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Word Gems 

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How Modern Science has falsified
the claims of Biblical Creationism

 

 


 

return to "Evolution Controversy" contents page

 

Dr. Amit Goswami:

“Biologists claim that creationism does not stack up well against that ultimate scientific test [that of analyzing data]. This claim is correct. In creationist theory, God created the world six thousand years ago in just six days. This statement has been falsified beyond doubt; much geological and even physical data (radioactive dating) exist to show convincingly that the Earth is about five billion years old.”

smithsonianmag.com:

The process of figuring out a rock's age often falls to the scientific techniques of radiometric dating, the most famous of which is radiocarbon dating. This process focuses on the ratio between the number of carbon-14 and carbon-12 isotopes in any once-living being: that ratio indicates how long it's been since that being was alive. But carbon is not the only element that can be dated—a whole host of others exist. In uranium-lead dating, for instance, the radioactive decay of uranium into lead proceeds at a reliable rate.

Based on the very old zircon rock from Australia we know that the Earth is at least 4.374 billion years old. But it could certainly be older. Scientists tend to agree that our little planet is around 4.54 billion years old—give or take a few hundred million.

forbes.com:

Do you believe that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old according to science, or 6000 years old according to the Bible? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

The Earth solidified 4.54 billion years ago, plus or minus 1%. That’s a fact, and if your belief is not aligned to this fact, then you are what we call “wrong.”

This age is arrived at by several cross-checking lines of evidence, but the great antiquity of the Earth has been apparent for much of human history. True, scientific progress repeatedly found our home to be much older than previously suspected, but the widespread view that the planet is only a few thousand years old is relatively new, and has no basis in either fact or scripture.

The 6,000 year age was arrived at by James Ussher, a 17th century Irish Archbishop who counted up estimates of the ages of Abraham’s family listed in the Old Testament and calculated that the creation began (on the Julian calendar) on Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC, at 6 pm. Really.

Usher made a lot of assumptions, chose to ignore inconsistencies within even those scriptural sources known at that time, and was unaware of certain, now obvious translation issues, importantly including the way the Babylonians counted, but that’s beside the point. As William Henry Green wrote, “The Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham; and the Mosaic records do not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the Flood or of the creation of the world.”

In other words, even if Ussher’s calculation were correct (it isn’t) it would only tell us when Abraham lived, not when the world was made.

But even this doesn’t matter, for as Thomas Paine reminded us, the only revelation we can really trust is the creation itself. When nature disagrees with scripture, scripture must necessarily be wrong.

Nature tells us Ussher was off by six orders of magnitude.

The Earth formed a persistent solid surface 4.54 billion years ago. Life appeared no less than 3.8 billion years ago... Neanderthals appeared in Europe about a quarter million years ago. If they were alive today, they could probably run for congress (that’s not an insult). They might even do better than those now in Congress (that is). Various groups of humans started domesticating crops and animals between 16,000 and 8,000 years ago, which is why most young Earth wackados now argue for an Earth around 10,000 years old instead of Ussher’s increasingly ridiculous 6,000.

But here’s the thing, the dendrochronologic record—last I checked—now goes back 12,000 years in some parts of the world. You don’t trust radiometric dating? Fine. Buy a magnifying class and a box of Twinkies and visit a dendro lab. Tree rings form a unique fingerprint as trees across a region are exposed to similar conditions. For this reason, overlapping ring patterns from living, dead, and fossilized trees can be lined up to build continuous series stretching back through thousands and thousands of years. 12,000 and counting. No fancy science required.

And at a certain point, the dendro dates line up with ocean core dates and pack ice dates, both of which go back hundreds of thousands of years—but that might take a little scientific know how. Easier are simple geologic strata:

This is the Grand Canyon: Those lines are sedimentation lines that form 40 major layers spanning 2 billion years of deposition. Okay, you might need a degree in geology to tell desert sand deposition from silt and to follow the series around the West to account for disconformities, but even a casual, unbiased evaluation will convince you utterly of two things: 1) The canyon was laid down by erosion through ancient sediments, not cut by any flood, and 2) those sediments were laid down over many, many, many millions of years.

And that’s just scratching the surface, so to speak. Even the Pope knows the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. When you accept it and start studying the data, you’ll discover something important...
 

Editor’s note: As mentioned in an earlier article, some creationists attempt to circumvent the "6000 year" problem by offering what is called “The Gap Theory.” They say, between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 lies an undetermined length of time during which the Earth’s five billion years might be accommodated. After this “gap,” they say, the Earth was “recreated” 6000 years ago, in 6 days, in a form that we would recognize.

What is their evidence for this notion, this “gap”? Certain scriptures from the Old Testament are called upon to support a view that Satan and his armies rebelled against God and created all manner of havoc and destruction in the universe; hence, the “recreating” of the Earth 6000 years ago.

There are many problems with this view. I invite you to peruse my research elsewhere: There is no Satan with armies, there never was a rebellion, there is no "lake of fire," and, in any case, the Bible cannot be trusted as an infallible guide.

“Gap Theory” proponents want to have it both ways: They’d like to maintain a veneer of scientific respectability by admitting the Earth is billions of years old, while clinging to untenable, out-dated ideas rooted in mythology and folklore.

 

 

Editor's last word:

The 6000-year claim runs into other problems with our growing knowledge of ancient civilizations, such as Egypt, pre-dating the "6000 years." 

ignoring the elephant in the room

But let's forget about that detail and address the "elephant in the room." The basis for Creationists' claims is the Bible. But the Bible, while containing some great literature, and a certain amount of wisdom, as stated above, is not an infallible document. See the case for this HERE.

And if the Bible stands with clay feet, then we need not trouble ourselves unduly to make sense of Genesis as a scientific writing.

Editor's note: I happen to like Genesis. I've spent much time in my life studying it. I think there's great wisdom there, especially, certain sections; I think some of it is channeled information from the other side. I quote it often in "The Wedding Song." But I'm not deceived that Genesis can help us very much with the evolution debate.

In other words, because the Bible is not a "dropped from heaven" book, this whole argument by Creationists should come to a screeching halt. But, of course, it does not, just as its "rival religion," Darwinism, also does not, with screeching halt, abandon its positions when shown to be mathematical fantasies.

Each camp proceeds on similar unsure footing, and, in principle, for the same reasons.