Anyone know for sure how old the earth is?

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
You don't know the first thing about science, the scientific method or anything else related to this topic for that matter.

When someone says 'science tells them' do you think they are
refering to other worldy voices? Personally, I believe they are not
refering to science as a being, yet it comes off that way, they accept
the views of some people over others, and that to them is the same
as saying science tells them something, when in fact, it is simply
some person or a commonly held belief they are refering to that they
happen to agree with, not some being named science.

With regard to the age of the earth, you have beliefs on that topic,
or do you call what you have, 'facts'?
Kelly

Originally posted by frogstomp
Here's what science tells us :

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

What a GREAT site! A christian scientist putting down the young earthers and every argument they come up with, and there are some doozies I didn't know about. Lots of links. I put it in my favorites.

Originally posted by KellyJay
When someone says 'science tells them' do you think they are
refering to other worldy voices? Personally, I believe they are not
refering to science as a being, yet it comes off that way, they accept
the views of some people over others, and that to them is the same
as saying science tells them something, when in fact, it is simply
some person or a com ...[text shortened]... of the earth, you have beliefs on that topic,
or do you call what you have, 'facts'?
Kelly

You always refer to scientists as 'They' or 'Them'. Pretty convenient if you ask me. That way you don't actually have to READ anything, just re-spout the same blather, and then say, see, its all your RELIGION.
You totally ignore hundreds of years of research and thousands of papers written where certain lines of evidence are shown by 40 differant methods all pointing at the same set of facts. This is not a belief system, much as you would like to force that view on the rest of the world, this is slowly building up a court case provable by many thousands of pages of circumstantial evidence. Of course we can't go back in a time machine and prove that mankind wasn't there 10,000 years ago but we can sure make a convincing argument for that idea, and you are welcome to provide actual evidence or even some theory that refutes all of the scientific work done in the last 200 years. Where is your theory, what is your evidence? Thats all it takes to make a real argument, not 'well you have your religion, I have mine'.

Originally posted by KellyJay
When someone says 'science tells them' do you think they are
refering to other worldy voices? Personally, I believe they are not
refering to science as a being, yet it comes off that way, they accept
the views of some people over others, and that to them is the same
as saying science tells them something, when in fact, it is simply
some person or a com ...[text shortened]... of the earth, you have beliefs on that topic,
or do you call what you have, 'facts'?
Kelly

Science is not a deity. Science is not a voice inside my head (or anyone else's head). There are facts and they remain facts despite you putting them in inverted commas.

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
Science is not a deity. Science is not a voice inside my head (or anyone else's head). There are facts and they remain facts despite you putting them in inverted commas.

Facts, really, what facts do you have? That point to the age of the
earth?
Kelly

Originally posted by sonhouse
You always refer to scientists as 'They' or 'Them'. Pretty convenient if you ask me. That way you don't actually have to READ anything, just re-spout the same blather, and then say, see, its all your RELIGION.
You totally ignore hundreds of years of research and thousands of papers written where certain lines of evidence are shown by 40 differant methods a ...[text shortened]... s all it takes to make a real argument, not 'well you have your religion, I have mine'.

"You always refer to scientists as 'They' or 'Them'." We are still
speaking about people are we not, or have you placed scientists upon
a pedistal beyond the rest of humanity?

So you don't think of scientists as them and they?
What do you think of them as?
Kelly

maybe, instead of accepting evolution and the age of the earth as fact, and never knowing why, you should study it yourselves, and find out the "why" and if it is even true or not.

Originally posted by josephw
I've repeatedly said that the age of the earth is probably older than we can imagine, but I also know that God could have snapped his fingers and created it old in a mere moment of time.

Are you sure you existed yesterday. Maybe God snapped his fingers and created you old at 1 o'clock this morning.
Such a possibility could not be ruled out but if God created the world old complete with evidence of its age then he clearly intended you to think it was old and who are you to defy him on that?
Also if it was created complete with history that is indistinguishable from a 'real' history then is the history really not 'real'? We only say yesterday 'happened' because of the evidence. It does not actually exist right now.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Are you sure you existed yesterday. Maybe God snapped his fingers and created you old at 1 o'clock this morning.
Such a possibility could not be ruled out but if God created the world old complete with evidence of its age then he clearly intended you to think it was old and who are you to defy him on that?
Also if it was created complete with history th ...[text shortened]... y say yesterday 'happened' because of the evidence. It does not actually exist right now.

What is real, does not depend upon human guess work or theories, it
simply is what it is no matter what we think about it. You believe you
know what happened billions of years ago maybe, or you have some
educated guess, but it is still between your ears, it is a belief nothing
more, evidence or no. Much of what is called evidence are simply
stories wrapped around items, tests, beliefs where things are claimed
to mean this or that, it could be true, maybe not, the point it is, it is
still faith like it or not.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Facts, really, what facts do you have? That point to the age of the
earth?
Kelly

Can you not read?

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
Do you want to tell me that the assumptions first made in the dating methods can't be verified by one of the other fields I mentioned?

How do you verify that the assumption that the rate of radioactive decy of daughter isotopes has always been constant?

Originally posted by XanthosNZ
Science is no less fallible than the practioners of said science. However, if you want to claim that current wisdom in the scientific fields is flawed you need to provide evidence. Do you have any evidence?

Do facts change? No.

But Scientific knowledge is continually changing. So you cannot claim that current Scientific knowledge is a fact.

Originally posted by frogstomp
Here's what science tells us :

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

Not that I ever doubted that the earth is billions of years old, but thanks for this link. It is very informative.

Originally posted by KellyJay
What is real, does not depend upon human guess work or theories, it
simply is what it is no matter what we think about it. You believe you
know what happened billions of years ago maybe, or you have some
educated guess, but it is still between your ears, it is a belief nothing
more, evidence or no. Much of what is called evidence are simply
stories wra ...[text shortened]... or that, it could be true, maybe not, the point it is, it is
still faith like it or not.
Kelly

It is a question of word usage. To you, yesterday may not have happened and you may not even actually exist right now. You just have faith that you do. I would agree that there is no way of proving that you exist but I still call it 'fact' and 'real'.
However the evidence for the age of the earth is not less significant nor more inherently flawed than the evidence that you exist or that yesterday happened.
What amazes me is that you troll though every thread stating that everything anyone says is mere faith and yet you never seem to go further than that.
So, do you personally have faith in anything? What is that faith based on? If your observations of the world contradict that faith then what do you do?

Originally posted by wittywonka
Nobody knows for sure how old it is, but the majority of the scientific community believes it is approximately 4.6 billion year old.

"According to current evidence..."

Nobody knows the exact age of the universefor sure. Is it particularly important? The Lascaux cave paintings precede the date derived by counting back to Adam.

Is time an arrow or a ring?