How old is the Earth?

[Welsh cake]

Well you have emperical evidence to support a conclusion. You do not have emperical proof that your conclusion is one hundred percent accurate.

When did I ever say that? The dating process is still being refined as we speak, and as far as I'm concerned that's my justification for accepting practical meaningful knowledge whereas absolute knowledge is unattainable in any instance.

How old do you think the earth is?

Between 6000 and 7000 years.

1. What's your justification for this?
2. What evidence do you have to support this?
3. You criticise dating-techniques yet why can't you give an exact measurement yourself?

[orogenicman]

An intelligent alien life form reading claims made by creationists, and only the claims made by creationists, might come to the conclusion that the 20th century never happened.

[Anomalocaris]

An intelligent alien life form reading claims made by creationists, and only the claims made by creationists, might come to the conclusion that the 20th century never happened.

Maybe they would conclude the creationists belong to a separate species.

[theVOID]

That would just be the planet that Satan's angels fell to...

[Statler Waldorf]

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Haha, you again? Well either you missed what Dr. Netwon said, or you just flat-out ignored it to try and make a dishonest point abou tSpecial Relativity. Dr. Newton deseribes Special Relativity as a "well tested and valid theory"- so of course he is going to follow the theory. However, according to special relativity the speed of light is constant in a vaccum when using the calculated time definition. You will notice that Dr. Newton says he uses the observational time definitioin, which is a whole nother hill of beans. So you have essentially tried to disprove Dr. Newton by stating something that he himself agrees with. Kinda funny.

I'm sure he said something to that effect, but his theory still violates special relativity rather obviously. That evil youtube video you keep dismissing even eliminates the possibility that light can travel at anything other than a constant speed using high school mathmatics.
I'm sure he thinks he's following relativity because he's certainly saying as much but, speaking of dishonest, what he's saying and what he's doing are two different things when it's blatantly obvious that even a casual observer can see the disparity between his crack-pipe theory and special relativity.

So does this mean you discredit Secular Scientists because they only had their articles reviewed by like-minded secularists? You are commiting the old fallacy of Special Pleading. If you have to move the goal posts to keep up with me, then I guess you have to do what you have to do right?

That depends on the secular scientist and where the articles were peer reviewed, but by and large, no. Normally, if I see an article in scientific american, I'll give it some thought.
If you're wondering how I'd react to even the same article in Christian Science magazine, I'd meet it with far more skeptisism unless they're merely reprinting an article with a much farther reach.
The same applies to virtually anything at any christian website - like Answers in Genesis.

As far as your accusation about special pleading, there is a reason for that and it's the same reason that I listen to doctors over faith healers on matters of health, scientists over pastors on matters of science, evolutionary biologists over creationists on matters of biology, chemists over alchemists on chemicals and chemistry, archeologists over creationist sunday school teachers about the history of life on earth, and why I'll listen to Stephan Hawking or Albert Einstein over your Dr. Newton on matters of Astrophysics.
The reason being is that people in those fields and those individuals who have proven time and time again to have no presuppositions about where the evidence leads and they have the ability to give conclusions without the kind of bias that a creationist has - who very clearly has a specific world view point to defend.

In short, they know what the fuck they're actually talking about.

Further, I've not moved any goal posts because I've presented no goals for you to reach and thus I cannot have committed that fallacy. I have not committed the special pleading fallacy because I did not ignore and specifically addressed your arguement by presenting counter-evidence directly from the stated special theory of relativity.
Your only response to that has been, from my understanding, to be "Nuh Uh!"

When you have something more substantive, let me know.

I have an idea, why don't you read a peer-reviewed article about this subject by Dr. Newton and tell the rest of us where he goes wrong? I am guessing since it is rather obvious you do not have a Science Degree that it will go way over your head, but you can still give it the old college try right?

