Objections to vast ages of earth

Faith & Science Conversation
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Makes sense. I just know I’m not qualified to evaluate the science myself.

They took more science than me. They know a lot more about radioactive decay and genetics respectively. For what it’s worth, when I first started reading up on not-YEC views, I e-mailed a college friend because our alumni magazine had just mentioned he got a PhD in Geology and was teaching at a university in MD. When we were in college together (at Wheaton where we had assigned seats for mandatory chapel 3x a week and had to sign a pledge not to dance, so not exactly a bastion of liberalism) he was a YEC evangelist and argued with any profs or students who thought otherwise. So I asked him if he still thought that way and what he recommended reading. He replied and said as he got into his graduate studies he found YEC completely untenable based on things he could see and touch and calculate, and he was embarrassed I even remembered what he had been like as an undergrad. He told me to read “Coming to Peace with Science” and to check out BioLogos, but I’d already been there, done that.

All my friends and acquaintances who graduated from solid evangelical schools like Wheaton, Taylor, Messiah, Seattle Pacific, and Westmont and have gone on to do graduate work in science, not a single one has stayed YEC. I have never met anyone who was an agnostic or atheist science major and through studying science became convinced that the evidence pointed to YEC, which led them to Christ. Everyone I know who got into YEC as an adult accepted it after making a faith commitment to a certain way of approaching the Bible. To me that is meaningful.

I know nothing about Niagara Falls. I do know that in my own field, the evolutionary anthropology models of human migration patterns and the time frames they postulate make a lot of sense of the inter-relatedness of languages geographically and the diversity of languages we now have on earth, especially compared to a literal reading of the Tower of Babel narrative. It doesn’t prove the earth is 4.3 billion years old, but it isn’t intellectually tenable to me that the earth is 6,000 years old and all the languages on earth originated in a single place in the Middle East in 2242 BC.

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Eddie, my original question was whether anyone would take seriously the objections raised to an old age. It was not whether the objections would convince them of 6000 yr earth. I probably already attend a church or churches where a large number of people think the globe is quite old, not a few thousand years young. I’m not sure I would even call myself a strict YEC person. And I don’t go around looking for reasons to disfellowship with those who claim Christ as their saviour and Lord. But I would probably stop attending a church where YEC are ridiculed or dismissed out of hand. I believe they are true scientists, that they are as intelligent as anyone else, and that the objections they raise are not absurd, preposterous, nor ridiculous. I believe the evolutionary paradigm in general is influenced very heavily by a materialistic and irrelevant-God perspective. And thus I am naturally and justifiably suspicious of it, just as people have been suspicious of marxism, or pure capitalism, or pure environmentalism, all of which rather tend to make God irrelevant to their ideology or practice.

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It is interesting to think about qualifications… are we qualified to agree with the experts? How do we know they are experts? Anyway, let me give you a recent example of how a lack of knowledge can easily sway one to one position or another. In looking at the list of 101 objections and the responses in your link (rationalwiki), I saw a response to the C14 question in coal and oil. I thought, ouch, that was a good response, that uranium decay could cause nitrogen in coal to change to C14. It sounds like he knows what he is talking about, and sounds very plausible. YEC is in trouble for sure on this one. I was not aware of a YEC response. But then, I searched, and what did I find? a response by CMI on creation.com. A simple and telling response was that for uranium decay to have caused this amount of C14 it would have to consist of 99% uranium; in other words, although yes uranium decay could cause C14, the amount measured is not similar to what uranium could produce. (This reply was given by Jonathan Sarfati, PhD in physical chemistry.) The 14C was produced by U-fission (actually it’s cluster decay of radium isotopes that are in the uranium decay chain). This was an excuse proposed for 14C in coal, also analysed in Dr Baumgardner’s paper, but not possible for diamonds. But to explain the observed 14C, then the coal would have to contain 99% uranium, so colloquial parlance would term the sample ‘uranium’ rather than ‘coal’.1

So its like a chess game, one move instigates another, and then responds to another. So at least so far, the response to this objection to me appears to be entirely inadequate. And that’s why the actual science interests me so much.

