Age of the Earth 2

[Guest Isaia]

BodhiDharma,

Who said anything about God tricking anyone ? God did what He did in creating the universe in 6 days, and we have misinterpreted the signs that we see around us?

SA,

Thank you for the reply. While you are correct in saying that my arguement is basically that of the Earth being created "mature" because Adam was created mature. However, I think you missed a very important point that is one that cannot be overcome unless you believe in God, and His Christ.

The story of Creation states that light was created on the 1st day, while the sun, moon and stars were created on the 4th. This implies that light and day, is independent of the sun.

Also, plants were created on the 3rd day, before the sun on the 4th. What does this imply about photosynthesis ? That the sun is unnecessary for plants to survive. This flies in the face of current scientific belief.

The point that I'm trying to make is that Creation is the story of the universe being created by a Sovereign God. A Sovereign God is a God that is not subject to anything. Let me repeat that....a God that is not subject to anything.

This is a very important point to accept if you want to believe. God is not subject to any laws, whether natural, human, or of any other order. This is the meaning of Sovereignty. He does not need to create in any particular order, or at any particular stage of maturity, in order for things to work. He does what He wants, when He wants, how He wants.

You might be interested to know that according to the Bible, rain did not fall anywhere on the earth for about 2000 years. Biblically, the earth was watered by a mist that came out of the ground and covered the whole earth.

However, as you are also a self-confessed atheist, I will try to argue the point from a scientific point of view.

The whole process of "radioactive dating" is based on the assumption of a "half-life." I am saying it's an assumption because in the case of C14 which is supposed to have a half life of 5700 years, the question needs to be asked ( in the traditions of science ), has this ever been proven in a laboratory somewhere ? I think not...for if it has, then the experiment started sometime in the 1400s, during which I doubt, facilities for this testing would have existed and C14 wasn't even heard of.

The following quote is taken from an article published by the American Physical Society, which states :"This low yield means that the half-life of C14 discovered by Ruben and Kamen is considerably less than their estimate and is probably about 100 years". If you want to see more, the link is: http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v58/i12/p1047_1

The following site is also an in-depth into the pros and cons of radiocarbon dating :

http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockS1-p1.htm

C14 dating is inconclusive, and new evidence is not making thing any easier. I think that to use radiocarbon dating as a starting point for dating the earth is to start from a position that is at best, open to arguement, and at worst, unsupported by the facts.

May the God of Heaven open your eyes to His truth.

God Bless you all,

Isaia

[Bread_of_Life]

Isaia

So am I to take it you believe that God has been literally 'planting' signs of age on earth for no good reason, not to fulfill any functional criteria?

I am saying it's an assumption because in the case of C14 which is supposed to have a half life of 5700 years, the question needs to be asked ( in the traditions of science ), has this ever been proven in a laboratory somewhere ? I think not...for if it has, then the experiment started sometime in the 1400s, during which I doubt, facilities for this testing would have existed and C14 wasn't even heard of.

Yes, it has been proven in a lab, many times. There is no need to run an experiment for 5700 years to find out the half life of C-14. If you have a sufficiently large sample, the experiment can take days to get a very very accurate result. All you actually need to know is the ammount of substance (the number of isotopic atoms), and the average number of decays per second (the activity, measured on a geiger muller tube) to calculate the half life. You don't need to actually wait for half to decay.

The same goes for all other radioactive materials. For example, Rubidium-87 has a half life of billions of years - but this has been measured to an incredible accuracy by taking extremely accurate measurements of activity of a sample, and hence calculating the probability of decay of any one atom in a second, and from that the half life is attainable.

It is essentially a myth that half lives have not been measured accurately.

The following quote is taken from an article published by the American Physical Society, which states :"This low yield means that the half-life of C14 discovered by Ruben and Kamen is considerably less than their estimate and is probably about 100 years". If you want to see more, the link is: http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v58/i12/p1047_1

This paper is from 1940, and has since been overturned by modern studies. For example, in 1949 Libby, Anderson and Arnold were the first scientists to actually directly measure the rate of decay of C-14. They came up with an estimate of 5568 years (the Libby half-life), 3% off the current figure more accurate figure of 5730 years. This newer figure was attained using accelerated mass spectroscopy to obtain an accurate figure for the ammount of C-14 in a sample, and liquid scintillation counting to find out the activity accurately, both developed after the Libby half life.