Considering that you still believe in Young Earth creationism despite the fact that some youtube person used high-school level math and science to utterly and completely disprove a universe that must be all of very old, very large, and possesses a constant speed of light and the fact that a casual google search of the special theory of relativity allowed me to dispute any notion of a variable speed of light or any kind of preferrence in the speed of light in relation to its observer or multiple observers, I'd say that the science I need to dispute your theory is accessable to a small child, or at least a teenager who has any competance in math and science.

... or any idiot with a good search engine.

But hey, no one's stopping you from providing links or whatever, right? I'm sure you could give it a shot.

I didn't give your youtube video much attention because it was not peer-reviewed. I can't let you break your own rules of only peer-reviewed material! Fair is fair right? :-)

I didn't present that youtube video as a physicist with a radical new theory that all scientists everywhere are popularly leaning toward. I didn't present someone with a worldview inconsistent with all the evidience in his primary line of work.
What I presented was a video that clearly and effortlessly used basic math and science that's very well understood and developed by people whose work that formulated those things have been very well studied and confirmed by observation.
As such, no, I don't need this youtuber to be peer-reviewed because he didn't present anything that isnt' already well established and proven in the scientific community - in some cases for centuries.
Your astrophysicist-creationist is another matter, however, because his work, from what I know of it so far, already contradicts the math and science in those videos AND the special theory of relativity.
But that's fine with me if you want to ignore it because it's from youtube. I have no problem finding a few high school or basic-level college textbooks or online educational journals or websites to do basically the same thing. I only chose those videos because it presented less effort to search for all the science and math I needed to find were all in one place.

By the way, Dr. Newton graduated summa cum laude from his doctoral graduating class, so to act like he is some Pastor trying to do Physics is laughable. He knows what he is doing.

Good for him.

You can only do this when you measure a significant portion of the Earth. Obviously you must have missed that from my post. Measuring 100 years worth of a supposedly 4.5 billiion year history would be the same as trying to do calculations on the Earth's surface by only measuring 3.5 inches of it! Good luck with that lol.

Actually, I can measure the circumferance of the earth with a yardstick by simply using simple geometry on a particular set of days of the year depending on where I am on the earth.
As a 'science and math' teacher, you should know about things like this.
This is something I did even before high school.
So, hilariously, YES, lol, I can, in fact, measure the circumferance of the earth by measuring only 3.5 inches of it.

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Well at least you are honest enough to admit that you make up your mind on the validity of an argument BEFORE you read the argument lol. You have taken your first steps into a much larger World my friend. I love it when people finally admit that they are not objective in their reasoning and have a particular side they are pulling for. An objective person would read both the secular and creation sources with the same approach and come to their conclusions based on the material, I am glad that you admitted that you give the secular source a pass and read the creation one as a skeptic. This explains why you have arrived at such a fallacious position. This post really was insightful to me, thanks!

As to your relativity argument, I already refuted that approach in another thread you posted on, so I see no need to do it again on here.

I love how you act like all secular scientists agree on every issue and it's only the creation guys who are marching out of step. Astronomers disagree on all sorts of issues, such as the existance of white holes and what happens when matter enters a black hole. Dr. Newton is part of the American Astronomical Society so I consider him a reputable source (unlike youtube).

So without using any other measurement, only your little yard stick, can you tell us how you would know "where you were on the Earth"? So you could then do your calculations with your yard stick lol. Again, too insignificant of a measurement to conclude anything. Good try though, I do admire your effort on here, you give it more than most.

Oh almost forgot, I actually got my job with the Gov under the Obama Admin. So you are right, that was a baseless assertion you made! You really are not batting a very good game are you? lol.

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Well if the Earth is really 4.5 billion years old then you cannot "observe" that decay rates are constant because yoru observation is vastly too small and insignificant compared to the whole time period. Even if you could observe it for 100 years it would still only be 2.2X10^-11 percent of the total time. Even a curved line looks straight when you only observe an insignificant portion of it. So you're going to have to provide some other backing as to how you know those rates are constant.

Sit down and learn newbie.

