Can science prove the world is over 4 billion yrs. old?

[Dale_M]

What makes you think God wants to give man the appearanc e that the earth is 4 billion yrs.old.Man is the one who has decided that.

Very true. And the scientific rationale for believing that age seems sound.

What if God created the earth in a second.

Certainly that is possible, but it is an unnecessary interpretation of what we know from divine revelation.

The problem with the theory of instant creation less than 4 billion years ago is that it contradicts the orderly laws of the universe which God created. Granted, God can do anything. But there is no compelling reason to believe that he did what you suggest. And if he did, why does the physical evidence point to such an old planet?

 

[Curious_Seed]

Someone said something to me quote"if i build you a boat made of wood from a tree 200 yrs. old could you say to me that the boat is 200 yrs. old?'I understood his point to be just because the earth is made up of materials which are billions of years old(because that/s how long it takes some substances to be created how can we say that the earth is billions of years old.In otherwords God could have created the earth in a second yet is made of up materials which take billions of years to form.Like a diamond for instance.

You say, “God could have.”

Yes, God could have done anything.

Now, let’s go back . . . and delete could for did.

God created the world with materials that take billions of years to form.

And He chose that method because . . . ?

Knowing God could have done anything is not license for us to stop reasoning, by speculating anything and calling it reasoning.

It’s called specious thinking: taking the plausible and concluding it as probable, under intimidation of the possible.

The Earth was formed far further back than any Biblical dating indicates – which means, the Biblical dating needs a fresher understanding by ourselves, as to its context and implications.

It does not mean, we substitute fact for fabulation.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Answer my question please if you can.I build a boat today using wood from a tree 100yrs.old.How old is the boat?

Disambiguate your question. As you asking how long ago the boat was constructed from the wood, how long ago the wood was cut down, how long ago the tree was planted, or how long ago the matter that composes the wood “came into existence.”

BTW: In general when you ask this question you’ll get an answer based on when the boat was constructed. But I am sure you already know this.

Now presume that Im God.i make the earth last week using materials (like diamond)that have been found by scientists to take millions of yrs.to develop from sand and other minerals.How old is the earth?

Disambiguate this question too.

 

[buffalo]

No, because ages are built on assumptions.

 

[valentino]

God did tell us how old the Earth is by creating the universe according to a set of natural laws and endowing His premier creation, Man, with a rational mind.

To claim that God is completely unbound, even by the Laws He created, by Justice, Mercy, and Rationality, is to slip close to the Islamic conception of Allah (“The Jews are cursed because the say Allah’s hand is fettered” in the Koran, in reference to the Jewish belief that the world was made by God according to certain immutable laws that nothing could change), and to say that God could just as easily be the Evil Demiurge, or Satan. A God that created the world with the “appearance” of age but without age is a god of confusion, a Father of Lies, not the Omnibenevolent God.

If He made the Earth as you say, He could have just as easily changed the fundamental natural laws and made it so that no mineral, animal, chemical, etc. took more than 5600 years to form.

God can not change fundamental laws of nature and mathematics, etc., as Thomas Aquinas argued well: God can bind His own hand.

that/s true.He can’t change the fundamental laws of nature.But He can cause a diamond to appear and it doesn’t take Him millions of yrs to create it.

 

[chris62]

Have we found the missing link yet? Where are we up to with that?

 

[FaithBuild18]

Science cannot prove that the world is over 4 billion years old. But it can certainly support such a hypothesis.

 

[Khalid]

Answer my question please if you can.I build a boat today using wood from a tree 100yrs.old.How old is the boat? Now presume that Im God.i make the earth last week using materials (like diamond)that have been found by scientists to take millions of yrs.to develop from sand and other minerals.How old is the earth?

I answered your question before you asked it, in my last post directly preceding your own.

 

[Khalid]

Have we found the missing link yet? Where are we up to with that?

That’s a completely different question which has to do with common descent, which, unlike the age of the earth and the universe, is still very much a debated theory.

