Evidence Against Young Earth Creationism
Source: RationalWiki article - Evidence against a recent creation
Page intro:
The evidence against a recent creation is overwhelming . There is perhaps no greater attack on science than Young Earth creationism (YEC).
This article collects evidences that place a lower limit on the age of the Universe beyond the 6,000 to 10,000 years asserted by most Young Earth creationists (YECs) and the literalist Ussher chronology . All of this evidence supports deep time : the idea, considered credible by scientists since the early 1800s, that the Earth (and the Universe) is millions [note 1] or billions of years old. Modern science accepts that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old and the entire universe is around 13.77 billion years old. [note 2]
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Content list:
- 1 >10,000
- 2 >100,000
-
3 >1,000,000
- 3.1 Relativistic jets: >1,000,000
- 3.2 Space weathering: >1,000,000
- 3.3 Petrified wood: >1,000,000
- 3.4 Naica megacrystals: >1,000,000
- 3.5 Cosmogenic nuclide dating: >1,000,000
- 3.6 Iron-manganese nodule growth: >1,000,000
- 3.7 Amino acid racemization: >1,000,000
- 3.8 Stalactites: >1,000,000
- 3.9 Geomagnetic reversals: 5,000,000
- 3.10 Erosion: 6,000,000
- 4 >10,000,000
- 5 >100,000,000
- 6 >1,000,000,000
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Even something as simple in concept as dendrochronology (tree ring data) goes back more than 10,000 years.
And here I thought carbon dating might date me.
But she turned out to be silicon based. Imagine my disappointment.
You tried to date a ROCK? There are some very fine dating sites out there you might try, I think you need to get out more.
Nope, dig, all this crap you offered is nothing but historical science. Historical science is interesting but nobody really knows what happened in the past. Were you there? Were you there to confirm that the rings on every tree correlate to the age of the tree?
No, you were not. The only science that matters is observational science - what we can observe happening in the present.
So toss all your fancy historical science and your pathetic 'dating methods' out the window because none of it means anything (unless I can use it to my advantage when I make a point - then and only then is it valid). Instead go to THE source where real people give eyewitness testimony to what actually happened. Then and only then will you get the truth. You see, dig, I have this book ...
Oh, and plate tectonics is bullshit too. The plates moved much faster in the past but plate tectonics presumes a near constant rate.
( And by the way, Answers in Genesis has all sorts of YEC products to buy so please visit their website. )
LOL!
You are scary good at Ken Ham impressions, TiG.
I hope no one thinks you're serious.
But, yeah, that is how it goes isn't it? To hell with cross-disciplinary evidence-backed knowledge, I have this book of old stories...
Exactly! What more do you need?
Science is approaching things all wrong. They are looking at evidence and attempting to explain it based on logic and accumulated formal knowledge. The problem is that sometimes they offer theories that do not conform to the Bible. Are they insane? Yet they continue with these theories as if the Bible did not matter!
I was a high school science teacher in Australia for many years so I know what I am talking about. The framework for science is the Bible. Instead of trying to figure out the age of the Earth just start with what God effectively told us: 6,000 years. Now figure out how all of our findings such as dinosaur fossils, radiometric dating, DNA, Gyrochronology, etc. work within that framework.
If a theory of science contradicts a literal read of the Bible then the theory is wrong. No need for fancy experiments. The falsification is immediate if it contradicts the Bible. This greatly simplifies science. And by tossing all of historical science out the window I think I have science framed in a manner that all my people can comprehend. And best of all, they will keep buying my products because everything continues to make sense to them. That makes me very happy.
You just proved that you never read the Bible, unless it is a different version than the King James version. Never once does it state how old the Earth is. It just states that after Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, they lived to a certain age and their children, their children's children, and so on and so forth. It is by adding up the ages based on how old the child was when the parent died that people have gotten the age of the Earth as being 6000 years old. That is the first fallacy of the argument that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
The second fallacy is on the part of science. It is assumed that time is linear and moves consistently even back in the time when the Universe was young and that is based on the speed of light and the red shift. How do we know that light was moving consistently in the distant past. Recent experiments have shown that light can have its speed changed and therefore any time measurement based on light cannot be fully relied upon.
