Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks.
Lead can be produced by supernova, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that’s besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted. It’s not a falsifiable claim, there’s really no disproving it, unfortunately.
(Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)
Plus you can give a liberal reading of the bible to be:
god created the heaven and the earth. God created the heavenly bodies.
God created the sky - earths atmosphere and climate
God separates oceans - creates continental forms, and plant based life
God creates the moon and sun and stars. This one seems out of order to me… maybe just the earth and solar system stabilize. I don’t know how plants exist without the sun, so maybe it’s microbes or something.
God creates birds and sea creatures. Maybe birds are dinosaurs.
God creates modern land animals, then creates man and woman. That makes sense, mankind is certainly new with only a few hundred thousand years of records before civilization starts.
That doesn’t have to imply the earth is 4000 years old. Even the original wording could be read as eon instead of day.
The Bible is a couple thousand chapters long. The creation story is the first two chapters. It’s pretty obviously only attempting to establish that God created the universe in some ambiguous way and move on with the story. That doesn’t stop people from inferring all sorts of things from what is essentially a poem.
If anyone is interested you can read a fine destruction of the stupid “Young Earth” argument at the link I provided.
The “Young Earth” people, both Christian and Jew, are trying to shoe horn something into the Bible that doesn’t fit and doesn’t need to exist. It’s nothing more than a desperate attempt to hold onto an old, wrong headed, and man-made theory.
I don’t see why God must be incompatible with evolution or the Big Bang or really any of science. God created us to be clever, surely that includes using logic and science to learn about the world.
Personally I’m agnostic and I try not to judge people. I do judge people who dismiss science and decide faith alone is better.
God created us to be clever, surely that includes using logic and science to learn about the world.
The argument can be made that since God created humanity in their image that we’re all just fledgling gods with the big difference being our lack of immortality. We’re just not long lived enough as individuals to reach God’s level of power and insight. We are who God created us to be, logic and science included so If we don’t kill ourselves off we may eventually reach a collective godhood, or something akin to it, as a species.
I’m not saying I believe that argument, I’m just pointing out that it’s there because it supports your point.
I skimmed that link and it’s pretty interesting, I’ll have to spend more time on it. I definitely liked the part at the end about God being the observer in this context, so what’s a day to him.
Also I’m amazed by how people don’t seem to understand what half-life is. It’s not the time it takes for an atom to decay. It’s the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay, meaning there will be some U-238 that decay into Ra-226 in just a couple of seconds.
So even if the Earth was created 4000 years ago with uranium but not lead (for some weird reason), some of that lead would have decayed into lead by now.
The weirdest part to me is thinking the timeless omnipotent god that the Bible explicitly says considers a thousand years less than nothing actually literally meant that he created everything in what we’d perceive as 7 days when talking to whatever arbitrary scribe wrote down the creation myth for him.
So it’s more like God appears to this guy named Abraham and tells him the story and then his great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great, great great grandchildren wrote it down. But in the original Hebrew it doesn’t use a word that means day they use a word that means unit of time.
Also, we could be way off on the age because we just don’t know. Sure, we can collect data and extrapolate for billions of years and assume that all elements have always decayed at the same rate, but short of living through it and accurately measuring it with modern instruments, molecules-to-man “macro” evolution can’t actually be proven.
This is why, using the Scientific Method, it is still a theory. A theory accepted by most scientists, but still. There’s a certain arrogance in declaring solved something we can’t actually know for 100% certainty.
Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks. Lead can be produced by supernova, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that’s besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted. It’s not a falsifiable claim, there’s really no disproving it, unfortunately.
(Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)
Also this doesn’t say anything about the Earth.
Plus you can give a liberal reading of the bible to be:
That doesn’t have to imply the earth is 4000 years old. Even the original wording could be read as eon instead of day.
The Bible is a couple thousand chapters long. The creation story is the first two chapters. It’s pretty obviously only attempting to establish that God created the universe in some ambiguous way and move on with the story. That doesn’t stop people from inferring all sorts of things from what is essentially a poem.
It’s literally a poem in the original language.
Most people don’t know that the Hebrew word “yom” (day) can be and is used to denote wildly different lengths of time.
If anyone is interested you can read a fine destruction of the stupid “Young Earth” argument at the link I provided.
The “Young Earth” people, both Christian and Jew, are trying to shoe horn something into the Bible that doesn’t fit and doesn’t need to exist. It’s nothing more than a desperate attempt to hold onto an old, wrong headed, and man-made theory.
Thanks for that
I don’t see why God must be incompatible with evolution or the Big Bang or really any of science. God created us to be clever, surely that includes using logic and science to learn about the world.
Personally I’m agnostic and I try not to judge people. I do judge people who dismiss science and decide faith alone is better.
The argument can be made that since God created humanity in their image that we’re all just fledgling gods with the big difference being our lack of immortality. We’re just not long lived enough as individuals to reach God’s level of power and insight. We are who God created us to be, logic and science included so If we don’t kill ourselves off we may eventually reach a collective godhood, or something akin to it, as a species.
I’m not saying I believe that argument, I’m just pointing out that it’s there because it supports your point.
I skimmed that link and it’s pretty interesting, I’ll have to spend more time on it. I definitely liked the part at the end about God being the observer in this context, so what’s a day to him.
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This is why you can never disprove creationism sufficiently to convince a young Earth creationist. The hypothesis is unfalsifiable.
The obvious solution is to make a science that is unfalsifable. Then argue about who would win, like superman vs goku.
Also I’m amazed by how people don’t seem to understand what half-life is. It’s not the time it takes for an atom to decay. It’s the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay, meaning there will be some U-238 that decay into Ra-226 in just a couple of seconds.
So even if the Earth was created 4000 years ago with uranium but not lead (for some weird reason), some of that lead would have decayed into lead by now.
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Well there’s also no way to disprove that everything was created last Tuesday including the memories of things/events happening before last Tuesday.
The weirdest part to me is thinking the timeless omnipotent god that the Bible explicitly says considers a thousand years less than nothing actually literally meant that he created everything in what we’d perceive as 7 days when talking to whatever arbitrary scribe wrote down the creation myth for him.
So it’s more like God appears to this guy named Abraham and tells him the story and then his great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great! Great, great great grandchildren wrote it down. But in the original Hebrew it doesn’t use a word that means day they use a word that means unit of time.
Also, we could be way off on the age because we just don’t know. Sure, we can collect data and extrapolate for billions of years and assume that all elements have always decayed at the same rate, but short of living through it and accurately measuring it with modern instruments, molecules-to-man “macro” evolution can’t actually be proven.
This is why, using the Scientific Method, it is still a theory. A theory accepted by most scientists, but still. There’s a certain arrogance in declaring solved something we can’t actually know for 100% certainty.
I thought carbon dating of fossils was our best argument against the 4000 years myth.
God could have put the fossils there with the right carbon isotopes.
You can’t use logic to disprove belief in magic.