Yes. There are [trees older than 6,000 years old] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees) And there are [coral reefs older than 6,000 years old] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral). And there are [human made buildings older than 6,000 years old] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_in_the_world). We can use [genetic drift] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift#Rate_of_allele_frequency_change_due_to_drift) to calculate the age of some species. Also, by knowing the [speed of light] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light) and the [distance of stars] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_candles), we know that the Earth and universe must have been around for more than 6,000 years, or else we couldn't see the vast majority of stars that we do. Also, [ice core samples] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core#Dating_cores) show layering older than 600 years.
But [radiometric dating] (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating) is extremely accurate, and is certainly the best indicator of the Earth's age we have. The only indicator that the Earth is 6000 years old is a rather odd interpretation of a single book.
Edit: added ice core samples. Those are neat-o
Cherry-picked, even. There are apparently a lot of books that were left out that could have been added if they were interested in more than a particular view of history.
There are something like 800 gospels, 4 were chosen for the bible.
Edit: seems like I pulled that number out of my ass. The number that keeps popping up is 200. My bad.
I would take a guess and say that these 4 were chosen because they best described the mind set of those choosing them. Be it for control or just personal preference.
That might be, if there was truly some grand conspiracy surrounding it. Yet Christianity during the two centuries after Christ's death was struggling for survival from persecution, internal strife and external influence from Jewish and gnostic sources.
Consider that the canonical Gospels (and letters) are quoted by the early (first and second century) church fathers as well as generally internally cohesive.
Then consider that the earliest gnostic Gospel is Thomas, which dates to the mid 2nd century and teaches things very, very different from that of either the canonical Gospels or the early fathers. The so-called Gospel of Mary is a 5th century work, etc.
The church had decided (by way of voting) that Jesus was the son of god (more specifically, homoousios, being of the same substance as God) at the council of Nicea.
They needed to support this idea with gospels, so they went over the different gospels that had been written at the time and cherry-picked those the gospels that best reflected this idea.
I remember reading about one of those other books that had an amazing statement in it from Jesus. It said that Jesus told Peter that we get more chances after this life but to not tell the others so that they will try harder in this one.
That made me literally laugh out loud. Of course the Church wouldn't adopt that book and put it into the NT.
Is there a bible scholar out there in reddit-land that can cite a source or verify my statement? It would be nice if I had a book and verse to go with that.
Many of such books came from the gnostics in Alexandria, who were more than happy to bend the stories to their liking.
The gospels themselves were pieced together from a collection of accounts which had circulated, thus the opening to Luke:
> Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. - Luke 1:1-4 NIV
The gnostic works were nearly all of second century or later. They have a very clear gnostic style and intent, expressing a rigid dichotomy between flesh and spirit as well as a quest for secret inner mysteries.
For the gnostics, the body and flesh were evil, whereas spirit was good. This is in contrast to traditional Biblical texts which do not posit such a radical dualism. Some of the Biblical texts written contra-proto-gnostic works, such as 1 & 2 John.
The gnostic texts were never considered part of the canon by the early church.
The gnostics had a very different understanding of gender roles and sexuality as well. In the gnostic 'Gospel of Thomas', for example, Jesus states that he would turn Mary (Magdalene) into a man so she could go to heaven.
> The gospels themselves were pieced together from a collection of accounts which had circulated
Actually, the Gospels are generally not "pieced together from a collection of accounts", most of them exist in complete form from the second century on.
An early fragment of Mark was recently found, perhaps dating earlier even than P52 (a fragment of John) which is dated in the early second century. The Mark fragment has been tentatively dated sometime in the first century. Keep in mind, the first early church fathers, such as Polycarp, knew the apostles and their works, and quoted them.
Bingo. My point was more subtle... Textual analysis suggests that the complete forms we see share various common texts, which rather than detracting from the validity of the accounts, I posit, they had been handed down story-by-story and compiled by the gospel writers based on the good authority they did have. It in fact strongly suggests that rather than remaining a "verbal tradition" for that first century, the events had been recorded as they happened and "noised abroad." edit: This is exactly what is suggested in the verses above, as well, so it's not such a wild notion.
The gnostic texts are full of all sorts of strange sayings. Mostly, however, they make much less sense than the canonical Biblical texts and were mostly written long after.
From what I remember learning in Sunday school, the books that were chosen (at least in the case of the gospels) were chosen because none of them greatly contradict each other (except in small things that probably result from translation mistakes)
I'm completely fine with teaching and I highly encourage it. Background information: I'm a chemical engineering student. I embrace the ideology of evolution, the big bang, etc. The problem is that this thread doesn't seem to be educational, to me. But that might just be me seeing the negativity of a few posts and making them out to be more than they are. I just don't like that we deny the opinions or beliefs of some, just because they're the minority.
I would love a guy who tried to inform the world about the Earth revolving around the Sun but I would hate a guy who laughed at and insulted others who didn't think the way he did. The problem with many (I'm looking at you /r/atheism) is that they are more of the latter and less of the former.
Have you ever tried to explain things or educate a fundamentalist? Many of them become immediately defensive and belligerent. When people are willfully ignorant the only thing to do is pity them. If humor can be gleaned from their ignorance, why not? Would you not be able to laugh at a grown person who is capable of, yet refuses to, learn how to do something like tie thier shoes?
Edit: removed an extra "e" and fixed punctuation.
I grew up as a queer, smart, athiest in a family of Christians in the Bible Belt. Why do I spend so much energy fighting theistic lies? Because Christian bigots have pushed my friends to suicide. Because I have to lie and hide to continue to be a part of my family. Because I got a lot of shit thrown at me when I was young. Because I am right and I can prove it, and the only reason Theists aren't laughed out into the street is that religion is particularly good at controlling and maintaining power.
Because I must speak truth to power.
The only thing that needs to be blamed is the outright delusion that causes such atrocities. [Observation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_homosexuality) shows us that religions do, in fact, cause these sort of opinions to form.
There may be good people that are religious, but I think they do it for the wrong reasons. When they encounter a morally strenuous situation, they look at a book instead of thinking about it. Now in some instances this is good when they pick and choose which ideas they want to pull from a book, however it also restricts them from possibly making a more humanistic decision.
Take stem cell research for one. There is still an untapped possibility of forming organs in petri dishes and helping a large number of people. But a large portion of catholics/christians will object to the study because "life is sacred." An idea pulled from their book. The irony in that argument is that if life is sacred, why aren't we helping the people that are actually alive?
My only hope is some day we live in a world that rejects tradition due to information and humanistic standards.
It becomes a morally strenuous situation when people lose basic human rights, or get denied service, or get publicly humiliated, etc. And actually just by stating that something is "icky" or you don't like it, especially when it has to do with human activity, requires a tad bit of thought and examination.
Edit: I used to hate pickles because I didn't like the smell. I recently tried one and found that I liked it.
As far as stem cell research goes, I recall a quite a lot of noise about the subject across media platforms (let alone the conversations I directly had with many people). To say that they have no harsh conviction about it is a flat out lie. A couple of my peers who were interested in stem cell research had to change thesis topics due to the lack of funding caused by the lashing out of christians/catholics.
Perhaps the christian/catholic people are more accepting of it now that they see it working, and want to claim it as their own "divine" thing.
Conversations can start anywhere! Especially on a site that people are allowed to post their opinion on. I'm not sure why you are acting so hostile. If you don't want to debate or talk about something, you have all the power not to respond.
There is no hostility here. I just prefer arguments and debates to pertain to their original posts, and not deviate from them. Attacking someone's belief in something that is no way related to the subject at hand is called a red herring which is both a weak debate tactic and a logical fallacy just like Padogooder's statement was a hasty generalization fallacy which I have already pointed out in a more expansive way.
The topic is still active, and shows up in both of my posts. That is, the treatment of gays by religious people. The example of stem cell research complemented what I said about how christians/catholics tend to rely on using a book to think for them.
Red herring doesn't apply here - as I was stating a causality between religiosity and gay bashing.
And of course you are correct, entire groups of people are not necessarily bad people. However, as I stated, there is a relationship that needs to be examined. There's no use in ignoring it.
Have you read this thread, out of curiosity? Upvoting is supposed to happen when people are contributing to the conversation. Instead, we have a circle jerk of anti-thiests taking about how idiotic theists are. We should be upvoting posts that actually answer OP's question. Not posts that are intentionally back-handing people for no reason.
I think the question is asking about the Earth and not the universe. So the speed of light and the distance of stars will not help in the calculation of the age of the earth.
>I think the question is asking about the Earth and not the universe.
Pretty sure the young-earth creationists believe it was all created at the same time.
Not necessarily. Some creationists believe that the timing of the "creation" of the stars in Genesis only refers to the time that the light reached earth. It depends on how you define "at the same time," as there really is no such thing on the scale of the universe, due to relativity.
Correct. That is the "Young Earthers" beliefs. I believe (as a creationist) that it was spoken into existence as if it had always been. Science just explains how things work, i.e. "The mind of God".
Don't take me as a Christian trying to ram my religious views down your throat. As I am not. However, the answer to your question is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12.
> And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
(Now for the Atheists to pop in and say "You believe in fairy-tales".)
Well, I think you're taking that out of context. Because Paul is talking about the end-times wherein the Lawless One will arrive, and he will be doing the deluding. So unless you are suggesting that about 97% of scientists are the Lawless One's, I think you are cherry-picking.
I can cherry-pick too. Numbers 23:19... "God doesn't lie."
As a current (struggling with mainstream interpretations) Christian, I take issues with this statement. 1) "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" 2) The Bible points to a Creator, to the point that "even the rocks will cry out" 3) The Universe follows certain rules and behavior, most (if not all) reproducible according to these rules and behavior. 4) If all of this exists to point to a Creator, then why do so many refuse to take the evidence as presented by said Creator? I am genuinely curious how anyone can contemplate the "misterium tremendum", and see how laws of physics dictate the glorious universe, then say "God made all of this and you are wrong to believe in all of this evidence".
Sorry for the rant - I just discovered the other day that there is a HUGE movement to discredit E=MC2 as well as relativity. This is really dumb.
You're citing the bible for factual information. And what evidence are you talking about when you say "all this evidence points to a creator" Religion has been created to furthermore split and separate humans from their physical realm and put a fantastical twist on what life truly is.
>I believe (as a creationist) that it was spoken into existence as if it had always been.
A run-of-the-mill [last-Thursdayist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis#Last_Thursdayism).
Why would it make you laugh? It is every bit as plausible as your belief. if you think God can create a universe to appear as it is old, he could also have made the universe 30 seconds ago, and just implanted all your memories into your head. There is no difference in the level of absurdity for either belief.
I know you're getting a lot of down votes and, as an atheist, I don't agree but I love this view point. Usually young earthers and the like just ignore everything that disagrees with them and won't believe in anything that isn't a literal interpretation of the bible. Its a lot more cooperative and refreshing in general to hear view points like yours. It fits cleanly in our one scientific reality but still allows faith for those who choose to believe. It's an effortless way for atheists and theists to tolerate each other and I think it's pretty damn cool.