Saying that a particle decays on average after 10^8 years also means that if you have a group 10^8 particles you will see one decay every year because even though the average particle decays ever 10^8 years, there is a probability that 1 in a set of 10^8 particles will decay in within 1 year, if you had 10^80 particles you would get 10 decays a year, and 10^800 100 decays, and this idea applies to all decay rates. That's not a hell of a lot of particles comparatively, you could quite easily measure decay rates to a really high degree of accuracy by seeing rate of decay in large sets of particles.

Such hubris for such a pointless post. That just proves what the decay rate is at the time of the observation. If I am observing the growth of a 17 year old, and I conclude that if he is really growing an inch a year I should be able to observe 1/365 of an inch a day. If I do observe this, that only means that RIGHT NOW he is growing at a rate that will yield one inch of growth in one year. Does that mean this rate will stay constant? Absolutely not. Does that mean this rate has always been constant? Absolutely not. Does this mean that I can tell how old the teenager is by how fast he is growing now? Absolutely not. I hoped you learned something.

[orogenicman]

Statler, you really should consider ending your argument because it is looking very foolish right now. First of all, his claim was that he could measure the circumference of the Earth with a yardstick (something anyone who knows how can do), not determine his longitude and latitude (which can also be done using simple tools). Secondly, any objective person would see creationism for what it truly is - an attempt to get the scientifically illiterate to believe that the Flintstones is a documentary. Scientists don't always agree. I would be concerned if they did. But there is no controversy to teach with regard to the age of the Earth, the theory of Evolution, or most other scientific theories. The world scientific community is in broad agreement on these issues.

As for your government science job, you still haven't told us what discipline it is in, and in what capacity you are working for us taxpaying citizens, or why we should believe you.

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Well you have emperical evidence to support a conclusion. You do not have emperical proof that your conclusion is one hundred percent accurate.

No scientific endeavor is 100% accurate. But I do find it ironic that you insist on 100% accuracy when it comes to scientific claims, and yet would insist that we believe that "god did it" based on no evidence at all.

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

Well at least you are honest enough to admit that you make up your mind on the validity of an argument BEFORE you read the argument lol.

I indeed dismiss creationist science as not science. I freely admit to creationist science as being an oxymoron.

As to your relativity argument, I already refuted that approach in another thread you posted on, so I see no need to do it again on here.

You indeed said it was untrue that relativity refuted my rebuttal, but you did not back up that claim with ... well... anything.

I love how you act like all secular scientists agree on every issue and it's only the creation guys who are marching out of step. Astronomers disagree on all sorts of issues, such as the existance of white holes and what happens when matter enters a black hole. Dr. Newton is part of the American Astronomical Society so I consider him a reputable source (unlike youtube).

Red Herring. I never made that presumption. We're talking about a specific set of issues - stop divering from the topic.

So without using any other measurement, only your little yard stick, can you tell us how you would know "where you were on the Earth"? So you could then do your calculations with your yard stick lol. Again, too insignificant of a measurement to conclude anything. Good try though, I do admire your effort on here, you give it more than most.

As you no doubt missed, I provided a link in that post pointing to how that actually works. I'll give you a hint: it involves geometry.
Although I suppose I made that link hard to find because I hid it inside of an underlined word that was a different color than the usual black.
Here it is: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fa...p018.shtml

Now that I made my link plainly obvioius I should also note that that website is a website for students and that particular idea (measuring the earth's circumferance) is a science fair project idea. Thus, proving once again that you can refute creationist crap with a basic high school education, "Government Scientist."

Such hubris for such a pointless post. That just proves what the decay rate is at the time of the observation. If I am observing the growth of a 17 year old, and I conclude that if he is really growing an inch a year I should be able to observe 1/365 of an inch a day. If I do observe this, that only means that RIGHT NOW he is growing at a rate that will yield one inch of growth in one year. Does that mean this rate will stay constant? Absolutely not. Does that mean this rate has always been constant? Absolutely not. Does this mean that I can tell how old the teenager is by how fast he is growing now? Absolutely not. I hoped you learned something.

