Your religion: How old is the earth?

[barney]

I really don't think you should use this approach. It just won't work, trust me... I've got some back ground in physics... carbon dating has been shown to be too reliable to be wrong by as much as say, a million years.

...

So a 400 million year old rock could be a 399 million year old rock instead.
Or if carbon dating is ten thousand times less accurate than what everyone knows it to be, that means the world is at least 40,000 years old.

Which is bad news for cavemen!
And Worse news for scripture.

 

[Malaikah]

I meant to say billions in my post.

By the way, I think you totally missed the last line of my last post.

 

[thirdwatch512]

Shalom (Peace),

Orthodox Judaism does hold that the earth is a few thousand years old, at least the circles I am in, however I will present to you the following analogy. Adam was created as a 20 year old, obviously in mature form. If Adam the day he was created as a 20 year old went to the doctors and was asked how old he was, he would reply "1 day old" and the doctor would of course laugh. The answer is that the earth was created in a mature form like Adam.

Why such a belief in the creation of a mature earth would scare anyone is beyond me. There are enough rapists and criminals running around our cities that taking a minute of your time being "scared" by such a belief in a way scared me more.

i found an article on some site (don't remember, as i pasted it to word pad LOL) that shows how some early Jews calculated and have predicted the earth at an age similar to the age evolutionists say.

Still, how do six days of creation equal fifteen billion years? According to the calculations of the 13th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac of Acco, the universe is precisely 15,340,500,000 years old.

The calculation proceeds as follows:

According to the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a, " R. Kattina said: Six thousand years shall the world exist, and one [thousand, the seventh], it shall be desolate…". Ancient and medieval Kabbalists such as Nehunya ben HaKanah, in Sefer HaTemunah (written about 100 AD) and Rabbi Isaac of Acco understood these seven thousand years a running parallel to the Jewish Sabbatical cycle. In this cycle the fields are planted and harvested for six years and left unplanted in the seventh year.2

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, who apart from being a rabbi, also held a master’s degree in physics, cites the calculations of Rabbi Isaac of Acco in his commentaries on the book Sefer Yehzirah: The Book of Creation. This book has an oral tradition going back to Abraham, but was first committed to writing about 1500 years ago. In his commentary on this book Rabbi Kaplan writes:

"According to the master Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac of Acco, when counting the years of these cycles, one must not use an ordinary physical year, but rather, a divine year. The Midrash says that each divine day is a thousand years, basing this on the verse, "A thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday" (Psalm 90:4). Since each year contains 364 ¼ days, a divine year would be 365,250 years long.

According to this, each cycle of seven thousand divine years would consist of 2,556,750,000 earthly years. This figure of two-and-a-half billion years is very close to the scientific estimate as to the length of time that life has existed on earth.

If we assume that the seventh cycle began with the Biblical account of creation, then this would have occurred when the universe was 15,340,500,000 years old. This is very close to the scientific estimate that the expansion of the universe began some fifteen billion years ago" (Kaplan 186).

That a thirteenth century rabbi could have so accurately calculated the age of the universe, using only the Scriptures and Jewish traditions, is astounding. It would take science nearly seven hundred more years to arrive at this same figure.

 

[rav]

I really don't think you should use this approach. It just won't work, trust me... I've got some back ground in physics... carbon dating has been shown to be too reliable to be wrong by as much as say, a billion years.

Peace,

Is that not under the assumption that every observation science makes is true? I have already explained how an observation by science can be true, such as the case of the Midrash telling us that Adam was created as a 20 year old, yet it may not be actually true (i.e. he was one day old).

Can you tell me about the half-life of 14C?

 

[Woodrow]

Peace,

Is that not under the assumption that every observation science makes is true? I have already explained how an observation by science can be true, such as the case of the Midrash telling us that Adam was created as a 20 year old, yet it may not be actually true (i.e. he was one day old).

Can you tell me about the half-life of 14C?

Carbon dating is interesting Here is a good article about it and how it is best used.

The Usefulness of Carbon 14

By Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

RTB's correspondence team is asked repeatedly to explain methods for dating the age of the universe and earth. The most frequent question has to do with the reliability of carbon 14 dating.

I make no mention of carbon 14 in my books for six reasons: First, the carbon 14 dating method measures the time since a living organism has died. Thus, it is useless for measuring anything that has never been alive, such as a rock. Second, compared with many other radiometric elements, carbon 14 decays quickly. It is useless for dating anything older than about 50,000 years. Third, because carbon 14 forms from cosmic ray bombardment of nitrogen 14 (and decays back into nitrogen 14 through the release of beta particles, i.e., electrons) the effect of variations in cosmic radiation intensity (caused by altitude, depth below the earth's surface, and astronomical events) can be difficult to calibrate. Fourth, a specimen's contamination by carbon from surrounding soil, water, vegetation, and animal matter can seriously undermine accuracy of tests on a given sample. Fifth, the release of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning significantly dilutes carbon 14, and researchers have no accurate way to calibrate this dilution factor. Sixth, and perhaps most significant, astronomy provides much simpler, more consistent, and more direct methods for measuring the date for creation.