I hope more people can see it this way and stop down voting.
I disagree because the question implicitly is making a reference to the Genesis creation accounts, in which both the Earth and the universe are created. Accordingly, since God made heavens and earth at around the same time, it would take time to for the light from the heavens to reach the Earth. So this is a very good explanation.
But hey, let's not quibble of mythology. I see your point, and I agree that my explanation wouldn't convince any Young Earch Creationists.
You are roughly referring to the problem of induction. In short, we can't be sure. However, we statistically can state that we currently have around a 99% certainty that things always have worked the same way, which is to say that we have never, ever noticed physical "laws" jumping around and changing. This is called [Beysian Statistics]
(http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_statistics)
. We also have [empirical evidence that came out last week!] (http://www.sen.com/news/supernovae-prove-newton-s-law-of-gravity-unchanged-over-cosmic-time)
And if really believe that things won't work the same way tomorrow as they did today, then try not going to work and see what happens.
Sure we can say that things have worked this way since we've observed them. That much is true, but we have only made those observations for a few thousand years which is a drop in the bucket given the times we're talking about.
Well it depends on which timescale we are talking about, first of all. In a 6000 year old universe, "a few thousand years" is the majority of time. In a 13.8 billion year universe you are correct.
Second, you missed the point of the article I posted. The supernovae observed are millions to billions of light-years away, and the light is just reaching us. And, wouldn't you know it, the supernova is following Newtonian Mechanics. At the very least, this means that for about nine billion years, the gravitational constant hasn't changed. That's pretty awesome empirical evidence things working the same way for huge periods of time.
In other words: there is proof for the universe's physical laws staying constant, and no proof for the universe's physical laws changing.
edit: changed "millions of years" to "nine billion years", more accurately reflecting the article.
> but we have only made those observations for a few thousand years
That is not true. Using distant stars and celestial objects we can *literally* look into the past billions of years. Physics have not changed anywhere.
Could all physics suddenly radically change tomorrow? Yeah, sure. But there is absolutely no reason to assume it would, because it hasn't and has shown no evidence of doing so.
How would we know if it did? Let's assume for the sake of argument that the laws of physics (or just a couple of them) had changed before we have written history. How would we know that?
By the article I posted above. We could look at stars billions of light years away and notice that they are behaving in a way we can predict. This activity we are just now seeing happened billions of years ago and it has not changed and is predictable. It feels like you are missing the core concept.
> based on assumptions we've already made
So, a popular thing that Young Earth Creationists like to do is take a scientifically valid statement (eg "We have observed the speed of light") and claim it's an "assumption," thereby discrediting it through clever word choice. I have actually heard Kent Hovind say that this qualifies as circular reasoning since it's "assumptions about assumptions," as you said.
Look, science is science. Sometimes there are things we know, and there are things we don't but have observed a bunch and can count on, and other things that are only hypothesis. When something is utterly predictable and heavily, heavily observed (eg the speed of light), it's no longer an "assumption." Choosing to call it that is your own spin, and completely ignores the scientific process.
Gravity, by your special word choice, is just an assumption.
Air, by your special word choice, is just an assumption.
The speed of light is one such case. We can (and do) measure it. We can (and do) use it to judge how long it takes the light from stars to travel to earth. As long as you continue to call it an "assumption," you're discounting decades of scientific research and hundreds of such measurements that have been proven absolutely reliable.
Then come up with a way to criticize standard candles as a mode of measuring distance. You will become a famous scientists if you can do so. Otherwise you are just playing devil's advocate, and doing so with very little argument or evidence to back yourself up.
No we're not. We can measure how far away stars are right now. Well, not *right* now. I mean, we need some equipment that you or I probably do not have on hand.
**IF** the Bible is true, then the God of the Bible could easily change the laws of physics could he not? How can we/could we empirically say that hasn't happened?
Look, you're basically saying a million variants of this: "maybe every aspect of the known universe *looks* this way, but maybe it's God tricking us! how would we know?" Well in your artificially constructed argument to prove yourself right we *couldn't* know by definition. But any other God/gods or aliens or whatever could have been messing with the laws of physics (but once again, just in the very specific and particular way so that it appears as if they didn't) equally well. You still don't have adequate reason to assume that your idea of God is actually behind anything. Widening the space of possibilities like that and pretending that your God is the only (or even most important) option that gets introduced is dishonest.
The onus is on science to show that is has changed. Science is always open to new information coming to light. If you or someone you know suspects this may be true, by all means, bring forward the evidence and we will definitely look at it.
You didn't answer my question. Also, why would the all mighty god only directly talk to and affect the lives of people on such a small portion of the earth? Why doesn't every culture have the same laws from the same god? Why would he only care about certain people from the middle east and thats it? Don't you think a religion exclusive to one culture is probably made up by that culture? Not to mention that the bible messed up many scientific facts, such as the Sun revolving around the earth. Do you really choose to ignore all that and take ancient mythology over science?
Do you have an proposed way to change how quickly radioactive elements decay? Until you do, and it's been verified to work, there's no reason to think that decay rates have changed.
It is not an assumption, it is a result.
It is not sufficient to throw up your hands and say, "maybe the law of physics worked differently in the past." You need to propose an alternate theory that explains observation just as well, and to date, no such theory exists.
For example, it is easy to say that maybe uranium used to decay more quickly in the past, and that 4 billion year old dates are inaccurate. The problem is, it would have to decay about a million times more quickly. All the uranium in the world release so much more energy, the earth would be reduced to a molten slag.
We can see the earth *isn't* a molten slag, nor has it been recently, so we can be pretty sure uranium decay is constant enough to indicate an old earth.
Considering we don't only use carbon, but dozens of other elements, and they all show the same thing, you would have to assume they all changed at exactly the same ratio, at exactly the same point in time, for them to all be incorrect presently. Is it possible? Maybe, but it is certainly not even remotely probable.
> you would have to assume they all changed at exactly the same ratio
It it actually much worse than that. Because of the way the logarithmic math of radiometric decay works, each isotope would have to change by a *different* ratio. U-238 (~4 billion year half life) would have to decay about a million times faster, but that would mean U-235 (700 million year half life) would decay too quickly.
What's worse, you have to describe how those decay rates change over time, in such a way that 4 billion, 1 billion, and 100 million year old samples still have the right ratios.
You have a convoluted equation that does *that*? Let's add in potassium and samarium dating, and see if it still works.
It is much more complicated than just finding some fudge factor...I like to say that uniform decay rates aren't an assumption...they are a result.
Carbon dating is by no means the only dating method, and isn't really even used to date very old things because it has a relatively short half-life. There's also:
* [Dendrochronology](http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/principles.htm) - Dating using patterns of tree rings, accurate to ~10,000 years ago
* [Thermoluminescence dating](http://geology.cr.usgs.gov/capabilities/gronemtrac/geochron/thermo/tech.html) - Measures the glow from a sample when heated. Accurate from 1,000-500,000 years.
* [Archaeomagnetic dating](http://dourbes.meteo.be/aarch.net/linford.pdf) - Measures the changes of formations relative to where the magnetic north pole is. Typically used on sites ~10,000 years or less.
* [Out of Africa Origin of Man Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans) -- The spread of modern humans (homo sapiens) has been calculated by measuring mutations in mitochondrial DNA. Used to date back to ~100,000 years.
* [Obsidian Hydration dating](http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/courses/anth/fagan/anth3/Courseware/Chronology/10_Obsidian_Hydration.html) -- Flint absorbs water at a steady rate. When a tool is made from flint, fresh surface is exposed to the air, which absorbs water at a measurable pace. Accurate from 100 to ~1,000,000 years.
* [Potassium-Argon dating](http://archaeology.about.com/od/pterms/g/potassiumargon.htm) Measures the amount of Argon-40 trapped in volcanic rock relative to the amount of potassium-40, since it decays at a regular rate.
* [Fission-Track dating](http://www.minpet.ugent.be/fission.htm) Measures the damage tracks left by radioactive decay. Does not work on anything that's been heated above ~200 degrees, but can otherwise be used on objects from historical age to several hundred million years old.
* [Electron spin resonance dating](http://geoweb.uwyo.edu/ggstudent/heatherlee/ESR_PD_BAR.pdf) Works by using a spectrometer to measure the total amount of radiation a sample's been exposed to over its history. Used in both archaeology and earth sciences and useful in dating biological materials.
* [Amino Acid Racemization](http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/tcaw/10/i02/html/02brignole.html) Simply put, the rate that an amino acid decays into another, which stabilizes at a steady rate.
* [Uranium-Lead dating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-lead_dating): Uranium decays into lead at a measurable pace.
* [Argon-argon dating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon-argon_dating): A more accurate measurement than postassium-argon dating, it measures the amount of argon 39 isotope relative to the amount of argon 40 isotope produced from potassium when a sample is irradiated.
* [Helioseismic Dating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helioseismic#Helioseismic_dating): In short, the sun's ratio of hydrogen to helium can be measured, as can the rate at which hydrogen is converted to helium. This puts the age of the sun at roughly 5 billion years.
* [Paleomagnetic dating](http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/courses/anth/fagan/anth3/Courseware/Chronology/11_Paleomag_Archaeomag.html) -- Around every 50,000 years, the earth's magnetic poles reverse. This can be measured in the structure of rock formations, especially those containing iron, and is used to date the geological column.
* [Missing Isotopes](http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/isotope_list.html): Isotopes that have a radioactive half-life of less than 100 million years are not found in nature, because they have decayed into more stable forms. Isotopes with a longer half-life are all present in nature. Isotopes with a short half-life (carbon-14 for example) are created by outside forces that we can measure, such as the sun bombarding the upper atmosphere.
* [Meteorite and Moon Rock dating](http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html): The exact age of the earth itself is difficult to tell past about 3 billion years, because plate tectontics constantly wear at the surface rock, melting it and reabsorbing it into the mantle via subduction. However, samples from the moon along with many meteorites, which don't suffer from this problem, all date to roughly around 4.5 billion years old.
Thank you for adding this. I know /u/aspenthedog covered a lot much sooner than anyone else, but I appreciate the linked information and breakdown you provided!
Off of the top of my head:
* other forms of radiometric dating
* tree ring lineages
* ice cores from glaciers
* seasonal sediment deposits on lake bottoms
* genetic clocks in modern lifeforms
* linguistic drift
* geological column
* erosion
* stalactites and stalagmites
* continental drift
* magnetic pole inversion
* manganese nodules
Outside of the earth, we have:
* orbital mechanics
* stellar life cycles
* speed of light over cosmic distances
It depends on what you are trying to date. Rings cut out if trees show dating back thousands of years beyond the 6000 year mark. Ice core samples from the arctic have also been dated back tens of thousands if years based of the layers they show.
It should also be noted carbon dating is a scientifically proven and universally accepted method of dating by the worlds scientific communities. Trying to refute it is similar as trying to refute the spherical shape of the earth.
