Can the Earth really be 2.3 Billion years old?

Question

I highly disagree, Because the earth can only be 6,000 years old. Here's why. I think if the earth was really "2.3 Billion years old" The Apocalypse and everything else predicted in the Bible would have already come to pass. And also on a more fact based point of view. A recent Dinosaur corpse was found with blood vessels still alive and body tissue still fresh, It was perfectly preserved. blood and body tissue is predicted to last only a few thousands years if kept preserved. If it reaches a billion, It'll be gone and decayed. What's your opinion on this subject?

Answer 1

According to the bible the earth is approx. 6,000 years old. According too the original Hebrew word usage and Hebrew context, God created the world in 6 literal 24 hour days (which would mean he created everything in exactly 144 hours).

If you believe the earth is 2.4 billion years old, then you don't really believe the bible.

Besides, scientists today think the world is 4.6 billion years old I think. First they say its 1 billion, then 2 billion, then 3 billion, 4 billion and so on...

If they really knew how old the earth is, then why does the number keep changing? Obviously they don't really know.

Well, God's Word doesn't change.

Scientists used to say that Pluto is a planet. Then years later they changed their minds and said,"Oh, wait, no. Pluto isn't a planet. Oops!"

And we just nod our heads and say, "Uhuh, I believe every word you tell me. Scientists know better than we do. They're geniuses." We're like a bunch of bobble heads.

Bobble bobble bobble. "Uhuh, sure, I believe you..."

Answer 2

I bet my mate would know, he's about that old.  I'l ask him tomorrow for you and let you know

Answer 3

BIG EDIT

Here is the stuff i found from the website.  Sorry i should of just put this up in the first place.  This explains what i am trying to say much better than i can by myself.  There are  hypotheis.theories and sources/references on the website.

(I ran out of room)

Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The numbers listed below in bold print (usually in the millions of years) are often maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the Biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the Biblical time scale. Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a recent creation.

1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.

The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.1 Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this “the winding-up dilemma,” which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same “winding-up” dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a complex theory called “density waves.”1 The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope’s discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the “Whirlpool” galaxy, M51.2

2. Too few supernova remnants.

According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.3

3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.

According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4 Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical “Oort cloud” well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.5 So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations. Lately, there has been much talk of the “Kuiper Belt,” a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Some asteroid-sized bodies of ice exist in that location, but they do not solve the evolutionists’ problem, since according to evolutionary theory, the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it.

4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.

Rivers and dust storms dump mud into the sea much faster than plate tectonic subduction can remove it.

Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7 As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.

5. Not enough sodium in the sea.

Every year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today’s input and output rates.10 This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.10 Calculations11 for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

10. Too much helium in minerals.

Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape.25 Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.26 This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously.

11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.

With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. Lately the world’s best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old.

12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.

Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.

Answer 4

Speaking as a graduate geologist, this string is a little frightening. I do not see that either side is properly represented.

First the Bible does not say that Earth is 6000 years old. Archbishop Uscher added up the numbers and made a calculation that we know is incorrect. There are gaps in the genealogies. Most Graduate Young Earth Scientists tend to work in the 13,000 years range. But they are working from a completely different set of assumptions than Uniformitarian Scientists are.

Catastrophist YEC work with the idea that the facts can be explained using the general outlines given in Genesis. Uniformitarian  Scientists would from the assumption that around us is all there is and observations can explain everything. In fact, only natural explanations can be accepted. This automatically precludes the Creationist position.

There the two sides are arguing from positions that can never be reconciled. However one can start a lot of online eventaully ad hominem arguments.

It is possible to take the facts and put them into both of the two models and have most of them make sense.

What needs to be discussed is whether or not the assumption that there is only the natural and no supernatural is correct.

As far as the dinosaur please cite your sources for this. No one that I have ever discussed this with  was able to provide a verifable source.

To those arguing the creationist side on this string, I would recommend that you are totaly unprepared to discuss this subject in public. To those arguing the evolutionary side of this, you  need to do your homework and know both sides of the argument. Do not discuss things that Creationists know to be untrue and ascribe them to Creationists.

The argument may now continue

Answer 5

Modern geologists and geophysicists consider the age of the Earth to be around 4.54 billion years (4.54×109 years). This age has been determined by radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples.

Historically, estimates of the age were based on either creation myths in religious texts, or philosophical interpretations of geologic features, most notably by the Greek philosophers Theophrastus and Xenophanes. Biblical young earth creationists believe that the earth was formed as recently as 4004 BC, whereas Hindu beliefs have the universe enduring for billions of years before being destroyed and recreated in an endless cycle.

