How old is the Earth?

Views About the Age of the Earth

Old Earth View

Current estimates are between 4.5 and 4.6 billion years. Methods used to find the age of the earth involve radiometric dating of meteorite samples, which would have formed at the same time as the earth.

The oldest rock samples, zirconium oxides, were discovered in situ and then analyzed to an accuracy of a few million years. These samples yield an age of something on the order of 3.9 billion years or so. But the earth "recycles" rock, and we have to look around a bit to find "old" rock. That is why we cannot place the age of the earth with native material.

No matter how old the earth is, it is clear from the geological column that fossils are laid down in sequence, with the most recent fossils above the earliest ones. Any method that established a minimum age for the most recent fossils would at least provide a minimum age for the earth. Early in the 19^th century, Charles Lyell examined the Etna volcano on Sicily and studied the historical records of frequent eruptions. He noticed that each time it erupted, a new layer of lava would be added, causing the mountain to grow at a measurable rate. By knowing the height of the volcano, its approximate rate of growth and the frequency of eruptions, Lyall determined that the volcano must be several hundred thousand years old. At the edge of the volcano, under the first lava flows, he found fossil shells that were virtually identical to the shells of molluscs still found in the Mediterranean Sea. From this, he deduced that the fossils were geologically recent, that a hundred thousand years was geologically short, and that the age of the earth must be immense.

Even many creationists now accept the evidence for the immense age of the Earth. No longer do all creationists follow the Bible literally, instead we now have the traditional "Young-Earth" creationists and the "Old-Earth" creationists who largely accept that the Earth reall is around 4.5 billion years old.

Use the link to the related question on how scientists can date rock using radiometry.

The Earth as an accreted celestial body of roughly the same size as exists today, was created 4.6 billion years ago.

Young Earth View

There is a great deal of scientific evidence which suggests that the earth is nowhere near the ages claimed. Most of this evidence comes through the work of researchers who do not believe in the Bible account of creation. The evidence would allow the Bible chronology with a relatively recent creation around 6000 years ago to be correct.

1. Insufficient sea-floor sediment: At current rates of erosion the amount of sea-floor sediments actually found could accumulate in 12 million years. The oceans are alleged to have existed for 3 billion years.

Creationists contend these sediments could have accumulated rapidly at the flood of Noah c. 5000 years ago.

2. Insufficent Sodium Chloride in the sea: Evolutionary estimates for the age of the earth's oceans are 3 billion years. With current rates of deposition, the salt in the sea could have accumulated in 42-62 million years at todays rate and of course much faster in the Noahic flood.

Note: Calculations done for many other elements produce even younger ages.

3. Decay of the magnetic field of the Earth: This is occurring too rapidly to fit the long-age evolutionary paradigm - the total energy stored having decreased by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years. Creationists have a model explaining this based on sound physics.

4. Tightly bent strata: These strata, thousands of feet thick are tightly bent without cracking. Yet they are meant to have solidified over millions of years and then bent. The creationist explanation is that they formed while still plastic as the entire formation had to be soft when formed to avoid cracking. This would point to the folding having occurred thousands of years and not millions after formation.

5. Fossil Radioactivity: Radiohaloes which have shown evidence of having been squashed indicate that the Jurassic, Triassic and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were formed in a short time-frame - over months, not hundreds of millions of years. This is so since the rings formed by the haloes, which only exist for a short time before they decay were squashed, indicating rapid formation. If the rocks had formed over a long time span the haloes would not have been there.

6. Misplaced Helium: Helium is generated by radioactive elements as they decay. The escape of this Helium into the atmosphere can be measured. If this has been occurring for 5 billion years there should be much more Helium in the atmosphere, instead of the 0.05% that is actually there when compared to the relevant time scale.

7. Insufficient stone-age skeletons: The 100,000 year stone-age of evolutionary anthropologists should have produced many more skeletons - around 4 billion, many more of which should still be around compared to the few thousand found. Anthropologist should have produced 4 billion human skeletons.

8. Recent Agriculture: The archeological evidence shows the stone age people to be as intelligent as modern man and yet it is claimed they existed for 100,000 years before discovering that plants grow from seeds. Creationists would think that it is more likely that man was without agriculture for a much shorter period immediately after the flood.

9. History too short: Stone-age people built huge monuments, did beautiful cave paintings and kept records of lunar phases. It seems unreasonable that they should wait nearly 100,000 years before beginning to make written historical records around 4-5000 BC. A much shorter Biblical time-scale seems to better fit this evidence.