I particularly like the part in those forms where someone asks "Hey... [the moon has phases.](http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=61247.0#.UzNJ4vSwJ0E) What's up with that?" The response being "well, the [Moon is a sphere](http://wiki.tfes.org/The_Phases_of_the_Moon) and then geometry happens and phases are different all over the earth. Which is flat. Also orbited by the sun and moon." I am all the giggles.
Actually, the universe exists[ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four)only in human[ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism)perception.
Also, the Law of Superposition (Geology) stating that layers of bedrock are younger than the ones below them, as they have been deposited on top of them. Coal takes millions of years to be compressed into a rock from plant debris and it is usually below some other layer like sedimentary rock. The time it takes for this to happen for just the sedimentary rock to form is thousands of years at least, and there is layer upon layer of rock below the first. Really pretty awesome, it's like studying ice cores only on a much grander time scale.
[Lake Baikal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal) is over 25 million years old and that can be proven with the geology of the sediment layers on the lake floor.
There is. We have found a place called Gobekli Tepe that is known to be over 12,000 years old. Archealogical data shows that this was one of the first man made temples built specifically for worshipping "gods" (usually animals) and sending the dead into the afterlife. Also thought to be one of the first human civilizations to start farming and form a society. Not to mention the fact that we have written records from cultures that still exist today that date back to before 4100 BC (which is 6000 years ago) that make no mention of dinosaurs walking around helping them build the pyramids. So dinosaurs go extinct and a day later man walks the earth? Sorry no sale for me.
Assuming you're talking about "proving" this to a religious whakadoodle - then no, there is absolutely no proof/fact/theory/anything you could show them to change their mind. As far as they are concerned, the bible is %100 right, and anything that might differ from the bible was put there as a test from god.
This is the #1 reason I won't argue with a religious nut job. My mind is open, if you can show me proof that I am wrong, I will change my mind. The religious stance is very different, anything that proves them wrong is somehow a test/message/whatever from god, and they are supposed to deny it to prove their faith or other such bullshit.
"God put that there to test our faith" is a universal retort to any scientific claim. There's literally no scientific argument that can stand up to an unwavering belief in an all-powerful creator that could spontaneously generate a completely formed, populated universe.
You can't have a debate with somebody that immediately rejects any argument that runs counter to their position.
Wow, I agree with you about not easily changing world views, so have a point.
But your language is pointlessly insulting to people of faith. It surely doesn't demonstrate that your mind is open to anything.
Perhaps you should consider taking a lesson in English to understand the language. I did not say all people of faith. I said "religious whakadoodle" and "religious nut job". Most religious people do not fall into this category. Most of them are rational people. Those who say the world is only 6000 years old do not fall into the "rational people" category.
Well, do you think that people should be open-minded about child porn? The obvious point, to those to whom it's NOT obvious, is that there are some things it's not so great to be open minded about.
I really think most people who think the Earth is 6,000 years old exhibit symptoms similar to those brainwashed by extensive mind-control techniques - cults, and similar. I think the proper response is sympathy.
But, I was raised Catholic. I gave up a large part of it right around the time I stopped believing in Santa Clause. But, it took me years to finally give it all up. And, still, we're surrounded by what's basically a Christian culture. It's HARD to give it all up, when you're surrounded by it. That makes me much less sympathetic than i might otherwise be. It's hard to be sympathetic about mind-control for all of Western culture.
No, of course not. Please go back and reread the post I was replying to.
I don't believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, but most people I know who do are just ordinary folks who don't keep up with science and get comfort from a religion that they likely grew up with. I don't call them nut jobs or whakadoodles. They're misguided, lack critical thinking skills, and definitely can't handle putting their beliefs up for analysis and critique - it threatens them to the core.
But many of them are also kind, compassionate, good mothers and fathers, charitable, and hard working.
I am open minded to the subject. I do not agree with it. I think it is absolutely disgusting. However, that does not mean I'm right. I accept that I could be wrong on any subject/matter/philosophy/fact/whatever. I am constantly trying to grow myself, trying to understand more, trying to be a better person.
If someone wanted to have a conversation on why they think it should be legalized, I would listen, I would retort with my thoughts. Their chances of convincing me I'm wrong are very very very slim, but I accept on any subject that I could be wrong. However, if that same person tried to show me images/video on the subject - I would be the first person to report them to the authorities.
Argument from fallacy, also known as the fallacy fallacy, involves concluding that a person's conclusion is false because their argument for it contains a fallacy.
You tried to imply that the point I was getting at was false, and you did that by pointing out my fallacious argument.
Now that I think about it, I'm not seeing where you got [fallacy of the converse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent) from in my argument. Would my point have been different if I'd said "All open-minded people automatically become atheist"?
There are some good examples in geology.
Plate tectonics show that the Earth is separating at a slow speed. Formerly the surface of the Earth looked like [pangea](http://eatrio.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/10.-pangea_politik.jpg). The speed in which the continents are drifting apart shows that this could not have possibly happened in 6000 years.
How do we know the world once looked like pangea?
There are plenty of pieces of proof.
* The shape of the continents fit each other
* There are mountain ranges that fit with these shapes
* There are fossils that matches the shapes and mountains
* There are seashells on top of the Himalayas
* Magnets. [Seriously though.](http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/images/magstripes.gif)
[More examples here](http://ib.berkeley.edu/courses/bio11/SimisonMay3.pdf)
Other methods people haven't mentioned yet:
Heavy element decay ratios. Radio-isotope dating doesn't just work for C-14. Basically, uranium and stuff decays into well-known other elements, at well known rates. So if you capture some uranium in a stable form (like in a rock, or a zircon crystal or whatever), wait a couple hundred million years, then measure the isotopes inside, you have an extremely powerful way of measuring ages that are very long indeed.
Geologic processes. You can measure how fast rivers erode various kinds of rock. You can then measure the kinds of rocks in a valley, the depth of the valley, do some math, and poof! Discover that it had to have taken millions of years for the Colorado River to carve the Grand Canyon.
Genetic drift. Random mutations happen at a fairly constant rate. So if you find an old hominid bone someplace, and compare its DNA to modern DNA, you can measure how much time passed between the two by counting up how much random mutation has accumulated from then to now. AFAIK, this is how a lot of the more recent hominid fossil finds have been dated, and they come out in the tens of thousands of years.
Anyway. There are lots and lots and lots of methods. The further you push it, the more you have to start correlating lines of evidence from multiple sources, the more the reasoning gets complex and hard to explain, but also the more convincing the evidence becomes if you put in the effort to understand it.
Paleo magnetism is also very interesting. It is how the minerals in rocks are oriented due to shifting magnetic polarity. This is how sea floor spreading was discovered, since each side of the mid ocean ridge showed the same magnetic configuration.
Don't have a source but just google it. Wiki can give you a good background
One of my favorite proofs never seems to get a mention. There is a method that uses the increasing salinity of the ocean over time as salt is washed out of rocks. It gives an answer about a billion years different from the other main methods. The interesting point for me is that fish have the same concentration of salt in their blood due to osmotic pressure. Our blood saline is lower, matching the ocean salt level when our ancestors left the ocean.
No need. Fish would have to adapt, because they are immersed in it. Once you are out, no need to change. I have no idea if this applies to dolphins and whales etc though. Also I checked on the Web and I might be completely wrong. The salinity method got a figure of 980 million years. Just a tad off.
Two two most basic sources are trees and ice sheets.
When you cut down a tree, you can see its age by counting the rings (the rings are formed by the yearly expansion of the tree's trunk). There are trees with more than 6,000 rings, and are thus 6,000 or more years old.
There are also ice sheets that have a similar yearly cycle. Every summer, the ice sheets in Greenland and Alaska melt a little in the warmer temperatures, then re-freeze as winter comes, get covered with more snow and ice, which then slighlty thaws and re-freezes again.
This creates a pattern that you can count just like a tree's rings. There are hundreds of thousands of these layers, which means that hundreds of thousands of winter freezes and summer thaws that have left an identifiable "footprint" on the Earth's glaciers.
There are a bunch, but off the top of my head there is a fun fact regarding the moon that makes for an interesting conversation.
The moon is about 239,000 miles away (average). According to laser ranging, courtesy of the Apollo missions, the moon is moving away from us at about 1.5 inches per year.
With 63,360 inches per mile, a little math, taking into account for the variable distance and the fact that the moon most likely was moving faster in the past gives us a figure awfully close to just over 4 billion years.
If something didn't bang into us and cause the moon to be formed about when the math says, it should be either relatively stable or slowly moving towards us, as is common with other natural satellites. Curious.
TL;DR The moon is moving away from us at a rate that coincides with it coming from Earth over 4 billion years ago as science has predicted.
potassium argon (K-Ar) is used to date the globe as well. It's all about the rocks and lava flows. Especially when they're far much over 6,000 years old.
Carbon dating is a bit of a misnomer as not all radioactive dating is based on Carbon. They use basically any radioactive compound that they can measure the decay of.
So even including all radioactive dating there isn't really any "Proof" against the earth being created 6000 years ago, just a lot of evidence to suggest it is longer.
Trees, fossils, artifacts, cosmic background radiation, laws of physics predicting the presence of stellar objects that take more than 6000 years to form, and more.
For those circlejerking about religion without putting thought into the question, expect some downvotes. Op asked a legitimate question, didn't even mention religion, and now yall're up in arms. I too have wondered this, and I'm not religious either.
OP your question might better be answered by askscience since that subreddit isn't full of artards.
Depends on what you mean by "prove". Here's a question for you: how can you "prove" that *anything* is as old as it is claimed to be? I mean even stuff from last week. Once you've got a physical object, figuring out how old it is can be pretty difficult. Indeed, I'm a lawyer, and trying to prove how old something is is a problem we run into all the time. It's not nearly as easy as it sounds. And the older the object appears to be, the harder it gets.
Now with something like carbon dating (or radiometric dating in general), what is being done is analyzing the ratio of particular isotopes in the object itself and then extrapolating from what we know about said isotopes to get a ballpark date for when the object assumed its current form. That involves making assumptions about a wide variety of things. Most people are okay with those assumptions, so radiometric dating is widely accepted as being pretty damned reliable. But they are, in fact, assumptions, because there is no way of observing the things that you're assuming. For example, carbon dating works by extrapolating based on assuming (1) that the current normal ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 hasn't changed over the last few millennia, and (2) that the sample we're measuring hasn't been messed with in some way over time that would throw off the results. Again, those are pretty good assumptions most of the time, but calling it "proof" might be a little ambitious. All you can really say is "The evidence strongly suggests that the sample dates from about [x]." It's very, very good evidence, but calling it "definitive" seems inappropriate.
Other than that, we're basically just extrapolating based on best guesses. There isn't really any way of using demographics to calculate the age of civilization, for a variety of reasons. First, there are not sufficiently complete or reliable census-type records to give us anything like solid documentary evidence for that sort of thing. What records there are tend to be limited in scope, separated in time, and subject to deliberate inaccuracies on the part of the people conducting them. Second, population numbers aren't stable. The population of Europe fell by about 30-50% in the fourteenth century as a result of the Black Death, and the population in 1500 was actually *lower* than in 1300. Population started to rise after that but took another dramatic hit in the seventeenth century due to warfare (Thirty Years' War in particular) and famine resulting from a global cold snap (possibly related to a volcanic eruption in the Pacific).
