How is evolution

[mapleoak]

No, you have it wrong. The techniques used to determine the age of the earth are the opposite of your example in that if you tried to use those methods on young rocks, you would be wildly inaccurate. However, on old rocks, the margin of error for the methods used is small enough that the results are very accurate.

One thing I want to correct is that carbon dating is not used to determine the age of the earth. The half-life of carbon-14 is way, way too short for that. That method is only good to about 50,000 years.

Peace

Tim

But how can it be used to measure a billion years without having a known standard to verify it against?

later addition: Sorry, I skiped over the part where you said it is only good to about 50,000 years. So you agree it would not be useful in determining a 4 to 6 billion year old earth?

 

[Orogeny]

But how can it be used to measure a billion years without having a known standard to verify it against?

later addition: Sorry, I skiped over the part where you said it is only good to about 50,000 years. So you agree it would not be useful in determining a 4 to 6 billion year old earth?

I agree that carbon dating cannot be used to determine the age of the earth. There are other methods for that, such as rubidium/strontium, uranium/lead, potassium/argon and argon/argon. Those methods do have a known standard - the half-lives of the isotopes measured.

Peace

Tim

 

[thistle]

But if you can’t reasonably be certain something is accurate to a million years, how much less so when talking billions of years. That gap gets bigger, not smaller when making assumptions about millions and billions of years. Since one cannot scientifically verify something which is carboned dated at a million years actually is a million years old (no control), carbon dating defies normal scientic method. It is no different than taking a scale to weigh an object that is 10 lbs. A control or standard is used to calibrate or verify the scale so that when the scale says an object is10 lbs, it indeed is 10 lbs. This same scale cannot be assumed to accurately weigh a thousand pound object without using a standard or known thousand pound weight, let alone a million or billion pound object.

You seem to be blind to the point I’m making. The Bible is of no use when it comes to determining the age of the Earth whereas science does have a means of doing that which all credible scientists agree on. What is your evidence that science cannot provide such an answer?

 

[peary]

compatible with the Bible? It would seem that there is no room for evolution.

**EVOLUTION is a scientific theory and many concepts of it fit with what we know about how the Universe developed.

The Bible is not a scientific treatise. It presents an ancient cosmology that a group of people believed about how the Universe was created. That evolutionary theory is or is not compatible with the Bible is irrelevant.

Concerning cosmological evolution, the Church has infallibly defined that the universe was specially created out of nothing. Vatican I solemnly defined that everyone must “confess the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing” (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5).

The Church does not have an official position on whether the stars, nebulae, and planets we see today were created at that time or whether they developed over time (for example, in the aftermath of the Big Bang that modern cosmologists discuss). However, the Church would maintain that, if the stars and planets did develop over time, this still ultimately must be attributed to God and his plan, for Scripture records: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host [stars, nebulae, planets] by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6).

Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.

Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that “the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God” (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution. **