The only thing that can affect faith is it's source, Religion and nothing else matters.
First of all the idea that a book written from the word of god would have more than a single version makes it lack credibility and the concept that you can then explain away anything with made up concepts like bendable time reinforces the absurdity. Oops gotta go its troll worship hour.
Tom, I was pretending to be Ken Ham in my post. It was parody. Personally I am well aware of Ussher's analysis and have mentioned it many times in my comments. Ken Ham is also aware of Ussher's analysis and he too knows the Bible itself does not declare an age of the Earth.
The effects on the net speed of light are so minuscule they would not affect the calculations for the distance of cosmological bodies. So yes, per science, time / distance measurements based on a constant speed of light are still quite valid.
Disregard relativity for a moment to make this easier. If 'time' for the universe is viewed as the underlying clock speed (again this is absurd because this is not how time works) then speeding up the clock would not be noticeable in our calculations. If everything was 'faster' or 'slower' all measurements would correspond to the current clock speed.
To illustrate, pretend there is a super powerful alien (or God) outside the known universe randomly changing the 'clock speed' like someone speeding up or slowing down a classical movie reel. It would not matter how fast the reel was moving - the movie itself remains internally consistent. The observer (God or the alien) however would get to move backwards or forwards and at different speeds at it observes us.
The above, by the way, taps Relativity a bit. A body experiencing time dilation perceives no difference (there is no difference). Everything works perfectly fine for the body no matter how it is moving through spacetime. Yet the faster the body moves through space the slower time will pass for it. The more one travels in the space dimensions the less one can travel in the time dimension and vice-versa.
Fundies take all the fun out of fundamentalism. Thus sarcasm and ridicule will inevitably result. Fundamentalists, those who ascribe to a "literal" or exacting interpretation of the Torah/Bible/Koran as the one ? true historical account of the creation of our universe and of mankind really cannot be reasoned with no matter the color of their stripes. The three Abrahamic monotheistic religions, Judism, Christianity and Islam, all clearly trace their roots from Abraham through Jacob and Moses and David onto all the billions of adherants of thousands of different denomination out their today. How are the Mormons fundamentally different than the Muslims? They both recognize subsequent prophets of the Jewish God by whichever of His innumerable names. Mainline Christians are not fundamentalists. Even the Catholic Church has reconciled itself with modern science. It seems to me that too much of the air regarding faith or lack thereof being taken up by those arguing about ridiculous stuff way out on the fringes of what the vast majority of People accept as truth. A couple of hundred million Americans self identify as Christian. These are mostly what I would describe as small c cultural christians who may celebrate Christmas and Easter with their community, friends and family but who do not hold fundamentalist beliefs. Of those hundreds of millions only a small percentage regularly attend services and a much smaller precentage tithe. With the advent of cultural conservatism it seems that fundamentalism has become more of a tribal thing resulting in all these fire breathing flat earth science deniers on social media who will endlessly argue nonsense. So, I guess I understand the sarcasm you exhibited above which really amounts to ridicule. Not very nice but quite effective in my opine...
It was a parody of Ken Ham. And regarding Ken Ham I agree that I am not being nice. He is IMO knowingly misinforming millions of people.
When it comes to Ken Hamm, there's no need to be nice. Con artists like him deserve all the scorn and ridicule they get. And those who follow or believe Mr. Hamm and his ilk are just willfully ignorant and/or gullible.
I agree. Especially since his efforts are effective. Millions of people accept what he is peddling: ignore science when it conflicts with a literal read of the Bible.
I guess some people prefer the comfort and/or delusion of dogma over the reality of science.