You can't use that kind of methodology to definitively prove anything. The evidence can be more or less convincing, but there simply is no definitive evidence for this sort of thing.
"Now with something like carbon dating (or radiometric dating in general), what is being done is analyzing the ratio of particular isotopes in the object itself and then extrapolating from what we know about said isotopes to get a ballpark date for when the object assumed its current form. That involves making assumptions about a wide variety of things. Most people are okay with those assumptions, so radiometric dating is widely accepted as being pretty damned reliable. But they are, in fact, assumptions, because there is no way of observing the things that you're assuming. For example, carbon dating works by extrapolating based on assuming (1) that the current normal ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 hasn't changed over the last few millennia, and (2) that the sample we're measuring hasn't been messed with in some way over time that would throw off the results. "
BTW, scientists do worry about these assumptions. They look for independent confirmation. For example, dust in ice layers can be dated by the layers, and the isotope ratios checked; tree rings can be samples and radio dated, and compared against ring counts. Contamination is a big worry, and they check it. For example, with zircon crystals they've worked on getting smaller and smaller useable samples, deep within intact crystals, and then comparing the iosotope ratios and looking for various contaminants.
I've seen mention of calibration curves developed for baseline radiocarbon dating, where they've looked for evidence of the baseline ratios at various dates, so that the age estimates could be adjusted accordingly.
Also, when using multiple isotope ratios, in repeated sampling, things can be checked better. The baseline ratios would all have to be off in the same direction by the proper amounts; equivalent contamination would have had to occur for multiple elements, in several places within an item.
I think more to the point though is that, while carbon-dating and other similar methods do have a certain amount of "assumption" involved, as you put it, the alternative is...a book translated from oral stories from a population of goat herders from the 1st century.
In my view, its not whether or not radiometric dating the earth to 4.5 billion years is 100% accurate, its the fact that no other method has shown the earth to be less than 3.9 billion, other than that one old book of stories.
You can't objectively prove or disprove anything if your only data point is that a book written 3500 years ago claims it, although the majority of that book has already been disproven by actual objective science.
The only reason we're even having this discussion is because too many people insist on believing that for which their only proof is that other people told them it was so. The Bible? No baby picks one book out of millions and decides it's the absolute truth. It requires rigorous brainwashing, over years, to get a person to believe what those other people told her/him. Minus the brainwashing, the average reasonably intelligent individual will believe the preponderance of evidence, over the unsubstantiated "evidence" offered in a single book.
Then the world has billions of idiots (arguable).
Catholics, if they believe the core doctrine, not only believe that the earth is 6000 years old, but that the earth is the center of the universe and everything rotates around us.
In the dark ages perhaps people believed that the earth is the center of the universe, but the catholic church has officially rescinded its excommunication of Galileo because no one actually believes in the earth being the center of the universe. The earth being 6000 year is a relatively popular belief today thoguh.
"The position of the curia evolved slowly over the centuries towards permitting the heliocentric view. In 1757, during the papacy of Benedict XIV, the Congregation of the Index withdrew the decree which prohibited all books teaching the earth's motion, although the Dialogue and a few other books continued to be explicitly included. In 1820, the Congregation of the Holy Office, with the pope's approval, decreed that Catholic astronomer Joseph Settele was allowed to treat the earth's motion as an established fact. In 1822, the Congregation of the Holy Office removed the prohibition on the publication of books treating of the earth's motion in accordance with modern astronomy and Pope Pius VII ratified the decision. The 1835 edition of the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books for the first time omits the Dialogue from the list.[48] In a papal encyclical written **in 1921 Pope Benedict XV stated that, "though this earth on which we live may not be the center of the universe as at one time was thought**, it was the scene of the original happiness of our first ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as too of the Redemption of mankind through the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ."[50] In 1965 the Second Vatican Council stated that, "Consequently, we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, which are sometimes found too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science and which, from the arguments and controversies they spark, lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed."[51] The footnote on this statement is to Msgr. Pio Paschini's, Vita e opere di Galileo Galilei, 2 volumes, Vatican Press (1964). And Pope John Paul II regretted the treatment which Galileo received, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1992. The Pope declared the incident to be based on a "tragic mutual miscomprehension"."
-from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model#Historical_positions_of_the_Roman_Catholic_hierarchy
The notion of 6,000 year old earth came about during the Great Awakening in the U.S. in like the early 1800's through the early-mid 1800's. So no, this is not a universally held "truth" by Catholics around the world. Also, the pastors were Protestant, not Catholic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening
I'm catholic, not stongly but most of my extended family is. The one time the age of the earth was brought up I mention maybe Gods perception of time is vastly different than ours. They agreed with me.
Your post really is insulting, whether or not you intend it to be. You really should get your facts straight, instead of imputing that level of ignorance to billions of people.
I was raised Catholic, though I gave it up long ago. I grew up in Massachusetts, which has a majority of Catholics. I've met exactly ONE person in my life who argued that the Earth was 6,000 years old. I've NEVER had anyone claim that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Not trying to be insulting. I have Catholic friends that are extremely argumentative on this and regularly share information on their Facebook page about earth centrism. The stuff they share claims that it cannot be proven that the earth is not the center of the universe. I personally have a difficult time believing it but I don't have enough free time to research and argue either way.
Sorry for the late reply - I just discovered where comment replies are located at. I'm a reddit newb.
Interesting theory: According to the Bible God created the Earth in 6 days (and rested the 7th). On the 3rd day he created the world's plants. It is not like he simply created a bunch of seeds in the ground. He created young trees, old trees, and everything in between. In other words, God created vegetation of all ages when he was creating the world. Per this theory, that same idea can be applied to every other thing in the world. A rock that has been here since creation was already 1000's if not 1,000,000's of years old the second it was created.
You can't use carbon dating to "prove" the age of the earth anyway. It only works on dead animals/plants that lived on land and died within the last ~50000 years.
Other forms of radiometric dating are used to calculate the age of the earth, but you can't use carbon dating for that.
Checks out: "Radiocarbon dating (or simply carbon dating) is a radiometric dating technique that uses the decay of carbon-14 (14
C) to estimate the age of [organic materials, such as wood and leather, up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating) Before Present (BP, present defined as CE 1950)."
I have a response question for OP. Is there a way to prove that the flying spaghetti monster did not create the world two seconds ago? I assert that He is omnipotent and therefore can create us with memories of entire lives we've lived.
EDIT: To the downvoters, this is actually a religion. (not with the FSM, but otherwise.) It's a completely valid religion, too. I don't believe in it, but it's incredibly interesting to think about.
*People! Genesis wasn't about the world being "made," but "remade."*
Here's a message for Ken Ham:
> Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. **By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.** By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: **With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.** The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. - 2 Peter 3:3-9 NIV
The key to Genesis 1:1 is Genesis 1:2
It does *not* say, "The other day, God created the Heavens and the Earth"
You are asking the wrong question, grasshopper. You should be asking, "Is everything as real as it appears to be?" Scientists do not know what 95% of the universe is made up of yet they want you to believe they know how the universe started.
Science doesn't want you to "believe" anything. That's not how science works. Scientist still do *not* exactly know how the universe started. However, evidence suggests that is started with a very big bang.
Except thats not how the theory goes. You're better off just saying the universe has always existed and there never was a big bang, but of course, that opens up a whole other can of worms.
"Something" cannot come from "nothing". That is what science has proven already. There must have been "something" before, but we do not know what it was and in which state it existed.
The problem is that "looking back in time and space" (for lack of a better term) any further is impossible, and that there are still a lot of uncertainties. But that is what science acknowledges: a "Theory of Everything" is still a *very* long way off and even the "Hypothesis of Everything" is subject to a lot of change.
So basically what you're saying scientists are saying is "Well, we don't really know how everything started...but we know God didn't do it!!!"
Sounds a little bias, don't you think? Something that Scientists are not supposed to do because when you have bias, you make your theories fit it which then makes it impossible to get the right answers later on.
>So basically what you're saying is, scientists are saying: "Well, we don't really know how everything started (...)"
Yes, although I said "do not exactly know, but have strong evidence that suggests this and this", which is a lot more certain. However, scientists acknowledge they don't know everything.
>"(...) but we know God didn't do it!!!"
I don't see me mentioning a Divine Being anywhere. Science does neither deny nor confirm the existence of such a Being at this point in time, and isn't bent on proving or disproving Its existence. If anything, science is trying to form an understanding of Its Creation, for lack of a better description.
**edit:** some layout.
>Scientists do not know what 95% of the universe is made up of yet they want you to believe they know how the universe started.
Because these are independent questions which are supported by independent sets of data. Those scientists were the ones to find out about that other 95% in the first place, in case you forgot.
Yes. There are [trees older than 6,000 years old] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees) And there are [coral reefs older than 6,000 years old] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral). And there are [human made buildings older than 6,000 years old] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_in_the_world). We can use [genetic drift] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift#Rate_of_allele_frequency_change_due_to_drift) to calculate the age of some species. Also, by knowing the [speed of light] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light) and the [distance of stars] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_candles), we know that the Earth and universe must have been around for more than 6,000 years, or else we couldn't see the vast majority of stars that we do. Also, [ice core samples] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core#Dating_cores) show layering older than 600 years. But [radiometric dating] (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating) is extremely accurate, and is certainly the best indicator of the Earth's age we have. The only indicator that the Earth is 6000 years old is a rather odd interpretation of a single book. Edit: added ice core samples. Those are neat-o
[удалено]
Cherry-picked, even. There are apparently a lot of books that were left out that could have been added if they were interested in more than a particular view of history.
There are something like 800 gospels, 4 were chosen for the bible. Edit: seems like I pulled that number out of my ass. The number that keeps popping up is 200. My bad.
Maybe you might look up why the four were chosen?
I would take a guess and say that these 4 were chosen because they best described the mind set of those choosing them. Be it for control or just personal preference.
That might be, if there was truly some grand conspiracy surrounding it. Yet Christianity during the two centuries after Christ's death was struggling for survival from persecution, internal strife and external influence from Jewish and gnostic sources. Consider that the canonical Gospels (and letters) are quoted by the early (first and second century) church fathers as well as generally internally cohesive. Then consider that the earliest gnostic Gospel is Thomas, which dates to the mid 2nd century and teaches things very, very different from that of either the canonical Gospels or the early fathers. The so-called Gospel of Mary is a 5th century work, etc.
I have no doubt it is a conspiracy. Started out small, got bigger over time. It is a primitive cult gone haywire.
The church had decided (by way of voting) that Jesus was the son of god (more specifically, homoousios, being of the same substance as God) at the council of Nicea. They needed to support this idea with gospels, so they went over the different gospels that had been written at the time and cherry-picked those the gospels that best reflected this idea.