Actually, there are clear signs in the human body that a 17 year old's growth won't stay constant. Also, there are plenty of examples of humans at different stages of growth in which it would be easy to conclude what a person's average rate of growth would be from birth to death.
So yes, you can, in fact, learn the growth rate of a human at all stages of life without necessarily needing to observe an individual human grow from birth to death.

[Statler Waldorf]

Premise: Decay rates indicate that the Earth is ancient.

It seems to me that what you are surmising is that decay rates were massively accelerated right up to the point where science started observing and detecting them thus giving the impression that a 10,000 year old Earth was really 4.5 billion years old.

If this where the case then wouldn't most of the Earth's (short) history be incredibly radioactive?

Not really what I am saying. Decay rates have changed, we know this because different isochronic methods of dating yield different dates for the same rock. If decay rates were always constant each isochron should yield the same age, they don't. The biggest factor that would skew radiometric dating would be the presence of daughter elements at the time of Creation. This is why radiometric dating cannot be used to "disprove" a young Earth, it assumes something that would not be true if the Earth was young. Try and date a person (using their height and weight) using the same assumptions radio-metric dating uses and I guarantee your conclusion will be way off. Thanks for being civil though, makes thing way more fun I think.

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Statler, you really should consider ending your argument because it is looking very foolish right now. First of all, his claim was that he could measure the circumference of the Earth with a yardstick (something anyone who knows how can do), not determine his longitude and latitude (which can also be done using simple tools). Secondly, any objective person would see creationism for what it truly is - an attempt to get the scientifically illiterate to believe that the Flintstones is a documentary. Scientists don't always agree. I would be concerned if they did. But there is no controversy to teach with regard to the age of the Earth, the theory of Evolution, or most other scientific theories. The world scientific community is in broad agreement on these issues.

As for your government science job, you still haven't told us what discipline it is in, and in what capacity you are working for us taxpaying citizens, or why we should believe you.

---

Well you have emperical evidence to support a conclusion. You do not have emperical proof that your conclusion is one hundred percent accurate.

No scientific endeavor is 100% accurate. But I do find it ironic that you insist on 100% accuracy when it comes to scientific claims, and yet would insist that we believe that "god did it" based on no evidence at all.

Haha, if my argument is foolish then I am sure you will be glad to enlighten us as to how you can deterimine the circumfrence of the Earth by only using a yard stick. Remember, only a yard stick.

I don't require 100 percent, just when someone mis-uses the word "proof" to mean something that is not 100 percent I will call them on it every time.

Nobody thinks the Flintstones is a documentary, that's like saying people who believe in life existing on other planets (i.e. Dawkins) think E.T. is a documentary. Funny how you guys only seem to be able to make your case by using strawman arguments. That is almost always the sign of a shaky position.

[orogenicman]

Not really what I am saying. Decay rates have changed, we know this because different isochronic methods of dating yield different dates for the same rock. If decay rates were always constant each isochron should yield the same age, they don't. The biggest factor that would skew radiometric dating would be the presence of daughter elements at the time of Creation. This is why radiometric dating cannot be used to "disprove" a young Earth, it assumes something that would not be true if the Earth was young. Try and date a person (using their height and weight) using the same assumptions radio-metric dating uses and I guarantee your conclusion will be way off. Thanks for being civil though, makes thing way more fun I think.

No, decay rates have not changed. There is no evidence whatsoever that they have. Thousands of laboratories the world over use radioactive dating of material samples, and have done so for decades with huge success. If you have proof that they are wasting their time and money, you should publish your peer reviewed paper pronto, so these labs won't wate their money on bogus science. Good luck with that.

[theVOID]

Not really what I am saying. Decay rates have changed, we know this because different isochronic methods of dating yield different dates for the same rock.

Archilies heel fallacy, you claim knowledge of examples that are contrary to the expected outcome but provide no examples. What have you got in your bag of tricks here, a silly example about a snail dating to 25,000 years or other examples of creationist mucking of the actual results?

Decay rates have not changed, and the vast majority of experiments have confirmed this. Can you explain why the vast majority of results should be ignored?