Just wondering if any of you Geologists out there would be willing to give your opinion on the Earth's age - especially if you are a believer.

I'm NOT trying to start a religious argument here - just curious.

For what it's worth I'm a christian who tends to believe the Earth is billions of years old and I am curious to know if there are any geologists or geologically knowledgable people who disagree with that outlook.

Thanks,

Les

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The age of the earth is not a matter of scientific fact. People need to be aware just how abstract, shaky and prone to revision the findings of modern cosmology really are. To quote Prof. Wanser:

‘The sad thing is that the public is so overawed by these things [big bang and long-age cosmologies], just because there is complex maths involved. They don’t realize how much philosophical speculation and imagination is injected along with the maths—these are really stories that are made up.’

There is room in true science for young earth creationists. The disagreements are not over scientific facts but rather in the interpretation of scientific facts. Your example of Einstein should be a good reminder that interpretations and explanations of scientific observations can change over time as we gain a deeper understanding of those observations. Newtonian physics was considered established science and seemed to work very well. Einstein came along and showed that Newtonian physics was an incomplete explanation of the scientific observations. What if we were to discover that radioactive decays and the speed of light were not constants through time (i.e. they appear constant in the short term but over a few hundred years they measure change in these 'constants'). There is actually evidence that the speed of light may be slowing down. Of course this is much debated and controversial but we shouldn't be so arrogant as to say that it's scientific fact that the earth is billions of years old. Why would it be hard to believe that a good explanation for oil and gas and various rock layers and the huge fossil record (scientific facts) is the great worldwide flood of Noah's day. Oil and gas do not require time so much as they require temperature and pressure to form. If a cow can create a decent amount of methane in 1 day why would it take millions of years to form natural gas from decaying matter that was rapidly buried in a worldwide flood.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should regard the Genesis account of creation as a possible explanation of the scientific facts that we find in creation. We should also regard evolution over billions of years to be an explanation of the scientific facts and not a scientific fact itself.
lbaker:
"I'm not trying to start a religious argument here - just curious".

Louzanne:
"My belief is our Creator is behind it all....not matter when it began...
my opinion".
Sometimes I just write things to see the reaction. I have a good Christian friend that believes the earth is no more than 8,000 years old. I asked him about carbon data testing and he said he doesn't believe in all that scientific evidence. So, truth is what we want it to be until we die and find out something.......or nothing.

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