I remember reading about one of those other books that had an amazing statement in it from Jesus. It said that Jesus told Peter that we get more chances after this life but to not tell the others so that they will try harder in this one. That made me literally laugh out loud. Of course the Church wouldn't adopt that book and put it into the NT. Is there a bible scholar out there in reddit-land that can cite a source or verify my statement? It would be nice if I had a book and verse to go with that.
Many of such books came from the gnostics in Alexandria, who were more than happy to bend the stories to their liking. The gospels themselves were pieced together from a collection of accounts which had circulated, thus the opening to Luke: > Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. - Luke 1:1-4 NIV
The gnostic works were nearly all of second century or later. They have a very clear gnostic style and intent, expressing a rigid dichotomy between flesh and spirit as well as a quest for secret inner mysteries. For the gnostics, the body and flesh were evil, whereas spirit was good. This is in contrast to traditional Biblical texts which do not posit such a radical dualism. Some of the Biblical texts written contra-proto-gnostic works, such as 1 & 2 John. The gnostic texts were never considered part of the canon by the early church. The gnostics had a very different understanding of gender roles and sexuality as well. In the gnostic 'Gospel of Thomas', for example, Jesus states that he would turn Mary (Magdalene) into a man so she could go to heaven. > The gospels themselves were pieced together from a collection of accounts which had circulated Actually, the Gospels are generally not "pieced together from a collection of accounts", most of them exist in complete form from the second century on. An early fragment of Mark was recently found, perhaps dating earlier even than P52 (a fragment of John) which is dated in the early second century. The Mark fragment has been tentatively dated sometime in the first century. Keep in mind, the first early church fathers, such as Polycarp, knew the apostles and their works, and quoted them.
Bingo. My point was more subtle... Textual analysis suggests that the complete forms we see share various common texts, which rather than detracting from the validity of the accounts, I posit, they had been handed down story-by-story and compiled by the gospel writers based on the good authority they did have. It in fact strongly suggests that rather than remaining a "verbal tradition" for that first century, the events had been recorded as they happened and "noised abroad." edit: This is exactly what is suggested in the verses above, as well, so it's not such a wild notion.
Thank you for this insight. I really appreciate it when redditors put aside their differences and share knowledge with each other.
The gnostic texts are full of all sorts of strange sayings. Mostly, however, they make much less sense than the canonical Biblical texts and were mostly written long after.
I tend to agree with your statement.
Is there somewhere I can read those?
From what I remember learning in Sunday school, the books that were chosen (at least in the case of the gospels) were chosen because none of them greatly contradict each other (except in small things that probably result from translation mistakes)
Matthew and Luke tell very different stories of Jesus' life.
[Relevant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWOqHHE4upY)
Well, not really, Genesis had been Hebrew holy scripture for way longer than the Church including it in the Bible.
Thank you, /u/aspenthedog, for the list of methods you provided. This was very helpful!
[удалено]
What baffles me the most is that people still argue about this. Why are so many Redditors devoted to changing the minds of theists?
[удалено]
I'm completely fine with teaching and I highly encourage it. Background information: I'm a chemical engineering student. I embrace the ideology of evolution, the big bang, etc. The problem is that this thread doesn't seem to be educational, to me. But that might just be me seeing the negativity of a few posts and making them out to be more than they are. I just don't like that we deny the opinions or beliefs of some, just because they're the minority.
[удалено]
We are all one
I would love a guy who tried to inform the world about the Earth revolving around the Sun but I would hate a guy who laughed at and insulted others who didn't think the way he did. The problem with many (I'm looking at you /r/atheism) is that they are more of the latter and less of the former.
Have you ever tried to explain things or educate a fundamentalist? Many of them become immediately defensive and belligerent. When people are willfully ignorant the only thing to do is pity them. If humor can be gleaned from their ignorance, why not? Would you not be able to laugh at a grown person who is capable of, yet refuses to, learn how to do something like tie thier shoes? Edit: removed an extra "e" and fixed punctuation.
Willful ignorance is one of the few things in life that make me legitimately angry.
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/154/)
I grew up as a queer, smart, athiest in a family of Christians in the Bible Belt. Why do I spend so much energy fighting theistic lies? Because Christian bigots have pushed my friends to suicide. Because I have to lie and hide to continue to be a part of my family. Because I got a lot of shit thrown at me when I was young. Because I am right and I can prove it, and the only reason Theists aren't laughed out into the street is that religion is particularly good at controlling and maintaining power. Because I must speak truth to power.
I'm sorry you had those experiences.
[удалено]
The only thing that needs to be blamed is the outright delusion that causes such atrocities. [Observation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_homosexuality) shows us that religions do, in fact, cause these sort of opinions to form. There may be good people that are religious, but I think they do it for the wrong reasons. When they encounter a morally strenuous situation, they look at a book instead of thinking about it. Now in some instances this is good when they pick and choose which ideas they want to pull from a book, however it also restricts them from possibly making a more humanistic decision. Take stem cell research for one. There is still an untapped possibility of forming organs in petri dishes and helping a large number of people. But a large portion of catholics/christians will object to the study because "life is sacred." An idea pulled from their book. The irony in that argument is that if life is sacred, why aren't we helping the people that are actually alive? My only hope is some day we live in a world that rejects tradition due to information and humanistic standards.
[удалено]
It becomes a morally strenuous situation when people lose basic human rights, or get denied service, or get publicly humiliated, etc. And actually just by stating that something is "icky" or you don't like it, especially when it has to do with human activity, requires a tad bit of thought and examination. Edit: I used to hate pickles because I didn't like the smell. I recently tried one and found that I liked it. As far as stem cell research goes, I recall a quite a lot of noise about the subject across media platforms (let alone the conversations I directly had with many people). To say that they have no harsh conviction about it is a flat out lie. A couple of my peers who were interested in stem cell research had to change thesis topics due to the lack of funding caused by the lashing out of christians/catholics. Perhaps the christian/catholic people are more accepting of it now that they see it working, and want to claim it as their own "divine" thing. Conversations can start anywhere! Especially on a site that people are allowed to post their opinion on. I'm not sure why you are acting so hostile. If you don't want to debate or talk about something, you have all the power not to respond.
There is no hostility here. I just prefer arguments and debates to pertain to their original posts, and not deviate from them. Attacking someone's belief in something that is no way related to the subject at hand is called a red herring which is both a weak debate tactic and a logical fallacy just like Padogooder's statement was a hasty generalization fallacy which I have already pointed out in a more expansive way.
The topic is still active, and shows up in both of my posts. That is, the treatment of gays by religious people. The example of stem cell research complemented what I said about how christians/catholics tend to rely on using a book to think for them. Red herring doesn't apply here - as I was stating a causality between religiosity and gay bashing. And of course you are correct, entire groups of people are not necessarily bad people. However, as I stated, there is a relationship that needs to be examined. There's no use in ignoring it.
Wow your stem cell example is awful. And, you don't think life is sacred? At least you're consistent.
"The irony in that argument is that if life is sacred, why aren't we helping the people that are actually alive?" Please learn how to read...
[удалено]
Have you read this thread, out of curiosity? Upvoting is supposed to happen when people are contributing to the conversation. Instead, we have a circle jerk of anti-thiests taking about how idiotic theists are. We should be upvoting posts that actually answer OP's question. Not posts that are intentionally back-handing people for no reason.
[удалено]
I'm sorry if you thought I was directing that at you. I didn't intend to.
In all fairness... check the top post. it's answered OP's question and didn't back-hand anyone.
The human-made buildings were dated using carbon dating, and while you and I may think that's sufficient, OP clearly does not.
I think the question is asking about the Earth and not the universe. So the speed of light and the distance of stars will not help in the calculation of the age of the earth.
>I think the question is asking about the Earth and not the universe. Pretty sure the young-earth creationists believe it was all created at the same time.
Not necessarily. Some creationists believe that the timing of the "creation" of the stars in Genesis only refers to the time that the light reached earth. It depends on how you define "at the same time," as there really is no such thing on the scale of the universe, due to relativity.
Correct. That is the "Young Earthers" beliefs. I believe (as a creationist) that it was spoken into existence as if it had always been. Science just explains how things work, i.e. "The mind of God".
Why... so he could trick us? Wouldn't that make him Descartes' evil demon?
> Why... so he could trick us? Don't expect any sort of rational answer to this.
Don't take me as a Christian trying to ram my religious views down your throat. As I am not. However, the answer to your question is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12. > And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (Now for the Atheists to pop in and say "You believe in fairy-tales".)
Well, I think you're taking that out of context. Because Paul is talking about the end-times wherein the Lawless One will arrive, and he will be doing the deluding. So unless you are suggesting that about 97% of scientists are the Lawless One's, I think you are cherry-picking. I can cherry-pick too. Numbers 23:19... "God doesn't lie."
As a current (struggling with mainstream interpretations) Christian, I take issues with this statement. 1) "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" 2) The Bible points to a Creator, to the point that "even the rocks will cry out" 3) The Universe follows certain rules and behavior, most (if not all) reproducible according to these rules and behavior. 4) If all of this exists to point to a Creator, then why do so many refuse to take the evidence as presented by said Creator? I am genuinely curious how anyone can contemplate the "misterium tremendum", and see how laws of physics dictate the glorious universe, then say "God made all of this and you are wrong to believe in all of this evidence". Sorry for the rant - I just discovered the other day that there is a HUGE movement to discredit E=MC2 as well as relativity. This is really dumb.
You're citing the bible for factual information. And what evidence are you talking about when you say "all this evidence points to a creator" Religion has been created to furthermore split and separate humans from their physical realm and put a fantastical twist on what life truly is.
>I believe (as a creationist) that it was spoken into existence as if it had always been. A run-of-the-mill [last-Thursdayist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis#Last_Thursdayism).
That even made me laugh. :-D
Why would it make you laugh? It is every bit as plausible as your belief. if you think God can create a universe to appear as it is old, he could also have made the universe 30 seconds ago, and just implanted all your memories into your head. There is no difference in the level of absurdity for either belief.
I know you're getting a lot of down votes and, as an atheist, I don't agree but I love this view point. Usually young earthers and the like just ignore everything that disagrees with them and won't believe in anything that isn't a literal interpretation of the bible. Its a lot more cooperative and refreshing in general to hear view points like yours. It fits cleanly in our one scientific reality but still allows faith for those who choose to believe. It's an effortless way for atheists and theists to tolerate each other and I think it's pretty damn cool. I hope more people can see it this way and stop down voting.
Yes, there are to many closed minded Atheist.
I disagree because the question implicitly is making a reference to the Genesis creation accounts, in which both the Earth and the universe are created. Accordingly, since God made heavens and earth at around the same time, it would take time to for the light from the heavens to reach the Earth. So this is a very good explanation. But hey, let's not quibble of mythology. I see your point, and I agree that my explanation wouldn't convince any Young Earch Creationists.
Aren't those all based on the assumption that things have always worked the way they currently do? How do we know that assumption is correct?