Following the scientific revolution and the development of radiometric age dating, measurements of lead in uranium-rich minerals showed that some were in excess of a billion years old. The oldest such minerals analysed to date – small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia – are at least 4.404 billion years old.Comparing the mass and luminosity of the Sun to the multitudes of other stars, it appears that the solar system cannot be much older than those rocks. Ca-Al-rich inclusions (inclusions rich in calcium and aluminium) – the oldest known solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the solar system – are 4.567 billion years old, giving an age for the solar system and an upper limit for the age of the Earth. It is hypothesised that the accretion of the Earth began soon after the formation of the Ca-Al-rich inclusions and the meteorites. Because the exact accretion time of the Earth is not yet known, and the predictions from different accretion models range from a few millions up to about 100 million years, the exact age of the Earth is difficult to determine. It is also difficult to determine the exact age of the oldest rocks on Earth, exposed at the surface, as they are aggregates of minerals of possibly different ages. The Acasta Gneiss of Northern Canada may be the oldest known exposed crustal rock.

Answer 6

2.3 billion years is certainly reasonable.

6000 years is patently absurd.

Bible is not a science text. It is only meant to be guide to life. Ignorance is not a substitute for truth.

Where is the information on your dinosaur to be found?

The only reason the human population is now increasing is due to medical advance resulting in increased life span and significantly reduced infant mortality. We've upset the balance of nature.

Answer 7

"A recent Dinosaur corpse was found with blood vessels still alive and body tissue still fresh, It was perfectly preserved."

This is an exaggeration - see the real story here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu...

The incident is not quite unique either:

http://jgs.lyellcollection.org/cgi/conte...

"...blood and body tissue is predicted to last only a few thousands years if kept preserved. If it reaches a billion, It'll be gone and decayed."

While the asker's first statement is an exaggeration, this one is an argument from incredulity. Both statements were probably repeated from an uninformed source that was willfully lying - some people are naive enough to believe enverything they read.

There's no real reason to think things MUST decay over time - especially if no decay organisms are present. This soft tissue was protected in a cavity within bone which was mineralized and buried in a geologically quiet spot. In effect, small parts of this fossil were hermetically sealed and isolated from all outside influence. There's no reason it shouldn't last that long.

Answer 8

I think of it this way, It's a big rock.

The dinosaur did not live 2.3 bil. yrs. ago. But the Earth could have beenm around.

There is nothing on the Earth to decay since the Earth is not technically living.

Answer 9

No. It is more like 4.3 billion years old, if Geology is to be relied upon. Maybe the predicted Apocalypse was the end of the Dinosaurs.

Answer 10

no one is sure of an exact answer...it's just an estimate..for more information..contact God! ;)

Answer 11

I gotta agree with you there.. since man didn't evolve, and yet we reproduce, if the earth was billions of years old there would be alot more of us by now.

Answer 12

Geological time scale of Earth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_...

I think that in the bible they are saying the human race has been around for 6,000 years.

Answer 13

ha ha i got a book on this of how a planet is made like earth. you all know how it starts off as some gas then a planet of fire and lava then i dunno some water came from god knows where if its all fire on the surface then the magma cooled and made land and then grass ans stuff came and yeah all that stuf takes like at least 1 billion years but i think it ain't true.. cuz we would have found one somewhere in the universe. but  you dont know if that dinosuar flesh waz preserved in ice or even if it wasnt a dinosuar but it might have been a more primitive animal of today because even today animals are still evolving. but anyways id say that earth is about a couple hundred million but not billions thats the sun haha

Answer 14

We should observe these arguments logically, and below you will find my rebuttal to various claims, including those made by other answerers.

Q1. The Apocalypse would have already come to pass.

A1. That assumes you take the Bible as literal truth. And even if you don't, your point is flawed. Why should the apocalypse already have come to pass? The age of the Earth has absolutely nothing to do with that - it's akin to saying if the Earth was that old any event should have already happened, which is very illogical and moreover pretty incorrect.

Q2. Your claim would have more substance if it was sourced to a peer reviewed scientific journal. I know Don has put it to one, but he's already covered the main points against that argument.  Every search I've conducted about this matter came up with young Earth creationist arguments about why it was suddenly proof of a young Earth.

And on a further note, soft tissue has been preserved for much more than 65 million years (when the dinosaurs died out, not 2 Billion years ago - life was barely more than bacteria back then). I'll agree that bloody tissues are only predicted to be preserved for a short period of time, but that doesn't mean there aren't exceptions.

*****

"The earth COULD NOT be 2.3 billion years old because of things like the moon moves farther and farther aways and the ocean gets saltier as time goes on."

Granted, the moon has indeed been getting further from Earth, but again that's not conclusive proof of a young Earth. The substantial distance between the Earth and the moon, coupled with the minute speed they are seperating (I can't quote an exact figure, my apologies for this) means that this doesn't stand up as evidence that the Earth is young.

"People who say the earth is that old have no idea what they are talking about, and, at best, are just guessing at its age!" -

Edit - I have no intention of claiming that anyone with a PhD is infallible. Quite the opposite. What I do claim though, is that the people have substantial experience in research and are experts in their field. As a potential PhD student, I take offense if someone claims that they don't know what they are talking about.  Furthermore, I'm fully aware that having a degree or a doctoral doesn't mean you must believe that the Earth is over 4 billion years old. But the general consensus of geologists, those most suited to argue this case for science, is that it is.