Source: These points are condensed from an article by creationist Dr. Russel Humphreys, in Creation Ex Nihilo 13(3):28-31, June -August 1991.


These are not the only arguments used by creationists, but are a sample of some.

Other arguments include:

Processes thought to take a long period of time can take a short time given the right conditions:

Among the list of such processes includes the following:

Coal and Oil formation.

Opal formation.

Stalactites and Stalagmites in Limestone and other caves.

Diamonds Natural diamonds discovered on the surface are thought to be at least a billion years old. Diamonds can be created in the laboratory in a short period of time. The point here is that all it takes is the right conditions.

General Geologic processes are not always slow and gradual but sometimes catastrophic in nature

Some Examples of Rapid Geologic Processes.

The long accepted dogma taught by Charles Lyell that geologic processes always take vast amounts of time is being challenged by recent discoveries in science.

The following are now accepted as having formed catastrophically in a relatively short period of time:

- a major portion of Washington State

- the Snake River Plain of Idaho

- the Altai region of Southern Siberia

- the Black Sea basin

- the upper Mississippi River Valley

- the Hudson River Valley including New York City

- Wyoming's Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

- Owen's River Gorge in California

- the Great Lakes/S. Lawrence River drainage basin

- the English Channel and Dover Straits (the most recently discovered addition to this list)

Scientists who are not creationists of any kind are now openly talking about catastrophism of a major kind in shaping some of these vast areas.

Diamonds, Coal and Opals

These have all been demonstrated as not requiring millions of years to form. They can all be formed quite quickly under the right conditions and in some situations are indistinguishable from the 'real thing'.

The Fossil Record and The Geologic Column

The fossil record and the geologic column form some of the central planks in the evolutionist argument for an 'old earth'.

Young earth creationists (hereafter referred to merely as creationists) have a range of views regarding the interpretation of the geologic column.

From science itself regardless of which camp one is in it is clear that much of the fossil record represents a record of rapid burial. Examples of this abound including 'polystrate fossils' often tree trunks which span a number of alleged evolutionary eras and so are alleged to be many millions of years old. This however fails to explain how they did not rot while the layers were laid down to bury them over vast ages and also how they remained upright, especially at the beginning when they were first deposited rather than falling over or breaking off. Other problems for 'long -age' views of deposition include soft-bodies creatures such as fish with scales, jellyfish and also examples of creatures being buried in the act of feeding (a fish eating another fish ) or in the act of giving birth.

Creationists explain these many examples to suggest the multi-millions of years are illusory and posit rapid burial during the flood of Noah's day or soon after when much of the worlds sedimentary rocks, including most fossils, were laid down. Evolutionists tend to ignore these examples and do not attempt to explain them as they do not fit their paradigm, although they are certainly real.

Creationists also argue that the fossil record merely represents how things were buried and explain the natural burial of sea creatures first and those which were able to escape rising water as being naturally buried near the 'top' of the column.

Thus the fossil record does not naturally shout an 'old earth' but is interpreted according to a paradigm. The creationists argue with some justification that the actual evidence, all the evidence, fits better into the 'young-earth' model.

Old-earth creationists will merely adopt the evolutionary long age model and so the age of the earth issue does not arise. In any case, the ultimate question relates to the evidence from science and the evidence from the infallible word of God. Both point to a young earth, whether we choose to believe it or not.

Summary:Young earth creationists interpret the fossil record to represent the order in which creatures were buried mostly during the flood of Noah. Although they acknowledge there could have been other floods in history capable of the rapid burial necessary for fossilization. They thus are able to fit most of the geologic evidence into the young-earth model of a c. 6000 years old earth.

Answer

No one knows for sure but many people think they know how old earth is. The evolutionist would say the earth is millions of years old. Dr. Kent Hovind thinks the earth is 6000 or 7000 years old. He said it's that old because if you add up all the ages of the people in the Bible it comes to that long. He made a chart of how old each person was and how old the earth was. There are lots of theories on how old is the earth but no one has time machine to go back in time. But they also found problems with the theory if the earth is millions of years old.

[As an informational but relevant note, Kent Hovind holds no degrees from any accredited institution. (He is not a "Doctor" of anything.) And at this writing, he is currently housed in Federal prison. A link is provided for factual data.]

First answer by The sh1t. Last edit by Jones1rocks. Contributor trust: 152 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 0 [recommend question]