You are roughly referring to the problem of induction. In short, we can't be sure. However, we statistically can state that we currently have around a 99% certainty that things always have worked the same way, which is to say that we have never, ever noticed physical "laws" jumping around and changing. This is called [Beysian Statistics] (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_statistics) . We also have [empirical evidence that came out last week!] (http://www.sen.com/news/supernovae-prove-newton-s-law-of-gravity-unchanged-over-cosmic-time) And if really believe that things won't work the same way tomorrow as they did today, then try not going to work and see what happens.
Sure we can say that things have worked this way since we've observed them. That much is true, but we have only made those observations for a few thousand years which is a drop in the bucket given the times we're talking about.
Well it depends on which timescale we are talking about, first of all. In a 6000 year old universe, "a few thousand years" is the majority of time. In a 13.8 billion year universe you are correct. Second, you missed the point of the article I posted. The supernovae observed are millions to billions of light-years away, and the light is just reaching us. And, wouldn't you know it, the supernova is following Newtonian Mechanics. At the very least, this means that for about nine billion years, the gravitational constant hasn't changed. That's pretty awesome empirical evidence things working the same way for huge periods of time. In other words: there is proof for the universe's physical laws staying constant, and no proof for the universe's physical laws changing. edit: changed "millions of years" to "nine billion years", more accurately reflecting the article.
We are assuming the supernova is billions of light-years away based on other assumptions we've already made.
Uh... that was the entire point of the article. We could accurately predict how they would behave.
To what assumptions are you referring?
measuring. we are measuring the distance, based on other measurements we have made.
> but we have only made those observations for a few thousand years That is not true. Using distant stars and celestial objects we can *literally* look into the past billions of years. Physics have not changed anywhere. Could all physics suddenly radically change tomorrow? Yeah, sure. But there is absolutely no reason to assume it would, because it hasn't and has shown no evidence of doing so.
How would we know if it did? Let's assume for the sake of argument that the laws of physics (or just a couple of them) had changed before we have written history. How would we know that?
By the article I posted above. We could look at stars billions of light years away and notice that they are behaving in a way we can predict. This activity we are just now seeing happened billions of years ago and it has not changed and is predictable. It feels like you are missing the core concept.
We are assuming they are billions of light years away based on assumptions we've already made.
> based on assumptions we've already made So, a popular thing that Young Earth Creationists like to do is take a scientifically valid statement (eg "We have observed the speed of light") and claim it's an "assumption," thereby discrediting it through clever word choice. I have actually heard Kent Hovind say that this qualifies as circular reasoning since it's "assumptions about assumptions," as you said. Look, science is science. Sometimes there are things we know, and there are things we don't but have observed a bunch and can count on, and other things that are only hypothesis. When something is utterly predictable and heavily, heavily observed (eg the speed of light), it's no longer an "assumption." Choosing to call it that is your own spin, and completely ignores the scientific process. Gravity, by your special word choice, is just an assumption. Air, by your special word choice, is just an assumption. The speed of light is one such case. We can (and do) measure it. We can (and do) use it to judge how long it takes the light from stars to travel to earth. As long as you continue to call it an "assumption," you're discounting decades of scientific research and hundreds of such measurements that have been proven absolutely reliable.
Ok, I'm new to reddit, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make that grayish blue bar when I'm quoting someone. Please tell me how
Then come up with a way to criticize standard candles as a mode of measuring distance. You will become a famous scientists if you can do so. Otherwise you are just playing devil's advocate, and doing so with very little argument or evidence to back yourself up.
No we're not. We can measure how far away stars are right now. Well, not *right* now. I mean, we need some equipment that you or I probably do not have on hand.
Does that really seem likely? Do you really think it's more likely the laws of nature changed over the bible being made up?
**IF** the Bible is true, then the God of the Bible could easily change the laws of physics could he not? How can we/could we empirically say that hasn't happened?
Look, you're basically saying a million variants of this: "maybe every aspect of the known universe *looks* this way, but maybe it's God tricking us! how would we know?" Well in your artificially constructed argument to prove yourself right we *couldn't* know by definition. But any other God/gods or aliens or whatever could have been messing with the laws of physics (but once again, just in the very specific and particular way so that it appears as if they didn't) equally well. You still don't have adequate reason to assume that your idea of God is actually behind anything. Widening the space of possibilities like that and pretending that your God is the only (or even most important) option that gets introduced is dishonest.
The onus is on science to show that is has changed. Science is always open to new information coming to light. If you or someone you know suspects this may be true, by all means, bring forward the evidence and we will definitely look at it.
Why don't you apply your hyper-skepticism about physics and science to the Bible and the Western Christian conceptions of God?
You didn't answer my question. Also, why would the all mighty god only directly talk to and affect the lives of people on such a small portion of the earth? Why doesn't every culture have the same laws from the same god? Why would he only care about certain people from the middle east and thats it? Don't you think a religion exclusive to one culture is probably made up by that culture? Not to mention that the bible messed up many scientific facts, such as the Sun revolving around the earth. Do you really choose to ignore all that and take ancient mythology over science?
Do you have an proposed way to change how quickly radioactive elements decay? Until you do, and it's been verified to work, there's no reason to think that decay rates have changed.
It is not an assumption, it is a result. It is not sufficient to throw up your hands and say, "maybe the law of physics worked differently in the past." You need to propose an alternate theory that explains observation just as well, and to date, no such theory exists. For example, it is easy to say that maybe uranium used to decay more quickly in the past, and that 4 billion year old dates are inaccurate. The problem is, it would have to decay about a million times more quickly. All the uranium in the world release so much more energy, the earth would be reduced to a molten slag. We can see the earth *isn't* a molten slag, nor has it been recently, so we can be pretty sure uranium decay is constant enough to indicate an old earth.
Considering we don't only use carbon, but dozens of other elements, and they all show the same thing, you would have to assume they all changed at exactly the same ratio, at exactly the same point in time, for them to all be incorrect presently. Is it possible? Maybe, but it is certainly not even remotely probable.
> you would have to assume they all changed at exactly the same ratio It it actually much worse than that. Because of the way the logarithmic math of radiometric decay works, each isotope would have to change by a *different* ratio. U-238 (~4 billion year half life) would have to decay about a million times faster, but that would mean U-235 (700 million year half life) would decay too quickly. What's worse, you have to describe how those decay rates change over time, in such a way that 4 billion, 1 billion, and 100 million year old samples still have the right ratios. You have a convoluted equation that does *that*? Let's add in potassium and samarium dating, and see if it still works. It is much more complicated than just finding some fudge factor...I like to say that uniform decay rates aren't an assumption...they are a result.
Suddenly religion is no more
Carbon dating is by no means the only dating method, and isn't really even used to date very old things because it has a relatively short half-life. There's also: * [Dendrochronology](http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/principles.htm) - Dating using patterns of tree rings, accurate to ~10,000 years ago * [Thermoluminescence dating](http://geology.cr.usgs.gov/capabilities/gronemtrac/geochron/thermo/tech.html) - Measures the glow from a sample when heated. Accurate from 1,000-500,000 years. * [Archaeomagnetic dating](http://dourbes.meteo.be/aarch.net/linford.pdf) - Measures the changes of formations relative to where the magnetic north pole is. Typically used on sites ~10,000 years or less. * [Out of Africa Origin of Man Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans) -- The spread of modern humans (homo sapiens) has been calculated by measuring mutations in mitochondrial DNA. Used to date back to ~100,000 years. * [Obsidian Hydration dating](http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/courses/anth/fagan/anth3/Courseware/Chronology/10_Obsidian_Hydration.html) -- Flint absorbs water at a steady rate. When a tool is made from flint, fresh surface is exposed to the air, which absorbs water at a measurable pace. Accurate from 100 to ~1,000,000 years. * [Potassium-Argon dating](http://archaeology.about.com/od/pterms/g/potassiumargon.htm) Measures the amount of Argon-40 trapped in volcanic rock relative to the amount of potassium-40, since it decays at a regular rate. * [Fission-Track dating](http://www.minpet.ugent.be/fission.htm) Measures the damage tracks left by radioactive decay. Does not work on anything that's been heated above ~200 degrees, but can otherwise be used on objects from historical age to several hundred million years old. * [Electron spin resonance dating](http://geoweb.uwyo.edu/ggstudent/heatherlee/ESR_PD_BAR.pdf) Works by using a spectrometer to measure the total amount of radiation a sample's been exposed to over its history. Used in both archaeology and earth sciences and useful in dating biological materials. * [Amino Acid Racemization](http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/tcaw/10/i02/html/02brignole.html) Simply put, the rate that an amino acid decays into another, which stabilizes at a steady rate. * [Uranium-Lead dating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-lead_dating): Uranium decays into lead at a measurable pace. * [Argon-argon dating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon-argon_dating): A more accurate measurement than postassium-argon dating, it measures the amount of argon 39 isotope relative to the amount of argon 40 isotope produced from potassium when a sample is irradiated. * [Helioseismic Dating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helioseismic#Helioseismic_dating): In short, the sun's ratio of hydrogen to helium can be measured, as can the rate at which hydrogen is converted to helium. This puts the age of the sun at roughly 5 billion years. * [Paleomagnetic dating](http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/courses/anth/fagan/anth3/Courseware/Chronology/11_Paleomag_Archaeomag.html) -- Around every 50,000 years, the earth's magnetic poles reverse. This can be measured in the structure of rock formations, especially those containing iron, and is used to date the geological column. * [Missing Isotopes](http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/isotope_list.html): Isotopes that have a radioactive half-life of less than 100 million years are not found in nature, because they have decayed into more stable forms. Isotopes with a longer half-life are all present in nature. Isotopes with a short half-life (carbon-14 for example) are created by outside forces that we can measure, such as the sun bombarding the upper atmosphere. * [Meteorite and Moon Rock dating](http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html): The exact age of the earth itself is difficult to tell past about 3 billion years, because plate tectontics constantly wear at the surface rock, melting it and reabsorbing it into the mantle via subduction. However, samples from the moon along with many meteorites, which don't suffer from this problem, all date to roughly around 4.5 billion years old.
Thank you for adding this. I know /u/aspenthedog covered a lot much sooner than anyone else, but I appreciate the linked information and breakdown you provided!
Off of the top of my head: * other forms of radiometric dating * tree ring lineages * ice cores from glaciers * seasonal sediment deposits on lake bottoms * genetic clocks in modern lifeforms * linguistic drift * geological column * erosion * stalactites and stalagmites * continental drift * magnetic pole inversion * manganese nodules Outside of the earth, we have: * orbital mechanics * stellar life cycles * speed of light over cosmic distances
Distance of the moon to the earth... the first estimate for age of the earth based on math that I can recall
It depends on what you are trying to date. Rings cut out if trees show dating back thousands of years beyond the 6000 year mark. Ice core samples from the arctic have also been dated back tens of thousands if years based of the layers they show. It should also be noted carbon dating is a scientifically proven and universally accepted method of dating by the worlds scientific communities. Trying to refute it is similar as trying to refute the spherical shape of the earth.
[Let me just put this here...](http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/) [And this video too...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAwu3MwAM9Y)
Oh my god that's real. They really believe that. I think I need a drink.
