* that UFOs created the peramids, and come up with all sorts of apologetics about how it MIGHT be true; but that does not mean that it is.

In this case, the authors are looking at the underlying physics and math of the situation and saying, with the knowledge we have now, that spirals are stable. This is testing their theory against knowledge we already have. They use the 163 galaxies as additional tests.

The analogy about UFOs and pyramids is not even close. Yes, you can theorize it. But then you have to test it. What deductions would you make? What observations support or refute those deductions?

What these guys have done is what science does, and in the order science does it:
1. Make a hypothesis. Assume it is true.
2. Make deductions from the hypothesis.
3. Test the deductions in an effort to falsify the hypothesis.
4. Failing to falsify the hypothesis by 1) showing that it is consistent with known math and physics and 2) observed galaxies exhibit spirals predicted by the hypothesis.

To me a yong earth is anyone less than a billion years old, otherwise you get a time crunch with your evolution that requiers devine intervention to work.

Why? The Cambrian beginning of complex life with calcified body parts was only 530 million years ago. You still allow nearly half a billion years to 1) start life and 2) get it to the complexity of the Cambrian. Plenty of time. Particularly when you consider that the evidence indicates that life began as soon as the earth was cool enough to allow it.

When faith in evolution fails

I have no "faith" in evolution. I accept evolution as (provisionally) true because of the overwhelming data. It is you who seem to have faith in a young earth and have to resort to apologetics to get rid of data you don't like -- the paper you object to.

you can start to look at these things objectivly

I did, which is why I took your criticism based on spiral galaxies seriously and did the Internet search that resulted in my posts. I was looking to see if your claims were indeed correct. Instead, I found data that falsified them.

I did what I was supposed to do. However, you seemingly can't look at things objectively and instead dismiss with emotion the data I posted, then follow it up with this veiled personal attack on my character. Not good.

 

[lucaspa]

I wouldn't even give the time of day to #2. Anyone who says that in 10,000 years Adam & Eve could have populated the earth is entirely forgetting the Flood.

That's true. They are also forgetting disease, famine, etc. For instance, the population of the Eurasian landmass declined in the 14th century due to the Bubonic Plague, but this is ignored in the calculations. The population of the Mediterranean lands declined in the period 100 - 400 AD thru a series of epidemics, but this too is ignored. Instead, the population growth we have seen in the last century is assumed to have been going on forever. I find this ironic considering the disdain creationists have for "evolutionist assumptions".

 

[lucaspa]

And on what basis do you make these claims? Lucaspa provided hard evidence for his point, you've done nothing of the sort.

And of course you could theorize one way or another, but as soon as someone asked you for evidence you'd come up empty-handed.

That's the point often missed. Yes, you can devise any theory you want. Theories/hypotheses are imaginative constructs. But after you make the hypothesis you must TEST it!

It appears to me than many creationists operate on the old idea that hypotheses/theories are inductive. That is, you gather a bunch of facts and the hypothesis is a conclusion from the facts. That is almost never the way it works. I won't say "never", because a few times hypotheses have been constructed this way, but the vast majority have not. Creationism was not. Creationism was based on an imaginative interpretation of Genesis 1-8 and the writings of Plato and Aristotle, which in turn were based on their imagination of how the universe should logically be. It was never based on induction.

 

[seebs]

Seebs, you missed the point. The argument runs:
1. Comets lose mass on each orbit thru the inner solar system.
2. There is no way to replenish comets.
3. If the earth were 4.5 billion years old, then all the comets would be exhausted by now.

It's not an argument for a 10K old earth so much as an attempted falsification for a 4.5 billion year old earth.

Understood. I was just pointing out that I'm not sure it's a good falsification.

Again, you are approaching this backwards. What you want to look for is falsification of a 10K year old earth. You can always find supporting evidence if that is what you are looking for.

Well, really, the idea is this: If I can falsify all older earths, then I've "proved" a 10k earth.

Note that I'm not trying to disprove "evidence for an older earth", but rather, find positive falsifications for it.

So far, I haven't seen anything I was fully convinced by; I'd like to know more about how we know these things about comets.