How old is the Earth?

[Statler Waldorf]

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Hahahaha. I am seriously starting to worry about you. My whole point of the "Earth's Circumfrence" argument was to point out how small of an observable area you would have compared to the whole Earth's Circumfrence when compared to 100 years to 4.5 billion years. This shows how it would be impossible to conclude how far around the Earth is if you were only able to observe a tiny section of the Earth, (remember observing the sun is violating my initial premise since it is outside of your observable area). Then you go off on some crazy tangent about how you can actually measure the Earth's circumfrence using a yardstick. However, this was completely dishonest because the experiment actually uses the sun, not just a yardstick. It also uses loads of previous tested knowledge about the Earth's shape and it's relationship to the sun. This knowledge could not have been gathered by observing your tiny allowed area, so it can then in turn not be used in the experiment. So this experiment has nothing to do with my original point. You are given a linear image of 3.5 inches of the Earth's surface. Can you use this image, and only this image to tell me how big the Earth is? No of course you can't. To think, you get on me for deviating from the discussion at hand, pullease.

As I recall, the 'moving the goalpost' fallacy involves just what you are doing here because this is the first mention that the Sun is off-limits to measuring the circumferance of the earth given that the Sun is visible everywhere on the planet - including the observable area restriction you have given me.
Further, even if the sun is out of the observable area, the light it generates and the angle of that light is not.
As such, the experiment is still valid, but even without it, I can still easily calculate the circumferance of the planet by getting a bigger pole, measuring the distance to the horizon (best done on the ocean, and using that math to calculate the curvature of the planet and thus its circumferance using geometry... again.
Granted that's a larger area than the arbitrary limitation you've given me... but again... moving the goalposts. Plus, the original statement you made regarding why it was impossible didn't involve a mere 3.5 inches anyway - you merely stated that it was impossible without a large view of the planet, which I have proven with two easy experiments.

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Ok, I will never use the Circumfrence of the Earth analogy again, since it is obvious you guys do not get it and want to run down rabbit holes that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. The original issue before we got off on that rabbit trail was- can you conclude that radio-metric decay has always been constant by observing to be constant for 100 years? Ok, so this 100 year observation is 2.2X10^-6 percent of the total time. This would be like observing 0.14 Inches of a 100 Mile road and concluding that the entire road is straight because those .14 inches are straight. There, that is a pretty good illustration. Now if we start off on some rabbit trails about paving techniques and speed limits on that road I am going to scream :-)

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No more on anisotropic light speed?

Shame that, you have yet to show how it supports a young universe.

I did both, it was just in a different thread. It's under my introduction. Instead of just giving me a warm welcome everyone got excited and tried debating over there. Feel free to check it out.

I did, it doesn't.

Haha, so you think you can use the Calculated Time Definition to argue against the Observed Time Definition? Lol, well then I don't know what to tell you. "It's not 1 meter it is 100 cms!!" lol.

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I think a literal view of Scripture should be taken for many reasons but here are four. . .

1. If you don't take the book of Genesis literally then why take any of the rest of the Bible literally? Maybe Jesus didn't actually rise from the dead. Maybe he was not actually born of a Virgin? If you start compromising on all of these cornerstones of the Faith then you start believing in something that is not Christianity at all.

2. Why compromise on it to begin with? It will not help anyone come to the Faith. "Well I just can't except a Young Earth because Science does not back it, but I will accept Virgins giving birth." You see my point?

3. Jesus seemed to take the Genesis account literally, so if the Son of God did, then so too must His followers.

4. People will believe when God wants them to believe. So it is my job to present and support what scripture says, not water it down to make it more appealing. One Creationist said it very well, "It's God's job to open their hearts, it's our job to shut their mouths." :-)

Science requires interpretation, it can all be interpreted to support the Biblical view of creation. So I really do not see any reason to abandon that view.

Thanks for being civil in your response!

I haven't quite followed what the explanations are for fossils appearing in the right rock layers according to multi-million year timescales, how plate tectonics is explainable in a 6,000 year timeframe, how ice cores seem to show a record of nearly a million years rather than 6,000 years, why there was a 2-second delay in radio communications with the moon explorers if electromagnetic radiation is supposed to be instantaneous, and how evolution itself was supposed to happen in 6,000 years (maybe it isn't, maybe that's the point).

I fully accept that no evidence speaks for itself. At some point, atheists like me need to make a leap of faith as part of the interpretation process. But there are a couple of questions I still need answering. Forgive me if you have already done so, this is a hot thread and I may have missed a lot.

First, I don't see why god would bother, when he made all the stars appear an Day 4, to make it look to us as if they had all been created as part of a multi-billion year timeframe. The timelines for stellar development over billions of years seem consistent with observation, they don't need to be the same star. If you were presented with examples of 80 human males each in a different year of life, you could easily model the typical development of one human male. Same with stars, surely.

But why would god bother with fooling us into believing there is a 10 billion year plus process going on. There appears to be no reason for it. It would be like taking something that we know is instantaneous, like turning a tap to obtain water, and suddenly introducing a 2-hour delay. Other than wasting a lot of time, it would be absolutely pointless.

But more importantly if, as we both agree, interpreting any evidence involves an act of faith, because however many spreadsheets we create, we still have to interpret what is there and make our own minds up and trust our judgement; if that is the case then why does the Bible need to be read literally at all - you could conclude that everything in it is intended to be metaphorical, still beautiful stories but not literally true, even the virgin birth, because you can still interpret the metaphor and everything else you see in front of you as being evidence of God's existence. Why the need to have much concrete evidence to support the young earth theory? A tiny amount of evidence could be interpreted correctly, a large amount of evidence could be interpreted incorrectly - so why the need to keep pointing to a mass of evidence and attacking the evidence of rationalistic atheists?

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This is the best post I have seen on here. I am serious too, no sarcasm this time. There is a lot of information required to answr this post. How would it be best for me to answer it? On here or in a private message? Let me know. Thanks.