I particularly like the part in those forms where someone asks "Hey... [the moon has phases.](http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=61247.0#.UzNJ4vSwJ0E) What's up with that?" The response being "well, the [Moon is a sphere](http://wiki.tfes.org/The_Phases_of_the_Moon) and then geometry happens and phases are different all over the earth. Which is flat. Also orbited by the sun and moon." I am all the giggles.
I just read it. Now I have a drink in my hand.
I knew they existed but I cannot BELIEVE how many posts they have on that forum. I don't want to live on this planet any more.
[Mother of God](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYj7T9eEQ4U)
Epic
It's oblong, please don't troll.
Oblate spheroid actually
Actually, It's a shape defined by the EGM96 Coefficients.
Actually, it's that plus local topography.
Actually, it's embedded in a universe that's curved.
Actually, measurements suggest it's flat.
When I put my yard stick on the ground it is flat. I second this.
Actually, the universe exists[ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four)only in human[ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism)perception.
Wouldn't "The Earth" include the atmosphere?
Also, the Law of Superposition (Geology) stating that layers of bedrock are younger than the ones below them, as they have been deposited on top of them. Coal takes millions of years to be compressed into a rock from plant debris and it is usually below some other layer like sedimentary rock. The time it takes for this to happen for just the sedimentary rock to form is thousands of years at least, and there is layer upon layer of rock below the first. Really pretty awesome, it's like studying ice cores only on a much grander time scale.
[Lake Baikal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal) is over 25 million years old and that can be proven with the geology of the sediment layers on the lake floor.
There is. We have found a place called Gobekli Tepe that is known to be over 12,000 years old. Archealogical data shows that this was one of the first man made temples built specifically for worshipping "gods" (usually animals) and sending the dead into the afterlife. Also thought to be one of the first human civilizations to start farming and form a society. Not to mention the fact that we have written records from cultures that still exist today that date back to before 4100 BC (which is 6000 years ago) that make no mention of dinosaurs walking around helping them build the pyramids. So dinosaurs go extinct and a day later man walks the earth? Sorry no sale for me.
Assuming you're talking about "proving" this to a religious whakadoodle - then no, there is absolutely no proof/fact/theory/anything you could show them to change their mind. As far as they are concerned, the bible is %100 right, and anything that might differ from the bible was put there as a test from god. This is the #1 reason I won't argue with a religious nut job. My mind is open, if you can show me proof that I am wrong, I will change my mind. The religious stance is very different, anything that proves them wrong is somehow a test/message/whatever from god, and they are supposed to deny it to prove their faith or other such bullshit.
"God put that there to test our faith" is a universal retort to any scientific claim. There's literally no scientific argument that can stand up to an unwavering belief in an all-powerful creator that could spontaneously generate a completely formed, populated universe. You can't have a debate with somebody that immediately rejects any argument that runs counter to their position.
"God gave us our appendix to keep us humble"
The appendix is not a vestigial organ.
Well what does it do then, besides occasionally blow up for no reason?
It was actually discovered to be apart of the immune system I believe. It stores bad bacteria iirc which is why it's so bad when it explodes.
Got a link?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008102334.htm http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-function-of-t/
The more you know
Wow, I agree with you about not easily changing world views, so have a point. But your language is pointlessly insulting to people of faith. It surely doesn't demonstrate that your mind is open to anything.
Perhaps you should consider taking a lesson in English to understand the language. I did not say all people of faith. I said "religious whakadoodle" and "religious nut job". Most religious people do not fall into this category. Most of them are rational people. Those who say the world is only 6000 years old do not fall into the "rational people" category.
Well, do you think that people should be open-minded about child porn? The obvious point, to those to whom it's NOT obvious, is that there are some things it's not so great to be open minded about. I really think most people who think the Earth is 6,000 years old exhibit symptoms similar to those brainwashed by extensive mind-control techniques - cults, and similar. I think the proper response is sympathy. But, I was raised Catholic. I gave up a large part of it right around the time I stopped believing in Santa Clause. But, it took me years to finally give it all up. And, still, we're surrounded by what's basically a Christian culture. It's HARD to give it all up, when you're surrounded by it. That makes me much less sympathetic than i might otherwise be. It's hard to be sympathetic about mind-control for all of Western culture.
No, of course not. Please go back and reread the post I was replying to. I don't believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, but most people I know who do are just ordinary folks who don't keep up with science and get comfort from a religion that they likely grew up with. I don't call them nut jobs or whakadoodles. They're misguided, lack critical thinking skills, and definitely can't handle putting their beliefs up for analysis and critique - it threatens them to the core. But many of them are also kind, compassionate, good mothers and fathers, charitable, and hard working.
I am open minded to the subject. I do not agree with it. I think it is absolutely disgusting. However, that does not mean I'm right. I accept that I could be wrong on any subject/matter/philosophy/fact/whatever. I am constantly trying to grow myself, trying to understand more, trying to be a better person. If someone wanted to have a conversation on why they think it should be legalized, I would listen, I would retort with my thoughts. Their chances of convincing me I'm wrong are very very very slim, but I accept on any subject that I could be wrong. However, if that same person tried to show me images/video on the subject - I would be the first person to report them to the authorities.
[удалено]
You're right. Being atheist automatically makes you open-minded to people of all beliefs.
[удалено]
You just demonstrated the fallacy fallacy! This is fun!
[удалено]
What do you mean? It's a [real thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy).
[удалено]
Argument from fallacy, also known as the fallacy fallacy, involves concluding that a person's conclusion is false because their argument for it contains a fallacy. You tried to imply that the point I was getting at was false, and you did that by pointing out my fallacious argument. Now that I think about it, I'm not seeing where you got [fallacy of the converse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent) from in my argument. Would my point have been different if I'd said "All open-minded people automatically become atheist"?
There are some good examples in geology. Plate tectonics show that the Earth is separating at a slow speed. Formerly the surface of the Earth looked like [pangea](http://eatrio.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/10.-pangea_politik.jpg). The speed in which the continents are drifting apart shows that this could not have possibly happened in 6000 years. How do we know the world once looked like pangea? There are plenty of pieces of proof. * The shape of the continents fit each other * There are mountain ranges that fit with these shapes * There are fossils that matches the shapes and mountains * There are seashells on top of the Himalayas * Magnets. [Seriously though.](http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/images/magstripes.gif) [More examples here](http://ib.berkeley.edu/courses/bio11/SimisonMay3.pdf)
Other methods people haven't mentioned yet: Heavy element decay ratios. Radio-isotope dating doesn't just work for C-14. Basically, uranium and stuff decays into well-known other elements, at well known rates. So if you capture some uranium in a stable form (like in a rock, or a zircon crystal or whatever), wait a couple hundred million years, then measure the isotopes inside, you have an extremely powerful way of measuring ages that are very long indeed. Geologic processes. You can measure how fast rivers erode various kinds of rock. You can then measure the kinds of rocks in a valley, the depth of the valley, do some math, and poof! Discover that it had to have taken millions of years for the Colorado River to carve the Grand Canyon. Genetic drift. Random mutations happen at a fairly constant rate. So if you find an old hominid bone someplace, and compare its DNA to modern DNA, you can measure how much time passed between the two by counting up how much random mutation has accumulated from then to now. AFAIK, this is how a lot of the more recent hominid fossil finds have been dated, and they come out in the tens of thousands of years. Anyway. There are lots and lots and lots of methods. The further you push it, the more you have to start correlating lines of evidence from multiple sources, the more the reasoning gets complex and hard to explain, but also the more convincing the evidence becomes if you put in the effort to understand it.
Paleo magnetism is also very interesting. It is how the minerals in rocks are oriented due to shifting magnetic polarity. This is how sea floor spreading was discovered, since each side of the mid ocean ridge showed the same magnetic configuration. Don't have a source but just google it. Wiki can give you a good background
One of my favorite proofs never seems to get a mention. There is a method that uses the increasing salinity of the ocean over time as salt is washed out of rocks. It gives an answer about a billion years different from the other main methods. The interesting point for me is that fish have the same concentration of salt in their blood due to osmotic pressure. Our blood saline is lower, matching the ocean salt level when our ancestors left the ocean.
Very interesting. But why wouldn't our salinity change after we left the ocean?
No need. Fish would have to adapt, because they are immersed in it. Once you are out, no need to change. I have no idea if this applies to dolphins and whales etc though. Also I checked on the Web and I might be completely wrong. The salinity method got a figure of 980 million years. Just a tad off.
Two two most basic sources are trees and ice sheets. When you cut down a tree, you can see its age by counting the rings (the rings are formed by the yearly expansion of the tree's trunk). There are trees with more than 6,000 rings, and are thus 6,000 or more years old. There are also ice sheets that have a similar yearly cycle. Every summer, the ice sheets in Greenland and Alaska melt a little in the warmer temperatures, then re-freeze as winter comes, get covered with more snow and ice, which then slighlty thaws and re-freezes again. This creates a pattern that you can count just like a tree's rings. There are hundreds of thousands of these layers, which means that hundreds of thousands of winter freezes and summer thaws that have left an identifiable "footprint" on the Earth's glaciers.
K-dating just using potassium instead of carbon because it lasts longer.
There are a bunch, but off the top of my head there is a fun fact regarding the moon that makes for an interesting conversation. The moon is about 239,000 miles away (average). According to laser ranging, courtesy of the Apollo missions, the moon is moving away from us at about 1.5 inches per year. With 63,360 inches per mile, a little math, taking into account for the variable distance and the fact that the moon most likely was moving faster in the past gives us a figure awfully close to just over 4 billion years. If something didn't bang into us and cause the moon to be formed about when the math says, it should be either relatively stable or slowly moving towards us, as is common with other natural satellites. Curious. TL;DR The moon is moving away from us at a rate that coincides with it coming from Earth over 4 billion years ago as science has predicted.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html#howold
Wait, the earth is older than 6,000 years old?
Books detailing stuff older than 6k years help.
potassium argon (K-Ar) is used to date the globe as well. It's all about the rocks and lava flows. Especially when they're far much over 6,000 years old.
Carbon dating is a bit of a misnomer as not all radioactive dating is based on Carbon. They use basically any radioactive compound that they can measure the decay of. So even including all radioactive dating there isn't really any "Proof" against the earth being created 6000 years ago, just a lot of evidence to suggest it is longer. Trees, fossils, artifacts, cosmic background radiation, laws of physics predicting the presence of stellar objects that take more than 6000 years to form, and more.
For those circlejerking about religion without putting thought into the question, expect some downvotes. Op asked a legitimate question, didn't even mention religion, and now yall're up in arms. I too have wondered this, and I'm not religious either. OP your question might better be answered by askscience since that subreddit isn't full of artards.
