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Why-Most Scientists Believe the World is Old

“There is a little-known irony in the controversy between creationists and evolutionists about the age or the world. The majority of scientists - the evolutionists - rely on the minority of the relevant data. Yet an minority of scientists - the creationists – use the majority of the relevant data: Adding to the irony is the public's wrong impression that it is the other way a round. Therefore, many ask, “If the evidence is so strong for a young earth, why do most scientists believe otherwise?' The answer is simple: Most scientists believe the earth is old because they believe most other scientists believe the earth is old.”  R Humphreys, Ph.D.    See also Geologist Tas Walker's website.

In the late 1700's the earth was believed to be about 75,000 years old.

In 1862, calculations changed that belief to between 20 million and 400 million years. Then it was changed to 56 million years old. In 1897 it went back to 40 million, then later to 80 to 100 million years.

When radiometric dating was invented that changed the belief to between 250 million to 1.3 billion years. In 1927 that was changed again to 1.6 to 3.0 billion years.

However, "modern" dating methods changed the belief once again to around 4.53 to 4.58 billion years. Modern folks tend to forget that all past dating methods were thought around the time they were done, to be "modern."

It time, future "modern" dating methods will no doubt change the date once again, and when that happens, the faithful will believe they have the truth. This is because they have unquestioning faith in what they are told. (R. Comfort)

The following is a segment from "In the Minds of Men" by Ian Taylor © TFE Publ. 2004. To obtain a copy (or the CD) email  http://creation.com/

Chapter 12

"The poor world is almost 6,000 years old".

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
(1599)

It seems that as long as mankind has been keeping records, there has been a compulsion to keep track of time, the age of the individual, of his social group, his country, his empire, and of civilization itself. The records have been chiseled in stone and kept on paper and papyrus, but it is only in the past two millennia that the Judeo-Christian West has related its records to one historical event, a fact that has greatly simplified the record keeping. Dates within the A.D. time frame are, thus, fairly certain. The further one goes back in the B.C. era, however, the dates become increasingly less certain until, eventually, beyond about 2000 B.C., the dates given are actually a consensus of opinions from the prevailing school of thought.

The archaeological dates depend on a continuum of evidence, such as interrelated king lists with the years of reign, and as such, this is primary data. Dating by the carbon 14 radiometric method, for example, is secondary data, because this method is first calibrated against archaeologically dated material. More will be said of the carbon 14 method in the next chapter.

To go back further in time, estimates are made from the natural processes, largely independent of each other and certainly independent of the hand of man. More will be said of these in this chapter and the next, but it may first be asked, Can we legitimately consider the ancient written records? There are many of these of which the Bible is only one. As in the case of the written testimony of our own birth, these records are only as good as our trust in the authors. Although these sources cannot be taken as proof of the beginning, we might consider their coincidental record from widely different cultures to be circumstantial evidence.

The Age of the Earth Before Lyell and Darwin

One concise and readily available source of nineteenth century information is Robert Young's concordance, and in the popular twenty-second edition, under "creation", will be found a list of thirty-seven computations of the date of creation from a possible list of more than one hundred and twenty. Of these thirty-seven, thirty are based on the Bible and seven are derived from other sources -- Abyssinian, Arab, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, and Persian. Not one of these ancient records puts the date of creation earlier than 7000 B.C. In all the hundreds of thousands of years over which hominid man is alleged to have evolved, it is surely more than coincidental that ancient civilizations, which were by no means ignorant of timekeeping by astronomical methods, should all begin their historical record at this arbitrary date. In addition, all the myths and legends, however bizarre, speak of instant creation just a few thousand years earlier.

In almost every system of historical chronology, either the creation of the world or the birth of Christ has been adopted as the reference point to which all other dates are subordinate. The dating system based on the birth of Christ will be familiar to most readers and is, in fact, used throughout the world today for business transactions. However, in non-Christian countries, and Israel specifically, the eras are referred to as: B.C.E., before the common era, and C.E., the common era. In religious communities dating is often from the creation of the world. For example, orthodox Jews begin their dating at 3760 B.C., while the Freemasons begin theirs at 4,000 B.C.