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I’ve seen several critiques of these young-earth evidences that don’t actually address them properly. Arguments such as “there’s a lot of evidence for an old earth” or “so-and-so says this” or “these are just eccentricities” aren’t very helpful because they don’t actually pinpoint specific problems, and in many cases descend into ad-hominem attacks and appeals to authority.

That isn’t what’s needed here. What’s needed here is some kind of discussion on exactly what standards an objection to an old earth should be expected to meet, whether or not these YEC objections actually meet those standards, and if not then why not.

Here are a few examples of questions that I’d ask. Others may wish to add more:

  1. Is it backed up with hard facts and figures, or does it just make a broad claim of “that’s implausible”? Take soft tissue remnants in fossils, for example. What exactly was found, how much exactly do we know about rates of decomposition, DNA fragmentation and fossilisation, and can we put some hard figures on just how implausible it is that these fossils were indeed 68 million years old? Similarly, exactly how fast should we expect the moon’s core to have cooled and why?

  2. Is it based on robust, stable, time-independent chronometers? Or on phenomena that are likely to have varied significantly with time, are susceptible to environmental or climatological conditions, or are difficult if not impossible to pin down with any accuracy? This criterion raises serious questions for arguments based on salt or sedimentation rates in the oceans, for example.

  3. Is it well within the observational or experimental limits of that which is being measured? For example, just how much carbon-14 was found in coal, oil and diamonds, and was this sufficient to be able to rule out contamination and known background effects?

  4. Has it been replicated by multiple independent teams? You can’t call something scientific evidence if it’s based on a single study by a single team because there may be unforeseen systematic errors or confirmation biases. (Classic example: cold nuclear fusion.) Have the findings of the RATE project on helium diffusion in zircons been replicated by anyone else, for example?

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James, you have asked some good questions. Especially that broad claims are not often sufficient to pin down a problem. So the research that discovered and evaluated dinosaur tissue undoubtedly found soft tissue originating from the inside of bones. This soft tissue was several different things, including collagen, blood cells, and included pieces of dna. Normal decontamination procedures were used and the work duplicated even more carefully in subsequent work by which time finding these things was expected. Normal understanding of decomposition would mean that none of this type of material would exist after several ten thousand years, and this was stretched eventually to a million years as an outlier. So, the problem is that these fossils are presumed to come from animals that did not exist past 60 million years ago. To know that something surviving for a million years would be a fantastic outlier, would require only belief of sheer faith to imagine it could survive for 60 times as long as what is already highly improbable. Even presuming that possibly it could survive for even one million years is quite hypothetical; believing 60 million yrs for this is like believing in fairies.

Of course, salt in the ocean is not consistent over time, likely. But present rates are not necessarily an unreasonable starting point from an evolutionary perspective. It is quite possible that these rates are slower than past rates, for example. We could suppose there are a lot of things we do not know about these rates of acquisition or removal, but that is true for many postulations. This by itself is not a serious question, it is just an adhoc objection. Fact is that 62 my is a generous calculation, based on present known rates of deposition, evaporation, sequestration, etc. It assumes no salt at all originally, which is probably unreasonable. It does not assume violent eruptions and subterranean additions, which is also unlikely. So an adhoc objection about variable rates is useless and untenable. A reasonable explanation for a longer time period must be given in terms of numbers, not generalizations. For example, if evaporation took out so much more salt than this 62 my prediction estimates, then how much more? and what would that do to the estimate?

To know how fast the moon’s core should have cooled, you need to find the calculations for moon’s mass and assumed original temperature, and follow the calculations for heat loss based on mass and density and moon surface area, and temperature differential. These are available, and are what was used by YEC scientists to make this claim. Just asking questions about their procedures are not enough… you need to provide alternate calculations if you can find them.

The amount of C14 found in coal oil and diamonds was greater than the expected background amounts. While contamination is theoretically a possibility, it is not expected to be great enough to matter, and if it was that unreliable, then it would call into question the dating of other things as well. Procedures and equipment is much more precise and accurate than it used to be, which is why C14 in coal is now a viable concern. The main suggested reason for C14 in coal is uranium decay. However the amounts of radiation required for this would have to be very large, as uranium in coal itself would not produce c14 faster than it normally decays in the same quantity as produced. This could only happen when coal is imbedded in a uranium deposit likely large enough to be mined for uranium, rather than for coal.

It’s a good question whether the helium diffusion in zircons has been replicated by more than one research group. But so far I have heard of no one invalidating this approach.

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@JohnZ,

This fixation on C14 … where does this even come from!!!

Carbon 14 is used to measure very recent time horizons! It has a half life of 5,730 plus/minus 40 years! This method of testing is completely useless for dating even something 100,000 years old!

The source cited in the link below writes the following: "Radiocarbon dating doesn’t work well on objects much older than twenty thousand years, because such objects have so little C-14 left that their beta radiation is swamped out by the background radiation of cosmic rays and potassium-40 (K-40) decay. Younger objects can easily be dated, because they still emit plenty of beta radiation, enough to be measured after the background radiation has been subtracted out of the total beta radiation. "

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This fixation on C14 … where does this even come from!!!

Carbon 14 is used to measure very recent time horizons! It has a half life of 5,730 plus/minus 40 years! This method of testing is completely useless for dating even something 100,000 years old!

It’s from a project called RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth), a research project run by some of the main YEC organisations that ran from 1997-2005 looking for evidence against radiometric dating. You can read a summary and independent review of their findings here.

The RATE team argue that since C14 has been found in coals, diamonds and oil, they must be much younger than x million years old. Their critics argue that the C14 they’ve found is due to contamination. IIRC they got 20K years or so out of one sample, but most of the others were around 50K or so, which is the kind of level you’d expect from background contamination. They claim they took extra care to eliminate contamination but they’d really need to have their findings replicated by other research teams before we could draw any conclusions from them.

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The RATE team has been fully refuted as factually false. Even members of the team has come out saying the results are incorrect. Today radioisotope dating is among the most accurate measurements in all of science.

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@johnZ

Hello John, you should have started with checking the validity and the motivation of those YEC’s.
Lets start doing so.

Evidence of recent volcanic activity on Earth’s Moon…
Those dear YEC’ies have no idea of what is really going on. The Earth would have cooled down long ago if there had not been an external source of energy, the Sun, that radiates continually an immense quantity of energy into the solid central core, where that energy is converted in mass. Starting this is a very slow process. The special type of radiation passes through planets like Rontgen radiation passes through the human body, but is absorbed by a special material, that I call Material-X. The absorption is proportional to the third power of the diameter of the solid core. Earth has produced a large central core. The much lighter Moon drags long behind and shows some volcanism on a small scale

Recession of the Moon from the Earth.
The Moon recedes at a speed of 4 cm per year. That is 4,000.000 cm/M(ega)yr, which 40 km/Myr. During 4.5 billion years that is 4500 times 40km, which is some 180,000 km, about half the distance between Earth and Moon. And remember that the Moon is the result of a collision between Earth and a rogue planet. The YEC’ies jabber about a quarter of 4,5 billion years, then the distance was only 45,000 km less, some 10% less than the present distance. The Roche limit for the Earth-Moon combination is less than 20,000 km and the distance between them was already larger when the Moon was formed or the Moon would never have been formed.

Carbon-14 in coal and oil suggests ages of thousands, not million years.
Of course not!. The C-14 method works as follows: fossil wood has been collected and sorted on age by looking at the pattern of the year-rings. 1941 was a cold year, 1945 was warm year. During a warm year the ring becomes thicker than during a cold year. So you need only a series of trees, who did grow in overlapping times, to count back which rings were formed in which years. Next you determine the C-14 value for each year and write those values in a table.
Once you have this table, you only have to determine the C-14 value of your sample and you know its age. Right?
No, not really. The C-14 values do not form a smooth curve. Each year has a different value. There is a certain error in your measuring of the C-14 value. And if you look that value up in the table, then you may find a number of years that have the same value. So you may have to choose a year.
And then there was the prehistoric man killed by an arrow wirh a bone tip. They used the C-14 method and found that the man was 4 centuries older than the bone tip that killed him. The explanation is that the man lived on a menu of fish.
But anyway, dating on basis of C14 is limited to less than some 30,000 years

Amount of salt in the sea.
Sometimes people cackle such nonsense that a rational answer is impossible. And this is such a case. They state something without giving the data and the method of calculation.
The same applies to the next two subjects.

Those YEC’ies who wrote this are probably alpha people who tackle beta subjects. Compare it with a lion eating grass and a cow eating meat. That does not work either.
My advice, convert to the metric system, start expressing things in mathematics and keep exercising until one day it suddenly starts making sense to you.
Also keep in mind that even decent, honest, integer and fair people are making unbelievable errors.
A well known specialist on paleomagnetism does not know how the magnetic field of our Earth is formed. Volcano researchers do not know where, how and why liquid lava is formed.

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I won’t deal with all your assertions but just this one because it illustrates what I’m talking about. The statement “It is quite possible that these rates are slower than past rates” is just speculation – it is equally possible that modern rates are faster than past rates. The fact of the matter is that unless we can definitively determine the long-term minimum rate of increase of the salinity of the oceans, we can’t draw any conclusions from it about the age of the earth. Knowing the current rate is insufficient if we can’t determine whether it’s at the fast or the slow end of the scale.

Herein lies the problem. It’s not sufficient to claim that something constitutes scientific evidence on the basis of unqualified assertions such as “probably unreasonable” or “highly unlikely.” For evidence to be considered scientific, you have to back up every aspect of these assertions of unreasonableness with hard numerical data.

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I believe I agree with you. The universe is ancient. We also agree here with Benjamin Warfield. Why do I also mention him? He was not a classic postmillennialist; however, he was an optimistic amillennialist, and that is today modern postmillennialism. Hugh Miller was a geologist in Scotland, and I believe he held an Old Earth view.

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hi jan. what do you think about radiometric dating? how mcuh they are accurate in terms of %? thanks.

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hey jammy.

so if we will find a fossil date about 20 k its mean that its a real age?

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This was the result that was claimed by the RATE team. It could only be considered meaningful if it were peer reviewed by independent experts to verify that the methodology and analysis were correctly applied, and the findings were confirmed by additional studies by other researchers. In the absence of such confirmation, it can only be considered inconclusive.

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ok. how much accurate the dating methods in terms of %? lets say that we take a rock and date it in u238. do we will get the real age of the rock?

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Today’s radio-logical dating is accurate to 0.1% to 0.01%

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but heat can effect the date. so how do you know that the rock doesnt effected by heat?

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Sorry, I know how it works, but I have no experience in this field. Also there is no straightforward answer to your question, because there are many variations on the same principle. You might look in Wikipedia.

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I’m not sure if you are out of date or not on your understanding, as well as your link… Yes, C14 is not used to date things older than 40,000 or 50,000 years old, which is based on a number of factors, and which is older than they previously felt confident about. Methods for measuring C14 decay have dramatically improved along with the field of mass spectroscopy, which can measure most elements in a substance. The issue with finding C14 in presumed aged material is that the numbers are higher than background radiation. There is no dispute that what is measured, is C14. The response that this C14 is formed from the conversion of N14 to C14 due to the decay of U238 makes that clear.

Nor are the creationists suggesting that anything at 100,000 yrs can be dated by C14. You have the argument backwards. They are saying that stuff that is claimed to be much much older than 100,000 years, ie. hundreds of millions of years, still has C14 in it. It should have none. It is clear that this C14 is distinguished from K40 or any other radioactive isotope. C14 should be absent, but it is not. Yes, if C14 was completely absent, then another method would seem to be valid. But to arbitrarily discount the C14 when it is still present seems invalid. In the same way, when another method attributes hundreds of millions of years to a sample that is less than 50 years old, this also seems invalid.

To say that C14 doesn’t work well on anything older than 20k yrs is not just because of background radiation. It is also because the conditions for formation of C14 in the past cannot be absolutely determined, but only assumed. But even if C14 was unreliable under the assumed parameter for the period of 20k to 50k yrs, we acknowledge that C14 would be expected to be present. However, for 250my we do not expect any measureable C14 to be present, since the equipment would not have the capactity to measure such an amount. Yet the equipment commonly measures C14 in some of these old samples, particularly in coal and oil and diamonds. It is not the measuring that is the problem; it is the fact that the measuring does not match the assumed ages.