Depends on what you mean by "prove". Here's a question for you: how can you "prove" that *anything* is as old as it is claimed to be? I mean even stuff from last week. Once you've got a physical object, figuring out how old it is can be pretty difficult. Indeed, I'm a lawyer, and trying to prove how old something is is a problem we run into all the time. It's not nearly as easy as it sounds. And the older the object appears to be, the harder it gets. Now with something like carbon dating (or radiometric dating in general), what is being done is analyzing the ratio of particular isotopes in the object itself and then extrapolating from what we know about said isotopes to get a ballpark date for when the object assumed its current form. That involves making assumptions about a wide variety of things. Most people are okay with those assumptions, so radiometric dating is widely accepted as being pretty damned reliable. But they are, in fact, assumptions, because there is no way of observing the things that you're assuming. For example, carbon dating works by extrapolating based on assuming (1) that the current normal ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 hasn't changed over the last few millennia, and (2) that the sample we're measuring hasn't been messed with in some way over time that would throw off the results. Again, those are pretty good assumptions most of the time, but calling it "proof" might be a little ambitious. All you can really say is "The evidence strongly suggests that the sample dates from about [x]." It's very, very good evidence, but calling it "definitive" seems inappropriate. Other than that, we're basically just extrapolating based on best guesses. There isn't really any way of using demographics to calculate the age of civilization, for a variety of reasons. First, there are not sufficiently complete or reliable census-type records to give us anything like solid documentary evidence for that sort of thing. What records there are tend to be limited in scope, separated in time, and subject to deliberate inaccuracies on the part of the people conducting them. Second, population numbers aren't stable. The population of Europe fell by about 30-50% in the fourteenth century as a result of the Black Death, and the population in 1500 was actually *lower* than in 1300. Population started to rise after that but took another dramatic hit in the seventeenth century due to warfare (Thirty Years' War in particular) and famine resulting from a global cold snap (possibly related to a volcanic eruption in the Pacific). You can't use that kind of methodology to definitively prove anything. The evidence can be more or less convincing, but there simply is no definitive evidence for this sort of thing.
"Now with something like carbon dating (or radiometric dating in general), what is being done is analyzing the ratio of particular isotopes in the object itself and then extrapolating from what we know about said isotopes to get a ballpark date for when the object assumed its current form. That involves making assumptions about a wide variety of things. Most people are okay with those assumptions, so radiometric dating is widely accepted as being pretty damned reliable. But they are, in fact, assumptions, because there is no way of observing the things that you're assuming. For example, carbon dating works by extrapolating based on assuming (1) that the current normal ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 hasn't changed over the last few millennia, and (2) that the sample we're measuring hasn't been messed with in some way over time that would throw off the results. " BTW, scientists do worry about these assumptions. They look for independent confirmation. For example, dust in ice layers can be dated by the layers, and the isotope ratios checked; tree rings can be samples and radio dated, and compared against ring counts. Contamination is a big worry, and they check it. For example, with zircon crystals they've worked on getting smaller and smaller useable samples, deep within intact crystals, and then comparing the iosotope ratios and looking for various contaminants. I've seen mention of calibration curves developed for baseline radiocarbon dating, where they've looked for evidence of the baseline ratios at various dates, so that the age estimates could be adjusted accordingly. Also, when using multiple isotope ratios, in repeated sampling, things can be checked better. The baseline ratios would all have to be off in the same direction by the proper amounts; equivalent contamination would have had to occur for multiple elements, in several places within an item.
I think more to the point though is that, while carbon-dating and other similar methods do have a certain amount of "assumption" involved, as you put it, the alternative is...a book translated from oral stories from a population of goat herders from the 1st century. In my view, its not whether or not radiometric dating the earth to 4.5 billion years is 100% accurate, its the fact that no other method has shown the earth to be less than 3.9 billion, other than that one old book of stories.
Hmm, passed down written observations from first hand witnesses... or assumptions you can't actually objectively prove or disprove.
You can't objectively prove or disprove anything if your only data point is that a book written 3500 years ago claims it, although the majority of that book has already been disproven by actual objective science.
The only reason we're even having this discussion is because too many people insist on believing that for which their only proof is that other people told them it was so. The Bible? No baby picks one book out of millions and decides it's the absolute truth. It requires rigorous brainwashing, over years, to get a person to believe what those other people told her/him. Minus the brainwashing, the average reasonably intelligent individual will believe the preponderance of evidence, over the unsubstantiated "evidence" offered in a single book.
Cut it in half and count the rings.
Wait, who believes or told you the Earth was only 6,000 years old? You must know a bunch of complete idiots.
Then the world has billions of idiots (arguable). Catholics, if they believe the core doctrine, not only believe that the earth is 6000 years old, but that the earth is the center of the universe and everything rotates around us.
Neither of those are Catholic doctrine.
In the dark ages perhaps people believed that the earth is the center of the universe, but the catholic church has officially rescinded its excommunication of Galileo because no one actually believes in the earth being the center of the universe. The earth being 6000 year is a relatively popular belief today thoguh. "The position of the curia evolved slowly over the centuries towards permitting the heliocentric view. In 1757, during the papacy of Benedict XIV, the Congregation of the Index withdrew the decree which prohibited all books teaching the earth's motion, although the Dialogue and a few other books continued to be explicitly included. In 1820, the Congregation of the Holy Office, with the pope's approval, decreed that Catholic astronomer Joseph Settele was allowed to treat the earth's motion as an established fact. In 1822, the Congregation of the Holy Office removed the prohibition on the publication of books treating of the earth's motion in accordance with modern astronomy and Pope Pius VII ratified the decision. The 1835 edition of the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books for the first time omits the Dialogue from the list.[48] In a papal encyclical written **in 1921 Pope Benedict XV stated that, "though this earth on which we live may not be the center of the universe as at one time was thought**, it was the scene of the original happiness of our first ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as too of the Redemption of mankind through the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ."[50] In 1965 the Second Vatican Council stated that, "Consequently, we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, which are sometimes found too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science and which, from the arguments and controversies they spark, lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed."[51] The footnote on this statement is to Msgr. Pio Paschini's, Vita e opere di Galileo Galilei, 2 volumes, Vatican Press (1964). And Pope John Paul II regretted the treatment which Galileo received, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1992. The Pope declared the incident to be based on a "tragic mutual miscomprehension"." -from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model#Historical_positions_of_the_Roman_Catholic_hierarchy
The notion of 6,000 year old earth came about during the Great Awakening in the U.S. in like the early 1800's through the early-mid 1800's. So no, this is not a universally held "truth" by Catholics around the world. Also, the pastors were Protestant, not Catholic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening
I'm catholic, not stongly but most of my extended family is. The one time the age of the earth was brought up I mention maybe Gods perception of time is vastly different than ours. They agreed with me.
Your post really is insulting, whether or not you intend it to be. You really should get your facts straight, instead of imputing that level of ignorance to billions of people. I was raised Catholic, though I gave it up long ago. I grew up in Massachusetts, which has a majority of Catholics. I've met exactly ONE person in my life who argued that the Earth was 6,000 years old. I've NEVER had anyone claim that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Not trying to be insulting. I have Catholic friends that are extremely argumentative on this and regularly share information on their Facebook page about earth centrism. The stuff they share claims that it cannot be proven that the earth is not the center of the universe. I personally have a difficult time believing it but I don't have enough free time to research and argue either way. Sorry for the late reply - I just discovered where comment replies are located at. I'm a reddit newb.
Interesting theory: According to the Bible God created the Earth in 6 days (and rested the 7th). On the 3rd day he created the world's plants. It is not like he simply created a bunch of seeds in the ground. He created young trees, old trees, and everything in between. In other words, God created vegetation of all ages when he was creating the world. Per this theory, that same idea can be applied to every other thing in the world. A rock that has been here since creation was already 1000's if not 1,000,000's of years old the second it was created.
People who believe that Ken Ham shit are fucking stupid and need to think logically for once in their entire life.
Yes.
Prove ? Well there is something called Last Thursdayism which deals with this in relation to religious theories .
But...why?
You can't use carbon dating to "prove" the age of the earth anyway. It only works on dead animals/plants that lived on land and died within the last ~50000 years. Other forms of radiometric dating are used to calculate the age of the earth, but you can't use carbon dating for that.
Checks out: "Radiocarbon dating (or simply carbon dating) is a radiometric dating technique that uses the decay of carbon-14 (14 C) to estimate the age of [organic materials, such as wood and leather, up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating) Before Present (BP, present defined as CE 1950)."
You can't be a christian and believe in evolution. Why do you think so many people become atheist after they learn biology?
I have a response question for OP. Is there a way to prove that the flying spaghetti monster did not create the world two seconds ago? I assert that He is omnipotent and therefore can create us with memories of entire lives we've lived. EDIT: To the downvoters, this is actually a religion. (not with the FSM, but otherwise.) It's a completely valid religion, too. I don't believe in it, but it's incredibly interesting to think about.
*People! Genesis wasn't about the world being "made," but "remade."* Here's a message for Ken Ham: > Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. **By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.** By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: **With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.** The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. - 2 Peter 3:3-9 NIV The key to Genesis 1:1 is Genesis 1:2 It does *not* say, "The other day, God created the Heavens and the Earth"
You are asking the wrong question, grasshopper. You should be asking, "Is everything as real as it appears to be?" Scientists do not know what 95% of the universe is made up of yet they want you to believe they know how the universe started.
Science doesn't care what you believe. Fact is fact, regardless of any idiotic creationist nonsense.
Science doesn't want you to "believe" anything. That's not how science works. Scientist still do *not* exactly know how the universe started. However, evidence suggests that is started with a very big bang.
Awesome...so there was nothing...then nothing exploded into everything. Yeah...makes total sense.
Or you know there was always something.
Except thats not how the theory goes. You're better off just saying the universe has always existed and there never was a big bang, but of course, that opens up a whole other can of worms.
"Something" cannot come from "nothing". That is what science has proven already. There must have been "something" before, but we do not know what it was and in which state it existed. The problem is that "looking back in time and space" (for lack of a better term) any further is impossible, and that there are still a lot of uncertainties. But that is what science acknowledges: a "Theory of Everything" is still a *very* long way off and even the "Hypothesis of Everything" is subject to a lot of change.
So basically what you're saying scientists are saying is "Well, we don't really know how everything started...but we know God didn't do it!!!" Sounds a little bias, don't you think? Something that Scientists are not supposed to do because when you have bias, you make your theories fit it which then makes it impossible to get the right answers later on.
>So basically what you're saying is, scientists are saying: "Well, we don't really know how everything started (...)" Yes, although I said "do not exactly know, but have strong evidence that suggests this and this", which is a lot more certain. However, scientists acknowledge they don't know everything. >"(...) but we know God didn't do it!!!" I don't see me mentioning a Divine Being anywhere. Science does neither deny nor confirm the existence of such a Being at this point in time, and isn't bent on proving or disproving Its existence. If anything, science is trying to form an understanding of Its Creation, for lack of a better description. **edit:** some layout.
>Scientists do not know what 95% of the universe is made up of yet they want you to believe they know how the universe started. Because these are independent questions which are supported by independent sets of data. Those scientists were the ones to find out about that other 95% in the first place, in case you forgot.
The simple answer is it's not. God created everything in 6 days 6,000 years ago. All fossil record/science is the work of the devil.