If the Earth is only 6, years old, why does radiometric dating techniques used by geologists suggest the age is around much older? Well, AIG answers this exact question by explaining that radiometric dating is based on erroneous assumptions and cannot be trusted. AIG suggests that while it seems constant to us, this is a massive extrapolation of data to assume that the rate would have been constant back at the beginning of the earth.
However, the reality of radioactivity is that we know the rate of decay is constant based on both physics and mathematics check out this video for how we can use mathematical proof models to demonstrate constant rates of decay. Therefore, the AIG argument that we do not know that decay rates are constant demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of empirical data and mathematical relations that describe the natural world around us.
In fact, they completely disregard the many different types of dating techniques scientists use that each confirm one another. For instance, other forms of absolute dating exist such as tree ring counting, thermoluminescence, electron spin resonance, and many other different types of radiometric techniques. I encourage you to explore these techniques here and understand this for yourself.
Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of creation Genesis —5. From there, we can begin to calculate the age of the earth. Adam was created on day 6, so there were five days before him. If we add up the dates from Adam to Abraham, we get about 2, years, using the Masoretic Hebrew text of Genesis 5 and At this point, the first five days are negligible. Quite a few people have done this calculation using the Masoretic text which is what most English translations are based on and with careful attention to the biblical details, they have arrived at the same time frame of about 6, years, or about B.
Two of the most popular, and perhaps best, are a recent work by Dr. Floyd Jones 4 and a much earlier book by Archbishop James Ussher 5 — See table 1. The misconception exists that Ussher and Jones were the only ones to arrive at a date of B.
Jones 6 lists several chronologists who have undertaken the task of calculating the age of the earth based on the Bible , and their calculations range from to B.
A few are listed in table 2. As you will likely note from table 2, the dates are not all B. There are several reasons chronologists have different dates, 7 but two primary reasons:. Because of this, the Septuagint adds in extra time. Though the Samarian and Masoretic texts are much closer, they still have a few differences. See table 3. Using data from table 2 excluding the Septuagint calculations and including Jones and Ussher , the average date of the creation of the earth is B.
This still yields an average of about 6, years for the age of the earth. Table 3. Cultures throughout the world have kept track of history as well. From a biblical perspective, we would expect the dates given for creation of the earth to align more closely to the biblical date than billions of years. This is expected since everyone was descended from Noah and scattered from the Tower of Babel. Another expectation is that there should be some discrepancies about the age of the earth among people as they scattered throughout the world, taking their uninspired records or oral history to different parts of the globe.
See table 4. The Irish chronology has a date of about B. Even the Mayans had a date for the Flood of B. This meticulous work of many historians should not be ignored. Their dates of only thousands of years are good support for the biblical date of about 6, years, but not for billions of years. Prior to the s, few believed in an old earth. The approximate 6,year age for the earth was challenged only rather recently, beginning in the late 18th century.
These opponents of the biblical chronology essentially left God out of the picture. Three of the old-earth advocates included Comte de Buffon, who thought the earth was at least 75, years old.
And Jean Lamarck also proposed long ages. However, the idea of millions of years really took hold in geology when men like Abraham Werner, James Hutton, William Smith, Georges Cuvier, and Charles Lyell used their interpretations of geology as the standard, rather than the Bible. Werner estimated the age of the earth at about one million years. Smith and Cuvier believed untold ages were needed for the formation of rock layers. From these men and others came the consensus view that the geologic layers were laid down slowly over long periods of time based on the rates at which we see them accumulating today.
Hutton said:. Though some, such as Cuvier and Smith, believed in multiple catastrophes separated by long periods of time, the uniformitarian concept became the ruling dogma in geology. Thinking biblically, we can see that the global flood in Genesis 6—8 would wipe away the concept of millions of years, for this Flood would explain massive amounts of fossil layers. Most Christians fail to realize that a global flood could rip up many of the previous rock layers and redeposit them elsewhere, destroying the previous fragile contents.
This would destroy any evidence of alleged millions of years anyway. So the rock layers can theoretically represent the evidence of either millions of years or a global flood, but not both. Sadly, by about , even most of the Church had accepted the dogmatic claims of the secular geologists and rejected the global flood and the biblical age of the earth. After Lyell, in , Lord Kelvin William Thomson calculated the age of the earth, based on the cooling rate of a molten sphere, at a maximum of about 20—40 million years this was revised from his earlier calculation of million years in But there is growing scientific evidence that radiometric dating methods are completely unreliable.
Christians who have felt compelled to accept the millions of years as fact and try to fit them into the Bible need to become aware of this evidence.
Tree rings form a unique fingerprint as trees across a region are exposed to similar conditions. For this reason, overlapping ring patterns from living, dead, and fossilized trees can be lined up to build continuous series stretching back through thousands and thousands of years.
No fancy science required. And at a certain point, the dendro dates line up with ocean core dates and pack ice dates, both of which go back hundreds of thousands of years--but that might take a little scientific know how. Easier are simple geologic strata:. Those lines are sedimentation lines that form 40 major layers spanning 2 billion years of deposition.
Okay, you might need a degree in geology to tell desert sand deposition from silt and to follow the series around the West to account for disconformities, but even a casual, unbiased evaluation will convince you utterly of two things: 1 The canyon was laid down by erosion through ancient sediments, not cut by any flood, and 2 those sediments were laid down over many, many, many millions of years. And that's just scratching the surface, so to speak.
Even the Pope knows the Earth is 4. When you accept it and start studying the data, you'll discover something important. Many of those loudly proclaiming a young Earth these days must unavoidably understand how far their claims are from what the Earth really tells us--but they keep on saying it anyway, and selling books and lecture tickets.
I wonder why they would do that? This question originally appeared on Quora. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline.
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