With all these strikes against it, you might wonder why carbon 14 dating draws so much attention. Of all the dating methods that scientists use, carbon 14 has received the most publicity. Why? Perhaps because it's the method commonly used in dating popular artifacts, such as the Shroud of Turin.

Also, many young-earth creationists have attempted to discredit all scientific tools for age-determination by demonstrating how unreliable carbon 14 can be. In their book, Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity (Here's Life Publishers, 1981), Josh McDowell and Don Stewart poke fun at a Yale University study yielding three different ages for an antler -- 5,340 years, 9,310 years, and 10,320 years. Their derision is unwarranted, however, for the researchers explained what caused variations in result: limestone contamination of the sample. The 5,340 years is the carbon 14 date for the limestone contaminant; the 10,320 years is the antler's date; and the 9,310 years is the date for the antler and limestone combined.

People without training in science may not understand that any radiometric dating method can only be trusted for samples with ages close to the half-life of the element in question. Carbon 14's half-life is 5,770 years. This means it takes 5,770 years for half of the carbon 14 to decay into nitrogen 14. It takes 11,540 years for three fourths of the carbon 14 to decay, 17,310 years for seven-eighths of the carbon to decay, and 23,080 years for fifteen-sixteenths of the carbon to decay. Thus, the half-life of carbon 14 makes it a useful dating tool only for specimens between about 500 and 25,000 years old. Because of carbon 14's effectiveness range, it has been an excellent tool for giving us accurate dates of ancient Bible manuscripts. These dates have proved invaluable for settling disputes about authorship of various books of the Bible. Likewise, the carbon 14 dating of archeological artifacts has repeatedly vindicated biblical texts against the criticism of skeptics. As with other tools, it proves beneficial if and when it is applied to the right task.

Here are some brief guidelines for evaluating the trustworthiness of a carbon 14 test. First, always look at the age range to insure that it is appropriate--somewhere between 500 and 25,000 years. Second, look for the error bar. The size of possible error indicates the degree of contamination of the specimen tested or inadequacy of the sample's size. Third, be extra cautious about measurements dating back to eras when cosmic ray intensity was significantly less than it is today. More specifically, a dramatic supernova (massive star explosion) occurred near Earth (about a thousand light years distant) between 8,000 and 15,000 years ago. That event dramatically increased Earth's level of cosmic ray bombardment.

Even in cases of reasonable doubt about the date-determining accuracy of carbon 14, the measure may still have value. It can be helpful in showing that one sample is older or younger than another and by roughly how much. Sometimes relative dates are all we need to answer an important question.

Source: http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/carbon14.shtml

 

[evangel]

You'll have to research this but there was a scientist who somehow measured the age of the universe from what he calculated as the center of the universe :? I'm no astrophysicist:? . He came up with an age of 6 days old!
What I find compelling about this is that biblically it would put us in the day that man was created.

 

[evangel]

I'm sorry I didn't address the original question; approximately 6000 years old.

 

[YusufNoor]

just to answer, but will have to find links...

the curent age of the uni is 18 Billion Years old, Islamically speaking.

there was a formula, but short term memory loss prevents me from recalling it!:-[

i will, Insha' Allah, dedicate a few brain cells to recalling where i saw this...

 

[Malaikah]

Is that not under the assumption that every observation science makes is true? I have already explained how an observation by science can be true, such as the case of the Midrash telling us that Adam was created as a 20 year old, yet it may not be actually true (i.e. he was one day old).

I'm not sure what you are talking about specifically here, but I just meant to say that the approach of saying carbon dating is not accurate is not very effective (at least in my opinion and it will probably be laughed at by the scientific community).

I feel that the best response you can give is that the earth was creature mature, old, and that includes the carbon 14 content too... I will elaborate on that below.

Can you tell me about the half-life of 14C?

I don't know what the half-life is exactly, but do you understand how carbon dating works? Basically there is a certain fixed ratio in the environment of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12. When an organism dies, it's carbon supply stops, so it never gets new carbon (such as when we die we stop eating so we don't get any more carbon coming in to our body). The carbon-12 stays for good, unless it is physically removed, but the carbon-14 decays and is converted into a difference element, so the amount of carbon-14 relative to carbon 12 decreases. The rate at which carbon-14 decays is called the half life, and it is defined as the time taken for half the sample of the element to decay. So by comparing the ratio, we can figure out how many half-lives the carbon-14 has been through and hence how old the object is...

So........ this fits in to the mature-model of the universe by saying that it is possible that God may have created these object with a lesser carbon-14 content as if they truly had been so and so thousands of years old.

Hope that makes sense...

You'll have to research this but there was a scientist who somehow measured the age of the universe from what he calculated as the center of the universe :? I'm no astrophysicist:? . He came up with an age of 6 days old!
What I find compelling about this is that biblically it would put us in the day that man was created.

LOL! Someone needs to double check is results!:giggling: