Sure, no essential dispute there. But then you can’t use the fossils as “evidence” that either those particular rocks, or the earth itself, is some billions of years old, as @Chris_Falter seemed to suggest. Attempting to do so would be circular reasoning.
Your argument throughout has been that radiometric dates cannot be accepted as “proof” of deep time IF one accepts that God can make anything unscarred seem as old as He wants it to appear.
The fossils, sandwiched as they are between layers of sedimentary rock that have radiometric dates of millions and billions of years old, are the “scars” pointing to stories of lives and deaths in various biological kingdoms.
I honestly thought that this attribute of fossils was so well known by literate adults that it did not need to be mentioned.
Now that I have patched up my grievous error in logic, please proceed.
Peace,
Chris
There are so many independent evidences for the antiquity of the earth, it is pretty mind-boggling. If someone doesn’t accept any of them, that is good evidence that their mind is boggled to begin with.
Where some of the elapsed time clocks God has engineered into creation for us to discover and learn how to use validate and verify each other’s calibration is a good place to start:
This is also a favorite, and it has nothing to do with radiometric dating of substances on earth. It also validates the consistency of the decay of radioactive nuclides:
Extinct Radioactive Atoms
Of course they are “scars,” and of course they present a history. No one would dispute that. But those for those YECs who claim the rocks themselves are young, the fossils cannot be “evidence” of an old earth. But these particular scars can only be dated to 50,000 years, not billions of years. Care to modify your original claim, that the fossils themselves are evidence of a world billions of years old?
the error, respectfully, is you are missing for some reason that YECs hardly dispute that fossils are a record of the “stories of lives and deaths in various biological kingdoms” , a record of “scars” from a world, according to their belief, some thousands of years old. They don’t believe they earth was created with false fossils, rather, the fossils were formed over the last 6,000 years or so, according to all YECs I’ve ever read.
Some 2 years after his creation, Adam may well have had a scar, or a calcified healing of a broken bone. but such “scars” would prove he had some history, rather than instantaneous creation (at least at that moment). but it wouldn’t “prove” that he had the age that the rest of his appearance would suggest. i.e., a scar would prove he had not just at that moment been instantaneously created; but it would hardly serve as “evidence” that he had to be decades old, rather than 2 years old.
So hopefully without being rude, let me spell it out…
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Person A believes the earth to be 60,000 years old…
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Person B believes the earth the be 6,000,000,000 years old.
how, exactly, does the existence of fossils, which themselves can be dated up to 50,000 years given the upper limit of C14 dating, serve as “evidence” that person B is correct and person A is in the wrong?
Glenn Morton’s @gbob’s postings were quite good (about worms making holes in multiple layers) and clearly proved against YEC; but many other evidences of varves, etc are pretty clear evidence of age much greater than 6,000 years that is without another purpose (eg, not maturity). I’d appreciate your thoughts on them. Thanks 
. Genesis is history and can't be forced to fit with evolutionary theory - #93 by jpm
The above is just a tiny slice of the information in this category.
Thank you. Because of your congeniality, it is always a pleasure to communicate with you, besides the content of our conversation.
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No 6,000 years old? 
So far, Daniel, you have entirely misunderstood what @Bill_II and I wrote. Let’s try a short quiz from Stratigraphy 101. I think you’ll be able to pass with flying colors.
Scenario: There is a geological column in Fisherville, Fisherstan. Layer 2 is late Devonian quartz with a radiometric date of 370±8Mya. Layer 4 is an late Silurian basalt with a radiometric date of 420±10Mya. Layer 3 is sedimentary so it cannot be dated with radiometric methods.
While constructing a skyscraper in Fisherville, workers dug down into Layer 3 and found some amazing fossils of lobe-finned fish.
Question: Based on radiometric dating, when did these lobe-finned fish live and die?
Hint: Scientists cannot date the sedimentary layer in which the fossils were found. Nor can they use radiometric dating on the fossils themselves. But don’t give up just yet! Can you use information from the layers above and below layer 3 to provide an upper and lower bound to the era when the lobe-finned fish were swimming?
Peace,
Chris
Um, no, I really haven’t.
You are misunderstanding our disagreement, as I have no issue with the above. I am challenging the logic of your previous question. I have no issue with your observation here or @Bill_II’s observation regarding the logic or the process of using the age of rocks as “evidence” to determine the age of fossils, whatever the specific methodology involved…
But once you have used the age of rocks to determine the age of fossils…
…you cannot then use the age of fossils as “evidence” to determine the age of rocks (or of the earth itself)!
So again, back to your original question…
Again, no. I do not agree that fossils “are evidence of an earth that is billions of years old.”
Randy, appreciate your kind interest as always… forgive my length, but perhaps you may find all this interesting…
i’m afraid I can’t give much opinion about @gbob’s post, sorry. I have enough training and education in biology and organic chemistry that I am conversant enough with genes, alleles, ATP, mutations, genetic code, protein transcription, genetic drift, etc., to weigh arguments with at least some insight and form my own relatively informed opinion on them.
When we get into the realms of either geology or physics, I recognize I am out of my league, and thus hold any opinions very loosely. @gbob’s posts are indeed impressive, and sound very convincing, but I am simply not conversant enough to know what I’m looking at, and whether or not his observations would be indeed devastating to a YEC conversant with the geology.
For instance, many YEC’s make a big deal about polystrate fossils, and claim that at face value this proves beyond debate that layers of sediment that are normally claimed as having been laid down how many ever thousands or millions of years old can and must have been laid down very quickly, else the organism would have decayed before it could have fossilized.
This sounds very convincing to me on its face, but likewise, I simply don’t have enough familiarity in the field to know how convincing this should or shouldn’t be to me, similar to @gbob’s excellent posts. They impress me, but I am just not conversant enough to know how hard or easy they would be to refute, nor about the quality of any refutation. But i am conversant enough with biology to know when something just doesn’t pass the proverbial “smell test” to me.
Thus for me, the question of YEC/OEC is simply not important to me personally, partly because the questions involved there are out of my league, partly because to me it makes very little difference theologically or otherwise, and partly because given Einstein’s principles of relativity, there may not even be one correct answer!
But that said, I am indeed open to the observations, considerations, and hypotheses of YEC, though for certain reasons I don’t fall easily “into their camp”, so to speak…
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I fully agree with YECs, as I understand them, that when Scripture speaks about historic or scientific matters, it does so unerringly.
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I disagree with YECs to the extent that they seem to believe that they can tell, unerringly, when the Bible is indeed speaking about historic or scientific matters, rather than using metaphor, poetry, etc.
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I agree with YECs to the extent that I believe that Scripture (“special revelation”), as inerrant revelation, absolutely should inform, qualify, and sometimes overrule or correct our understanding of science.
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I disagree with YECs to the extent that they seem not to acknowledge the reverse truth: that science (“general revelation”) is also inerrant revelation from God, and should likewise inform, qualify, and sometimes correct or overrule our understanding of Scripture.
Thus, in just the same way I always try to qualify my understanding of one part of scripture given another, using the principle of allowing “scripture to interpret scripture”, and give no automatic preference to one part that always overrides another, I likewise try to allow general and special revelation to mutually interpret each other, giving no absolute preference to one over the other, as both are inerrant revelation from God, being interpreted by fallible humans.
Thus why, unlike many here, I do not automatically dismiss the observations, hypotheses, or arguments of YECs… I do not listen to “science alone” to answer such questions. I am entirely open to the idea that Scripture may be speaking on scientific or historical matters here, and thus indeed may need to correct our understanding of science.
But neither do I fall easily into the YEC camp, because they go further than I could… I agree that science can never correct or contradict the Bible… but they seem to, in effect, claim, “Science can never correct my interpretation of the Bible.” I hope that is not uncharitable, but it is my impression. And I am always ready to modify any interpretation of Scripture that I hold, based on other clarifying revelation, be that revelation special or general. I am entirely open to the idea that science may need to correct our interpretation of Scripture at certain points, something YECs seem unwilling to entertain.
(But no matter how tentative and untrained my knowledge of geology and physics, I can still spot faulty logic when I see it… hence my objection to the claim that the mere existence of fossils, on their own, could somehow be “evidence” that the earth is some billions of years old.)
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Thank you! I enjoyed your post.
I think that @Chris_Falter and @Bill_II were not implying that the existence of fossils alone was the proof–that’s perhaps an instance of GK Chesterton’s illustration of how we miscommunicate by assuming the other person knows what we mean. The evidence of fossils being old is quite strong (interesting quote on the age of the Earth’s core that I had not considered before, but as it’s been validated so much, it’s not likely to affect age of the universe), so I think they meant that with the evidence of age, one would expect the earth to be equally (and more) old. I’d be interested what you think of the varves and illustration in the Biologos excerpt. Glenn Morton’s point was that it takes more than a day to lay down each layer of sediment, with extensive worm tunneling; and so that doesn’t fit in the YEC narrative in the enormous, marvelous detail seen.
I understand your concern about inerrancy and interpretation; it’s better put than many explanations I have read. I wonder if you have read the Counterpoints series on Genesis? “Four Views on the Historical Adam,” and “Three Views on Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?”. I have both books, but haven’t yet read the second. We’ve had a good conversation on inerrancy in the past. I think that some of the issue is, again, language; it seems to me that God uses language appropriate to our understanding. It would not help me now to have Him communicate regarding quarks or, much less, some other scientific theory that will be discovered in the future. I would not understand it. Perhaps that’s why He used the language of the day to communicate with the folk of the day.
Again, thank you for your discussion.
Addendum: I came to geology from a very YEC stance at my first college level course in 1991. I was rather obnoxious, most likely, because several times I asked YEC type questions of the very kind prof, John Bartley. I recall that he unfailingly responded with kindness and patience. (Some of the other students were not so patient). Finally I began to realize that his approach was sincere, and that he was not only concerned with truth, but excelled compared to me in empathy. I was better able to learn the science as a result.
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Appreciated, thanks. Again, I’d have to do some kind of deep study of worms and sediment and varves and the like as I am entirely unfamiliar… and with anything like this I would also want to study a response from a YEC who is familiar with the concept, and even then, I would not have a good frame of reference to judge between the two perspectives to have a valuable opinion. All I could do in such settings is to see if one side appears to be hand waving evidence, or making unwarranted assumptions, or the like. I’ll take a look at some point perhaps if and when I have time.
That was certainly not @Bill_II’s point in the least, and I don’t think @Chris_Falter was trying to suggest that fossils were the only proof of an old earth. But I bristled (and still do) at his suggestion that the existence of fossils in the ground, with no further qualification than that, could in any way be considered “evidence of an earth that is billions of years old.”
If the age of fossils is determined from the age of the surrounding earth, their age simply can’t be used as evidence for a certain age of the surrounding earth. Whatever I do or don’t know about geology, I do know something about circular reasoning.
On the other hand, if he is not claiming anything about the age of the fossils as determining the age of the earth, rather, simply that their existence is evidence of “scars” in the world that demonstrate non-instantaneous creation, then his claim is simply a non sequitur. I could just as likewise claim… “There are stone arrowheads in the ground. So would you agree they are evidence of an earth that is billions of years old?”
I think I understand where your are coming from.
You have no problem with the dating of particular fossils when the layers above and below the fossils can be dated. Correct?
You object to the use of index fossils which are used to date the layers of rocks above and below them. Maybe?
Edit to add:
On a second reading of this I am not sure I am understanding you correctly. When you say “evidence for a certain age of the surrounding earth” do you mean a certain age for planet Earth? To me once a date can be assigned to any part of the planet there are two possibilities. The planet is older than that date or the planet was created with a false evidence for its age. Since we are told we can see God in His creation I have to reject the second option.
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Actually, you can. And we have discussed why at some length.
Recall that we have been using an analogy of trying to determine whether the man standing in front of you is in fact 30 years old, or whether he was miraculously created a minute ago with a mere appearance of age.
In the same way, we are discussing in this thread whether the earth we inhabit is truly 4+ billion years old, or whether it was created merely 6000 or so years ago with the apparent age of 4+ billion years.
How would we determine whether the man standing in front of us was truly 30 years old rather than created ex nihilo a minute ago? Here’s one way: Check his arms and hands for scars. If you see numerous scars, you would conclude that they point to events (wounds) that occurred months or years ago. The scars would help you decide that the man is well and truly 30 years old, and not created ex nihilo a minute ago with an apparent age.
In the same way, fossils point to events that happened millions and billions of years ago. At one point you seemed to think that fossils could not be dated by any method other than radiocarbon (maximum span of 50k years), but in your last post you grasped that the fossils point to lives lived in deep time, just as the radiometrically dated geological strata that sandwich them were formed in deep time.
To summarize:
- The radiometric dating of geological strata tells us an age of billions of years.
- The fossils (are like scars that) tell us that the age is real, not merely apparent.
Peace,
Chris
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Appreciate the thoughts… No, as understand the concept of an index fossil, I don’t even object to that, as there is still nothing particularly circular, so long as the reasoning and procedure is done properly. Radiometric dating is used as you describe to date an index fossil, then that index fossil is used to estimate that other certain strata are likely similar in age, if for whatever reason those strata can’t themselves be dated by such radiometric manners. In and of itself, I have no objection, and that process is not circular, though I can see potential of various assumptions or estimations that must be carefully corrected for. There may indeed be difficulties or problems, but no, that is not my objection.
For as I understand it, that is not circular… the “starting point” is not the conclusion… certain rocks are dated as some 500 million years old by radiometric dating, this is then used to date an index fossil, and this is then used to date other strata.
My objection is rather when someone, for instance a YEC, doubts the starting point… in the case above, let’s say my YEC friend doubts that the age of the first rock, used to date the fossil, is in fact 500 million years old.
At that point, it becomes circular reasoning to argue that “of course that rock is 500 million years old, because look, it has a 500 million year old fossil in it!”
Do you follow me thus far, and why I would find any argument circular that suggested that fossils could ever be used as evidence for the old age of the earth?
So their actual objection is to the method used to date the rock, not the age of the fossil. So they object to radiometric dating. And using radiometric dating is just one method that can give us the age of the Earth with no reference to fossils.
Which is why fossils are not used to directly show the age of the Earth (except perhaps in an Internet discussion). But you will agree that when fossils are dated using radiometric dating methods that places a lower bound on the age of the Earth correct? All of these lower bounds being much greater than 6,000 years.
It is geology and not biology that establishes the age of the Earth. And it was geology that first brought into question the 6,000 year old Earth long before Darwin.
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I wish you could stand back and look at the big picture. You can argue about one particular elapsed time clock all you want, but even if you are not convinced about the rationale behind its mechanism, that does not invalidate (pun not intended ) all the rest of the daters. There are a slew of them, and, significantly, they are not interdependent!
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I find it interesting (from what I observe) that YEC like to talk about process: why does the earth look and act the way it does, but old earthers like to talk about age. Speaking as a YEC, an old earther needs to convince me of the how and why the earth looks and acts the way it does before I can consider an old age of the earth.
Geology is all about the process and how things ended up to be how they are now. The age is merely one parameter, so you are correct to say that “old earthers” do discuss age. YECs do not talk about age because there is very little difference in age for anything. Everything is essentially the same age… The Hawaiian Islands were all created in the same year, according to YEC, as the Pacific plate moved along at several meters per second, while the island chain was created. This as opposed to the Pacific Plate moving at mere centimeters per year, as it is currently measured to be moving.
See this:
As compared to this:
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A process that has to get the Earth looking like it does in a matter of a few hundred years. And the process that they come up with is rather hard to believe.
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