I think that to use radiocarbon dating as a starting point for dating the earth is to start from a position that is at best, open to arguement, and at worst, unsupported by the facts.

I agree, C-14 dating cannot be used to date the age of the earth. That's because the earth is billions of years old, and C-14 can only be used with any degree of accuracy over the past 40-50 thousand years.

It's definetely not because we havn't measured the half-life accurately though.

[Guest Isaia]

Hello Sa,

Thank you for the reply...enjoyed reading it even though your point of view is different from mine.

Now down to business.

As you stated, radiocarbon dating has been tested in the lab many times, and that there is no need for testing to the fullest extent ( ie to test for 5700 years.)

This is based on the assumption that C14 decays at a constant rate.

But What if it doesn't ? What if there is a cascade effect after it decays to a certain point or it decays exponentially, or logrithmically ( I'm not saying that there is but just humour me ) and the rate of decay changes ? No one knows whether this is the case or not because it has never been tested to see how it decays over 5700 years.

Wouldn't that affect the "half-life" of C14 ?

The other assumption that I see is that C14 in a test sample is only decaying and that nonew C14 material is being added to it.

Let's take this further...if you have a sample of 100 grams of C14, then 5700 years ago, you would have had 200 grams of C14 ( using the "C14" dating method ). One million years ago ( let's assume that the Earth is billions of years old too, while we're at it ) that sample would have weighed... arount 17.5 kg. The same sample a billion years ago would weigh 17 and a half thousand tonnes ( give or take a few tonnes due to rounding off ).

I will admit that my maths here is not very accurate, but the point that I am trying to make is that, if the assumptions upon which radiocarbon dating is based upon are correct, then there must have been some gigantic living things on Earth a few billion years ago.

The paper that you refered to was written in the 1940's..correct. That is why I had also included another written in 2000 to balance the views. In case you missed the link to the later one, here it is...

http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockS1-p1.htm

I find it fascinating that even experts in "scientific" dating methods disagree to a wide extent. However, I see this as a point that there is still a lot of assumptions in the dating methods employed by those that hold to the belief that the Earth is billions of years old, and none of the so-called experts can agree with each other, let alone the rest of us.

Why would God, plant signs of age, if if served no functional purpose ?

Why is a rose red ? Why does the sun seem more majestic at dawn or at sunset than at midday ? Why is there music, and passion, and love and intelligence, and death, and hate, and envy, and jealousy ? God creates things to His pleasure. If we don't know why, it doesn't mean that there isn't a reason. It simply means that we haven't found it yet.

Before the Middle Ages, the view then was that the world was flat, and that one could "fall off the edge". That has changed. ( obviously...lol) What if new evidence comes in later that refutes the idea that the Earth is billions of years old? Facts based on Science have a way of changing, due to the discovery of new evidence. It is because we do not know everything.

God knows everything. His word states in Isaiah 40:22:

" It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. "

This verse and the book it was taken from in the Bible, was written in the latter half of the 8th century BC. The current view then was that the world was flat, yet God, through His prophet said that it was not, but appeared as a circle to anyone who would view it from "above" it. Supports that fact that the world is not flat, doesn't it ?

In Creation, like the rest of the Bible and any of God's truth, there are no assumptions made, because God knows everything there is to know. We do not know everything, which is why we assume.

Evolution, and the idea that the Earth is billions of years old are tied together, and are the products of theories based upon incomplete knowledge. Creation is the story of how God created the universe, and is diametrically different from Evolution.

This is why I cannot accept the "billions of years old" idea, any more than I would accept Evolution. it is based on incomplete knowledge, and compared to Creation, it pales.

God Bless you SA, and may He open your ears to His truth.

Isaia

[Bread_of_Life]

Isaia

This is based on the assumption that C14 decays at a constant rate.

No, it is not. C-14, just like any radioactive element, decays at a rate proportional to the ammount of the isotope in a sample. (This is due to the fact that decay is a quantum probabilistic process, with each atom having a certain probability of decaying a second, meaning that the more atoms, the more decays you'll likely have)

That means that, as the ammount of isotope decreases through decay, the less the chance of a decay in a second. That creates an exponential decay. Let's work through an example:

Say we start off with a million atoms of istope. Say there is a probability of decay of 1 in a million every second. That means that each atom has a 1/1000000 chance of decaying in a second. In a sample of a million atoms, we'd expect 1 decay a second.

On the other hand, one second later, there'd only be 999,999 atoms left, each with a probability of one in a million of decaying a second. We'd expect slightly less than one decay in the next second.

After a while, we'd be left with 500,000 atoms (after one half life). Each atom would still have a 1 in a million chance of decay (because this probability is governed by fundamental physical constants that keep matter cohesive). In the next second, we'd expect half a decay - in other words, we'd now expect the rate of decay to be 1 every 2 seconds, whereas when we had double the ammount of substance, we'd expected 1 decay a second.

In other words, the radioactive activity is proportional to the ammount of substance. This creates, as I've said before, an exponential decay. This has been observed for every radioactive substance, and is a direct causal result of the atomic nature of the forces that create decay, and the fundamental physical constantly that keep matter cohesive.

But What if it doesn't ? What if there is a cascade effect after it decays to a certain point or it decays exponentially, or logrithmically ( I'm not saying that there is but just humour me ) and the rate of decay changes ? No one knows whether this is the case or not because it has never been tested to see how it decays over 5700 years.

Firstly, there is no mechanism for this to occur. Secondly, we have observed shorter lived isotopes with similar concentrations decay fully - and there is no such effect. Thirdly, we have observed radioactive decay in distant stars, and this confirms that the rate of decay is exponential, and that the probability of decay has not changed even during the last few million years.

The other assumption that I see is that C14 in a test sample is only decaying and that nonew C14 material is being added to it.

This is correct, which is why we have to be careful about where we take a sample from, and how mobile atoms of C-14 are in this substance.

Let's take this further...if you have a sample of 100 grams of C14, then 5700 years ago, you would have had 200 grams of C14 ( using the "C14" dating method ). One million years ago ( let's assume that the Earth is billions of years old too, while we're at it ) that sample would have weighed... arount 17.5 kg. The same sample a billion years ago would weigh 17 and a half thousand tonnes ( give or take a few tonnes due to rounding off ).

No so. C-14 is being constantly created and decayed in the atmosphere through the interaction of solar radiation and Nitrogen gas. This creates a constant supply of C-14 in the atmosphere at a (fairly) stable concentration (although tree ring and varve data show that the concentration has changed over the past 40,000 years).

However, this argument is nonetheless wrong, because it assumes that no C-14 is created, which it is, constantly, in the atmosphere.

The paper that you refered to was written in the 1940's..correct. That is why I had also included another written in 2000 to balance the views. In case you missed the link to the later one, here it is...

http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockS1-p1.htm

The websitemakes several points:

1. That the half-life estimation has changed with modern methods.

This is true, it has, we now have far more accurate ways of measuring C-14's half life, and the concentration of C-14 in a sample. However, this means the method has become more accurate, not less.

2. That contamination can be an issue.

This is true again, however, this website also points out that there are several methods of removing contaminants - which are actually very reliable and remove most contamination which can skew results.

3. That Libby assumed that the levels of radiocarbon have been constant, when they have not.

This is also true, both tree rings (dendochronology), varves and stalactites have confirmed that over the past 40,000 years (for which C-14 dating is useful) C-14 concentration has almost halved in the atmosphere - there was almost double the concentration back then.

However, this knowledge again makes the method far more accurate, especially for old sample. It also proves that scientists **do** test their assumptions about uniformity, even seemingly obvious ones. It was scientists, not creationists, who found that C-14 levels had decreased in the past 40,000 years.

4. It says that "We simply have no information on the level of radiocarbon in our atmosphere before this date."

This is incorrect. The have data from varves and stalactites which confirm a linear decrease for the past 40,000 years (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html#page%2012)

I find it fascinating that even experts in "scientific" dating methods disagree to a wide extent. However, I see this as a point that there is still a lot of assumptions in the dating methods employed by those that hold to the belief that the Earth is billions of years old, and none of the so-called experts can agree with each other, let alone the rest of us.

There is no longer any serious disagreement over the efficacy of radiometric dating methods in the scientific community, nor over the fact that the earth is about 5 billion years old (although some argue slightly older, and some slightly younger).

Also, disagreement is what moves science forward. It leads to debate, more experiments, more data, more tests - and eventually to consensus on which theory has bee proven true, and which false. Without disagreement, science would become a mutual backslapping society, which would not advance and would become dogmatic.