Before the rise of science, it was usual for the church hierarchy to set forth pronouncements and deliberations on such issues as the age of the earth. Until the time of Darwin, the Old Testament Scriptures were held to be the literal truth. While the Bible does not spell out the date of creation, it was believed that this could be derived from the somewhat complicated genealogies and ages of the patriarchs. A number of scholars in the past have attempted to deduce the date of creation by this means, and a few of the more popular estimates were: Playfair, 4008 B.C.; Ussher, 4004 B.C.; Kepler, 3993 B.C.; and Lightfoot, 3928 B.C. These scholars were each proficient in a number of ancient languages, yet the fact that their dates were close but not coincident means that it is not a simple matter to establish the beginning exactly from the biblical genealogies; to this day there are men still working on this problem. Nevertheless, the date 4004 B.C. has generally been thought to be the most likely beginning point, and this has been associated with Anglican Archbishop James Ussher, although several other workers arrived at this same figure in Ussher's day.

In 1701 the date 4004 B.C. for the year of creation was inserted as a marginal commentary in the English edition of the Great Bible by Bishop Lloyd and, by association, thus became incorporated into the dogma of the Christian church. By the time the theory of evolution came into open conflict with church dogma, almost every Bible published in the nineteenth century had Ussher's date appended to the first page, followed by sequential dates throughout to the time of the birth of Christ. As the church succumbed to the reasonings of science, these dates were quietly dropped from the Bible's beginning about 1880.

There are few texts that, when discussing the age of the earth, fail to mention Ussher's name and his date of 4004 B.C. Many of these texts add a further detail ascribed to Ussher and pinpoint the time of creation at 9 A.M. on 17 September or 9 A.M. on 23 October, depending on the authority being quoted. The facts are that this specification of the precise time of creation did not originate with Archbishop Ussher but with his contemporary, John Lightfoot, who, except for a propensity to indulge in some idle speculation, has been effectively used, particularly by geology and biology textbook writers, to discredit the Ussher date. Characteristically, not only have the details been attributed to the wrong author but careful reading shows, for example, that the 9 A.M. statement was actually taken out of context in the first place (Lightfoot 1825, 2:335 ).

So much for the time of creation and the consequent age of the earth from the biblical perspective. If this record is to be taken at all seriously, it may be appreciated that the minimum age of the earth at this point is about six thousand years; while allowing for possible omissions in the genealogies, it might be a one thousand years or so older, but hardly more. The exact figure may never be known, but the point is that this is about a million times less than the current estimates of the age of the earth as given by science. Quite obviously, these two estimates are poles apart and provide the basis for diametrically opposed ideologies.

Time and Rationality in the Nineteenth Century

Historical time is unique; once passed, a moment can never be recaptured, and, without witnesses, can only be inferred from assumptions. It is no coincidence, then, that the theory of evolution, as formulated by Darwin and as we subsequently know it today, is founded on Lyell's geology. As we saw in Chapters Three and Four, Lyell's geology is, in turn, based on a device whereby traditional catastrophe became the quiet outworkings of natural processes observable today. That device was the philosophical stretching of time, from a few thousand years, implied by the biblical testimony and engraved on the nineteenth century mind, to an almost open-ended scale, reckoned today in thousands of millions of years. Lyell exploited the impossibility to recapture past events, and once having broken into this virgin ground, it then became a private preserve for his followers and had the convenience of having a sliding scale of time to fit the current theory.

Science was not very sophisticated in the early nineteenth century, and the only problem confronting the unproven assumption of the long ages proposed by Lyell was the mind-set of other scientists of the day and, of course, of the theologians, many of whom happened to be the same scientists! Nevertheless, the revolution from young earth to old earth was the snowball starting the whole avalanche that eventually changed mankind's entire Weltanschauung, or worldview….."

"In the Minds of Men" by Ian Taylor © TFE Publ. 2004.  Obtain a copy or the CD edition email http://trueorigin.org/index.asp or  www.creation.com

"...the fatal problem with all radioactive dates is that they are all based on assumptions about the past. You can get any date you like depending on the assumptions you make. And that is what geologist do, they make up an assumed geological history for rock depending on the numbers that come from the geochronology lab" (Dr Tas Walker Geologist. BS. B.Eng (hons) doctorate mechanical engineering, Author, Speaker, Researcher, Editor)