And, no, the “missing link” hasn’t been found - and never will, because it doesn’t exist. It’s purely hypothetical conjecture that is required to support the anti-Theistic strain of Darwinist belief that man evolved from ape. However, there were tens of thousands of apes, and tens of thousands of ape skeletons and fossils, and tens of thousands of men, and likewise skeletons and fossils, and every single one we’ve found is either ape or man: if the “missing link” existed, it would have been discovered by now, because it wasn’t just one ape that evolved in to man: that’s not how evolution, not even macroevolution (which is just as hotly contested as abiogenesis, and far more so than common descent) works.

I’m probably a heretic by saying that I believe it’s possible that God guided evolution in such a way that there were ape-men (neandertals) on earth, unconscious and without soul, just human, and were re-used as a template of sorts before God “built them up out of the mud and breathed in to their nostrils the breath of life”, granting them a soul: essentially, Adam and Eve weren’t the first biological humans, but were the first men, as in “male and female he created them…in the image and likeness of God,” with souls and a rational mind, existing both on the physical plane (as animals and neandertals) and on the spiritual plane (as the angels). However, I’m not even sure I believe that (I probably don’t), but I see how it could be possible, and resolve contradictions, for someone who holds to a fundamentalist Protestant literal reading of the words of the inerrant advanced revelation of the King James Bible (i.e. where day means day, instead of the Hebrew and Greek, which mean “day”, “age”, “aeon”, so on).

 

[Isaiah45_9]

No.

It is impossible to validate something 4 billion years old.

However, you can have all the hypothesis you want using the scientific method.

 

[valentino]

Science cannot prove that the world is over 4 billion years old. But it can certainly support such a hypothesis.

Perhaps.Perhaps not.Not all scientists support it.Some believe God created earth in a much,much shorter period of time.You can’t prove that it was and I can’t prove that is wasn’t.

 

[valentino]

God did tell us how old the Earth is by creating the universe according to a set of natural laws and endowing His premier creation, Man, with a rational mind.

To claim that God is completely unbound, even by the Laws He created, by Justice, Mercy, and Rationality, is to slip close to the Islamic conception of Allah (“The Jews are cursed because the say Allah’s hand is fettered” in the Koran, in reference to the Jewish belief that the world was made by God according to certain immutable laws that nothing could change), and to say that God could just as easily be the Evil Demiurge, or Satan. A God that created the world with the “appearance” of age but without age is a god of confusion, a Father of Lies, not the Omnibenevolent God.

If He made the Earth as you say, He could have just as easily changed the fundamental natural laws and made it so that no mineral, animal, chemical, etc. took more than 5600 years to form.
So God told man how old the earth is?Which man?He never told me.Did he tell you?
God can not change fundamental laws of nature and mathematics, etc., as Thomas Aquinas argued well: God can bind His own hand.

 

[valentino]

valentino:
what fundamental laws of nature proof that the earth is 4 billion yrs old?

 

[valentino]

that’s a strange thing to say.What makes you think God wants to give man the appearanc e that the earth is 4 billion yrs.old.Man is the one who has decided that.What if God created the earth in a second.He’s nnot trying to fool man.Man makes the assumption it was created 4 billion yrs.ago due to studing the minerals of the earth.God didn’t make the assumption.God never told us how old the earth was.

friend I visited the Link you posted.Im going to make a confession.I didn’t read it.Ive read so much of the literature about this subject in the past that I know they don’t prove the earth is 4 billion yrs. old.When new literature or something new is discovered I do read it.Im not anti science or anything.Im quite fascinated and interested in science.But the reasons they give to proof the age of the earth is based on other evidence that can’t be proved.They cannot proof the age of the universe.I really don’t want to get into the science.im not a scientist.Frankly im more interested in other things.

 

[Dale_M]

what fundamental laws of nature proof that the earth is 4 billion yrs old?

The rate of decay of radioactive isotopes in rocks is the basis for the 4+ billion year figure.

The ages of Earth and Moon rocks and of meteorites are measured by the decay of long-lived radioactive isotopes of elements that occur naturally in rocks and minerals and that decay with half lives of 700 million to more than 100 billion years to stable isotopes of other elements. These dating techniques, which are firmly grounded in physics and are known collectively as radiometric dating, are used to measure the last time that the rock being dated was either melted or disturbed sufficiently to rehomogenize its radioactive elements.

Ancient rocks exceeding 3.5 billion years in age are found on all of Earth’s continents. The oldest rocks on Earth found so far are the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada near Great Slave Lake (4.03 Ga) and the Isua Supracrustal rocks in West Greenland (3.7 to 3.8 Ga), but well-studied rocks nearly as old are also found in the Minnesota River Valley and northern Michigan (3.5-3.7 billion years), in Swaziland (3.4-3.5 billion years), and in Western Australia (3.4-3.6 billion years). [See Editor’s Note.] These ancient rocks have been dated by a number of radiometric dating methods and the consistency of the results give scientists confidence that the ages are correct to within a few percent. An interesting feature of these ancient rocks is that they are not from any sort of “primordial crust” but are lava flows and sediments deposited in shallow water, an indication that Earth history began well before these rocks were deposited. In Western Australia, single zircon crystals found in younger sedimentary rocks have radiometric ages of as much as 4.3 billion years, making these tiny crystals the oldest materials to be found on Earth so far. The source rocks for these zircon crystals have not yet been found. The ages measured for Earth’s oldest rocks and oldest crystals show that the Earth is at least 4.3 billion years in age but do not reveal the exact age of Earth’s formation.

pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html

 

[rossum]

Have we found the missing link yet? Where are we up to with that?

Erm… If we had found it, it would be the “Found Link” now, wouldn’t it.

We have plenty of found links, but the missing ones are still missing. Obviously.

rossum

 

[rossum]

what fundamental laws of nature proof that the earth is 4 billion yrs old?

Again you are using the word “proof”. You have already been told that using that word is not appropriate for scientific discussions.

As to the evidence for the age of the Earth, have a look at The Age of the Earth.

rossum

 

[inocente]

Someone said something to me quote"if i build you a boat made of wood from a tree 200 yrs. old could you say to me that the boat is 200 yrs. old?'I understood his point to be just because the earth is made up of materials which are billions of years old(because that/s how long it takes some substances to be created how can we say that the earth is billions of years old.In otherwords God could have created the earth in a second yet is made of up materials which take billions of years to form.Like a diamond for instance.

I guess it’s always possible God had to wait billions of years for the materials to form all by themselves before He could use them as found objects to make the world, but it makes Him sound more like a part-time handyman than the creator of all, it’s the kind of weird compromise that only satisfies overrunning committee meetings.

I’d remind the guy who said it to you that science is about making up our own minds on the basis of the physical evidence, not about trying to prove or disprove every pet theory folk dream up.

 

[rossum]

He could use them as found objects to make the world,

He did: “God also said; Let the waters that are under the heaven, be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. And it was so done.” - Genesis 1:9

rossum

 

[valentino]

I guess it’s always possible God had to wait billions of years for the materials to form all by themselves before He could use them as found objects to make the world, but it makes Him sound more like a part-time handyman than the creator of all, it’s the kind of weird compromise that only satisfies overrunning committee meetings.

I’d remind the guy who said it to you that science is about making up our own minds on the basis of the physical evidence, not about trying to prove or disprove every pet theory folk dream up.

Why do you think God has to start something like the big bang(if you believe that)and everything has to be crreated in some chronological order?If God said "let there be light"did He have to have a big bang with gases and molecules forming and bumping togeher to form the sun?God can create in any fashion He chooses.He doesn’t have to follow a man’s reasoning that everything has to created in some orderly fashion.