"As for scientists dating things, they once dated a clam to be 200 or 300 million years old, but it was still ALIVE!"

- There have been a number of claims by Young Earth creationists about the fallacies of dating mechanisms. I would respectfully disagree; dating mechanisms have a number of mechanisms to reduce inaccuracies and calibrate ages. Those "experiments" that are found to yield massively inaccurate ages are often done by the people trying to disprove dating, and as such there is an immediate conflict of interest.

"Here is more evidence for a young earth that you may want to look in to.

Too few supernova remnants

Not enough mud on the sea floor

Not enough sodium in the sea

The earths magnetic field is decaying too fast

Too much helium in minerals

Too much carbon 14 in deep geological strata"

By my own admition, I'm no astrophysicist, so I cannot argue the case of the supernova remnant evidence.

The case with there being too little mud on the sea floor warrants a simple invokation of a simple geological process - burial and compaction. Sediments are buried, compacted and turned to rocks - mud wouldn't just persist in the way you imply. That said, layers of mud can build up on ocean floors, but they are typically subducted along with the ocean lithosphere at subduction zones.

The statement that there is too little salt in the ocean warrants a similar response. Nature is very cyclic. Although salt is added to the ocean, it is also removed through a number of processes. Salt does not simply build up in the ocean, exhibiting a linear relationship between salinity and time.

I retain my point that creationists do tend to ignore counterarguments as if they hadn't been made, but I would hasten to add that I should have probably said "some" or "most" - I apologise for that oversight. But again, my standpoint on science remains valid, in my opinion. If new evidence for a process is made available, as long is it is reasonably supported, the scientific community will change its opinion - this is simply scientific progress. An example of this is that from 1990 to 2008, the IPCC has changed from the standpoint that humans may be the cause of climate change, to humans are very likely to be the cause of climate change.

The magnetic field is decaying too fast - This idea has been dismissed as shoddy science, and is an obsolete hypothesis. Barnes, who came up with this hypothesis, has several fatal flaws in his work, including, but not limited to -

1.  Barnes employs an obsolete model of the earth's interior.

2.  Barnes selects only the "dipole component" of the total magnetic field for analysis. The dipole field is not an accurate measurement of the overall strength of the earth's magnetic field.  The dipole field can decay even as the overall strength of the magnetic field remains the same

3. Based on his preconceptions of the earth's magnetic field, Barnes fits an exponential decay curve to the data. There's some circular reasoning here. The use of an exponential decay curve is tantamount to assuming that the earth is young; one must show that the decay curve arises from the data - not assume it.

4.  Barnes simply ignores the fact that the earth's magnetic polarity has reversed itself on numerous occasions.

Too much helium in minerals - Are you referring to atmospheric helium? This is the argument that young Earth creationists tend to use. The whole argument, however, hinges on Helium-4 remaining in the atmosphere.  A fair amount of helium is lost from the Earth's atmosphere by simply being heated up in the elevated temperature of the exosphere

Too much carbon 14 in deep geological strata - I'm sorry, but I don't follow. Could you tell me what you mean? On the argument of 14C dating being inaccurate, there are a number of techniques we use for calibration that have been repeatedly proven to yield reliable results.

- "All of this evidence points to the earth being less than 10,000 years old." I'm sorry, but I just can't agree. Aside from the statements above, I've done extensive research on dating glacial sediments from 110,000 years to the last 10,000 years. I've conducted 14C dating, and I see no reason to believe that there are unacceptable inaccuracies in my work.

The evidence points toward the Earth being 4.54 Billion years old.

Additional information - It's true that scientists have reassessed the age of the Earth, but that certainly doesn't mean we don't know what we're talking about, and to claim we are guessing is just plain offensive and ignorant. The reassessment of the age of the Earth is just part of gaining a better understanding of the universe around us - improving techniques, better understanding of data. We don't claim to be 100% infallible but it's certainly more accurate than religion, who go by ridiculous patriarchal life spans and by a text written 2000 years ago subject to individual bias.

As for the reclassifying Pluto - that's hardly the way it's been described. When it was discovered, it was classified a planet - now that we have more information, and made better informed decisions, it has been reclassified as a member of the Kuiper belt. There's certainly no "oops" about it.

I apologise if I've taken an unecessarily harsh standpoint against young Earth creationists on this matter, nothing in the above answer is meant to be personal, or a personal attack.

Oh, and despite what I've said, I strongly advocate the right for any person to believe in whatever they want. But with all due respect, if your argument relies on religious reasoning, it shouldn't be debated in the science section.

Answer 15

No, radiometric dating was used on a meteorite.

Take a read of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_...

Answer 16

well yes, the world has been alive since adam and eve whitch was a very long time ago!!!i say that it might even be more years that it has been alive....