Why is a rose red ? Why does the sun seem more majestic at dawn or at sunset than at midday ? Why is there music, and passion, and love and intelligence, and death, and hate, and envy, and jealousy ? God creates things to His pleasure. If we don't know why, it doesn't mean that there isn't a reason. It simply means that we haven't found it yet.

I think this is rather a "cop-out" so to speak (without meaning any offense to you).

The question of why God would deliberately plant evidence that the earth was very very old, evidence that serves no other purpose but to trick us into thinking this, is an important one, especially when discussing the age of the earth.

General revelation (creation, the world) should speak of the creator and be in harmony with Special revelation (the bible, prophecy, religious experience). If the two are in conflict, then an explanation is required to harmonise the evidence from creation and scriptural and other evidence.

Before the Middle Ages, the view then was that the world was flat, and that one could "fall off the edge". That has changed. ( obviously...lol) What if new evidence comes in later that refutes the idea that the Earth is billions of years old? Facts based on Science have a way of changing, due to the discovery of new evidence. It is because we do not know everything.

The flat earth was not a scientific theory, and not based on scientific data. In fact, it was a religious belief held because the bible describes the earth as a "circle", which is 2 dimensional.

It was scientific data that disproved the flat earth hypothesis though, by actually checking to find out if it was true.

This verse and the book it was taken from in the Bible, was written in the latter half of the 8th century BC. The current view then was that the world was flat, yet God, through His prophet said that it was not, but appeared as a circle to anyone who would view it from "above" it. Supports that fact that the world is not flat, doesn't it ?

No, in fact, this verse was always interpretted at the time as proof that the earth was flat. It does not say that it appeared as a circle when viewed from above, but rather says that it *is* a circle.

There was never any scientific data or analysis to say that the earth was flat - it was an early Christian religious belief.

This is why I cannot accept the "billions of years old" idea, any more than I would accept Evolution. it is based on incomplete knowledge, and compared to Creation, it pales.

It, just like your belief in the bible, is based on the best data you currently have available to you. Your belief in the bible ought to be based on evidence, therefore, it ought also be *subject* to new evidence.

If this evidence contradicts your previous belief (in the bible) which was based on previous evidence, then you have to change your theory, just as scientists do when they find new evidence that contradicts their theories, because the evidence isn't just going to go away because it's inconvenient...

[Lekcit]

Double post, sorry about that.

Edited August 30, 2004 by Lekcit

[Lekcit]

SA,

You bring up the point of why would God create things at a mature level when it served no function but the fact of the matter is that it did serve a function. It goes to survival. Anything mature obviously is going to get on better than infants. Further as to whether God can create things with apparant age look to the book of John and Jesus first miracle. At the wedding in Caina, Jesus turned the water to wine. No one disputes that the wine was young but everyone noted that the wine was the "best" of all the rest. Everyone that knows a stitch about wine knows that it gets better with age. So two things become clear 1.) God can create things with apparant age and 2.) It is done not to deceive but rather to show His glory and power.

In His Grip.

[Guest idied2]

For beginners, "radiometric dating" of rocks is a process that scientists use to tell how old rocks are. Radioactive elements in a rock when it is formed will decay into stable (daughter) elements at a predictable rate over it's lifetime - allowing scientists to pick the tock up at a later date, and tell how old it is by measuring how much radioactive element has decayed.

This logic is extreemly flawd. GOD created that rock yesterday to be a thirty billion year old rock. And the other rock he created last week just cooling down from the lava flow. Who set the dates on what they are doing? Of course "they did". They might even die in their sin When the rocks cry out the praises of the LORD.

In CHRIST JESUS :hug: :hug: :hug:

[Guest idied2]

1Co 1:27

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

In CHRIST JESUS :hug: :hug: :hug:

[Bread_of_Life]

Lekcit

You bring up the point of why would God create things at a mature level when it served no function but the fact of the matter is that it did serve a function.

Then you'll be happy to explain what function angular unconformities have - or what function certain ratios of parent/daughter radioactive elements in rocks have - or what function a layer with an iridium anomoly has in the fossiliferous strata - or any other example I brought up in my last post?

idied

This logic is extreemly flawd. GOD created that rock yesterday to be a thirty billion year old rock.

Why? Just to trick us?

[Guest idied2]

GOD did not develope that technology. So who is tricking who?

Ro 1:28

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;

29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers,

30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful;

32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

In CHRIST JESUS :hug: :hug: :hug: