Old Earth vs. Young Earth

[Monkey1976]

I’d be glad to review anything about the formation of heavy/radioactive elements - how any of the high atomic weight elements formed.

This I can definitely help with. We can take Fr. Lemaitre’s model of the Big Bang and use it to predict what elements would have been formed immediately following the primordial flash when God said, “Fiat lux” - this is the time of nucleogenesis, which lasted from when the universe was about .2 seconds old (not a typo - I really mean two tenths of a second) until it was nearly 17 minutes old. These primordial nuclides are almost 75% hydrogen, about 25% helium, with the fractional remaining percentage (accounting for the "about"s earlier) were a very small amount of lithium (including lithium-7, which cannot be produced through any known natural processes short of the conditions we can calculate were present during the time of nucleogenesis), and the tiniest smattering of beryllium.

When the universe was about 10,000 years old, it had cooled enough that elements up to carbon could exist in stable form, though not yet in any great abundance, as conditions still weren’t right for stars to form. For anything heavier than carbon, we need stars - they are God’s furnaces, where metals are born. The current thinking is that the first stars appeared when the universe was about 700 to 750 million years old, and that they were supergiants - very large, very hot, and very short-lived - explaining why we don’t see any of these “Population III” stars today. It’s not the life of a star that makes heavy elements, but its death. As hydrogen fusion in the core proceeds, a layer of helium “ash” builds up at the center. Eventually, there is too little hydrogen to sustain the star the way it has been for most of its life, so it begins to collapse. This collapse increases pressure and heats up the core until the helium starts to undergo fusion. This cycle of burn->collapse->burn continues until one of two things happens: Either there isn’t enough matter in the star to sustain fusion of elements past a certain point and it collapses into a white dwarf, the outer layers being blown away by the last gasps of the stellar wind (the eventual fate of our Sun), or it keeps on fusing heavier and heavier elements, relying on diminishing returns until it - quite literally - hits a wall of iron.

For any star with a mass more than 8 times that of our Sun, this second path is followed, until it tries to fuse iron. Iron is the first element in the periodic table that takes more energy to fuse than is released from the fusion reaction. All of a sudden, the thermal pressure that has held the star in equilibrium is switched off. The outer layers - millions of kilometers in diameter - collapse inward upon the core in a matter of seconds, compressing it beyond all limits previously seen and forcing the fusion of heavier and heavier elements - this is the origin of all natural elements past iron - until “bouncing” off of the core in what we see as a supernova, leaving the core in one of two states. If the core itself is less than 1.44 times the mass of our Sun, then it is left as a neutron star - a giant atomic nucleus, about 20km in diameter. If it’s more massive than that, we get to the realm where our physics start to break down. We know of no physical force that can stop the collapse at that point, and so it keeps collapsing down and down until all of the core’s mass is concentrated into a point of absolutely zero size - a singularity - the heart of a black hole.

This is part of why I say that science reveals the glory of God: Look at your hand. Almost every single atom there was once at the heart of a star. Those that weren’t were formed in the fire that burned only at the beginning of time itself. These are the “dust of the earth” from which God formed us. For us, He set creation alight.

Supplemental reading:

• Chemical Composition of the Early Universe
• St. Augustine’s Commentary on Genesis

 

[edwest2]

It says it happened. It doesn’t say it happened on it’s own. it doesn’t even touch the subject.

Not so.

We can see this in current biology textbooks:

“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

“By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that **matter is the stuff of all existence **and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that **evolution is not directed **towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. **Natural selection is totally blind **to the future. “**Humans are fundamentally not exceptional **because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in *Biology *by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)

“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. “[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)

“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)

Ed

 

[bsroufek]

Faith in God’s power to create (a young) Earth and man as man (not as an evolved creature) is rewarded by God. I think that the old Earth idea just denies God’s power to create Earth
and the Heavens in a short time.

 

[edwest2]

I could ask you the same. Why do you get upset in people believing the world is old? And we have pointed to applications of our knowledge of the age of the earth. I don’t get why non-theist websites have to do with this, other than that some people can be jerks. You seem to think that everyone who thinks the earth is old is out to stamp out religion. I don’t know why you get so upset at the idea of an old earth and frankly it doesn’t matter. What I would like is if you could please stop switching the subject away from science and onto the way some “non-theists” act

I’m not upset. I’m just pointing out the old earth campaign that is and will continue to go on indefinitely. And, on this subject, for every defense thread, the less I believe science. There’s politics involved here. That much is clear.

Ed

 

[Gricken]

Take a look at what some of of those say. Particularity the last one. “As far as science can show”. This does not mean that we are completely random. merely that science can not prove otherwise. This is the point at which theology and philosophy get involved. I’d also call foul on one of the assumptions that “Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism” Since nowhere does evolution require one to be materialist. That said, you have made your point about some science text-books claiming it all happens on it’s own. This, however, does not mean that science requires us to believe that it happens on it’s own. Nor does it mean that these studies are against the church, merely that the authors are.

 

[Monkey1976]

Not so.

We can see this in current biology textbooks:

“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

“By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that **matter is the stuff of all existence **and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that **evolution is not directed **towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. **Natural selection is totally blind **to the future. “**Humans are fundamentally not exceptional **because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in *Biology *by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)

“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. “[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)

“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)

Ed

Like I said: Reason without Faith. From my point of view, the ICR is just as wrong for promoting Faith without Reason. God gave us both, so we should use both.

 

[Monkey1976]

Faith in God’s power to create (a young) Earth and man as man (not as an evolved creature) is rewarded by God. I think that the old Earth idea just denies God’s power to create Earth
and the Heavens in a short time.

If we don’t see naturally occurring candy-cane trees, does that deny God’s power to create them? For those of us who accept science as reasonable, we know that it only explains the how and when. The Who and why are the domain of Faith.

 

[Gricken]

I’m not upset. I’m just pointing out the old earth campaign that is and will continue to go on indefinitely. And, on this subject, for every defense thread, the less I believe science. There’s politics involved here. That much is clear.

Ed

I don’t think it’s clear at all. The only agenda I see is yours. You reject the idea that the earth is old based on religion, and you assume that scientist all reject young earth ideas out of atheism. That shows a fairly strong bias. Even if politics are involved (and I am not sure they are) that doesn’t make the evidence presented wrong. So far, all the evidence for a young earth presented on this thread has been refuted pretty handily.

 

[Monkey1976]

I don’t think it’s clear at all. The only agenda I see is yours. You reject the idea that the earth is old based on religion, and you assume that scientist all reject young earth ideas out of atheism. That shows a fairly strong bias. Even if politics are involved (and I am not sure they are) that doesn’t make the evidence presented wrong.

That’s the joy of science - it doesn’t matter if the researcher is communist, capitalist, Christian, pagan, or a hyperintelligent shade of the color blue. Science is about objective predictions that can be reproduced and verified, just as the Church developed the scientific method to be.

 

[Gricken]

That’s the joy of science - it doesn’t matter if the researcher is communist, capitalist, Christian, pagan, or a hyperintelligent shade of the color blue. Science is about objective predictions that can be reproduced and verified, just as the Church developed the scientific method to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that militant atheist scientists do not exist. What I object to is this idea that an old earth is inherently atheist, or that modern science as a whole is designed to refute religion

 

[bsroufek]

My earlier post about how human population growth shows that man hasn’t been around for more than several thousand years hasn’t been scientifically denied.

You stridently claim that ALL evidence of a young Earth has been refuted pretty handily.

What about the Mississippi delta layers showing a massive flood several thousand years ago?

I think those that believe in an old Earth also disbelieve the flood story. Basically, they deny the power of God because science can’t explain His actions.

 

[Gricken]

My earlier post about how human population growth shows that man hasn’t been around for more than several thousand years hasn’t been scientifically denied.

You stridently claim that ALL evidence of a young Earth has been refuted pretty handily.

What about the Mississippi delta layers showing a massive flood several thousand years ago?

I think those that believe in an old Earth also disbelieve the flood story. Basically, they deny the power of God.

That’s because no model of old earth says that humans have been around for millions of years.

 

[bsroufek]

That’s because no model of old earth says that humans have been around for millions of years.

The Creation story shows man being created very close to the time the Earth was created, not millions of years later.

The old Earth model denies God’s power to create, I believe, because it allows no room for miracles.

 

[buffalo]

That’s the joy of science - it doesn’t matter if the researcher is communist, capitalist, Christian, pagan, or a hyperintelligent shade of the color blue. Science is about objective predictions that can be reproduced and verified, just as the Church developed the scientific method to be.

We can put one right to the test right now - objective prediction on what man will evolve to be?

 

[Gricken]

The Creation story shows man being created very close to the time the Earth was created, not millions of years later.

The old Earth model denies God’s power to create, I believe, because it allows no room for miracles.

Not true. Miracles are by definition outside of science. Also, as had been said here before, the “6 days” could very well mean “6 intervals of time”. We didn’t say god didn’t create the earth, merely that it wasn’t in 6, literal, 24 hour days. I think you’re a bit confused on what exactly those who hold the Genesis story as allegorical actually believe.

 

[edwest2]

If we don’t see naturally occurring candy-cane trees, does that deny God’s power to create them? For those of us who accept science as reasonable, we know that it only explains the how and when. The Who and why are the domain of Faith.

The old “who and why” canard. Nope. The integration is required or we’ll just see more paganism.

"The Time Question

Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago."

Ed

 

[buffalo]

Not true. Miracles are by definition outside of science. Also, as had been said here before, the “6 days” could very well mean “6 intervals of time”. We didn’t say god didn’t create the earth, merely that it wasn’t in 6, literal, 24 hour days. I think you’re a bit confused on what exactly those who hold the Genesis story as allegorical actually believe.

Consider Gen 1 seems to be written from God’s perspective. Imagine a rolled up tape measure 7 times. God looks at it and sees the entire roll at once. We live on the tape, so we are forced to look back past the graduations.

 

[Gricken]

The old “who and why” canard. Nope. The integration is required or we’ll just see more paganism.

"The Time Question

Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago."

Ed

This doesn’t help your position. I don’t understand why you keep posting it. If anything it supports what I’m saying. That God could have created the universe over the course of billions of years.

And who said integration is required most of the things I read on both the religion “side” and the science “side” say the same thing: That Religion and science can easily co-exist without them needing to meddle in each other. In other words, that there are no “sides” because there is no conflict. You are honestly the first person I’ve ever met who says that religion and science must be integrated.

As to your “paginism” comment. I don’t follow your logic. Science and religion not integrated = paganism?

 

[bsroufek]

Not true. Miracles are by definition outside of science. Also, as had been said here before, the “6 days” could very well mean “6 intervals of time”. We didn’t say god didn’t create the earth, merely that it wasn’t in 6, literal, 24 hour days. I think you’re a bit confused on what exactly those who hold the Genesis story as allegorical actually believe.

In the Creation story, it explicitly says, “evening came and morning followed, the second day” for each of the 6 days. I think there is no excuse to say, “Oh, those nights and mornings were not nights and morning as the languages says, but many years each.”

 

[CatholicGeek1]

Not so.

We can see this in current biology textbooks:

“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

“By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that **matter is the stuff of all existence **and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that **evolution is not directed **towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. **Natural selection is totally blind **to the future. “**Humans are fundamentally not exceptional **because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in *Biology *by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)

“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. “[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)

“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)

Ed

That is not the science though, those are quotes of people that are interpreting the science. They want to not see God in it, so they don’t. The actual science, the real science, what these people should be limiting themselves to neither does nor can prove or disprove the existence of God.

Every textbook that I have read, did not have this type of contact. It has only been a little over a decade since I was in high school and less since I was in college. I saw this in none of my books.

If it was there, it was likely in the introduction, which I didn’t read and no one else does either. It appears that is where most of the quotes above come from as well.