How can someone trust all the scientific information as to how old the earth is when it is impossible to even?

Question

determine accurately when something was written?

Answer 1

It all depends on the available evidence.



If only secondary versions of texts are available, it can be hard to pin down the dates of the originals as there is no primary evidence.



The Earth is directly measurable, in terms of geological and geophysical properties.



Edit:

The age of the Earth is determined by various forms of radiometric dating, though not carbon dating as that has an outside limit of about 60,000 years.



We can examine an original text scienifically to determine its age, but if none are available then historical, not scientific, methods must be used, such as context of events, stylistics, etc. I must stress that historical standards of evidence are not the same as scientific.



Edit2:

As far as I can tell (I am no expert), the Baghavad Gita has no surviving original texts, so there is no scientific measurement possible there. Those who estimate the dates of the original are using their understanding of Sanskrit and how it has changed over time, but that is rather imprecise.



In a similar way we know that Beowulf is not a modern English story as we can date the form of language to a particular era, but that is not at all precise, and different academics may have different opinions.

Answer 2

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You are comparing apples to oranges... You are comparing an IDEA to a FACT. Thought Vs. Evidence.



If I make a copy of a 10,000 year old text, is that text now "New" or is it 10,000 years old?



Your bible or Qu'ran was most likely printed in the last 10 years, does that mean that the texts of the bible and qur'an are under 10 years old?



As for the dating of the age of the multiverse, the solar system, and the earth... That is based on reproducible, trackable, predictable reality.



We can date the age of a SPECIFIC TEXT based on the age of the paper, ink, style of writing, language structure, etc. but that is completely different from dating the origin of the ideas written down.



All we can do is collect as many old texts as possible to provide a timeline of when the idea originated.



Through this, we know that most of what is in the bible is stolen from MUCH earlier cultures, plagiarized from them and all "Christian Traditions" are nothing but adulterated adaptations of local cultures and traditions used to convince the local populous to "Convert" without making them feel as if their whole belief system wasn't being stripped away from them.



Carbon Dating can help determine the age of a specific item.



The frequency of the observable light helps us determine the age of that which we see through a telescope.



Genetic drift and mutation of specific genes help us determine the age and origin of species.



Linguistic drift helps determine the age of separation between two similar populations.



How can anyone discount the scientific method, documentation, and reproducible evidence by claiming simply that it is "Impossible" simply because you don't comprehend the mythology?

Answer 3

I'm not entirely sure if anyone actually cares what anyone says here anymore, but I'll have a go anyway:





Your ignorance is a weakness on your part and your part alone. It does not, as you seem to believe, invalidate the processes that you're ignorant of. All it invalidates is the worth of your own opinion. If you educate yourself and find out how the Earth can be dated and how/why books can or can't be so easily, then you'll have your answer. The fact you don't understand it doesn't mean that it's impossible.



Edit: Because you're asking this in a Religion and Spirituality section. If you want to know how the Earth can be dated, you'd go to a science section (or simply google it, it would be a lot quicker and you'd get as much info as you like) and ask something along the lines of "How can scientists find out the date of the Earth?". You would not, however, make a pointless comparison to dating written texts or ask the question in the place and style you did, unless you were trying to suggest that we shouldn't trust that scientists are able to have an idea of when the Earth was formed.



Edit: You've changed your story yet again. If you wanted to learn how old Gita was or why that can't be precisely dated, you'd Google it or ask in some kind of book-dating section.

Please stop adding on to your question when it turns out someone has a response to your argument, because until you get a much better developed argument you're going to be adding a lot of Additional Details. Your latest story is clearly untrue as Gita was mentioned as evidence that scientists shouldn't be able to give the age of the Earth.



And no1home2day, I've seen quite a few of your posts. All of them contain nothing but proof you know nothing of science. What you described wasn't the scientific process of finding someone's age, it was a description of a mind blowingly moronic method of trying to figure out how old someone is, and this bizarre method even more bizarrely deliberately omitted hugely important evidence and processes that would help give a much more accurate answer. If you really believe that's how science works, then your opinion of it is irrelevant. If I prove I don't understand something then I also prove that my opinion of that thing isn't worth listening to. I'm sorry to tell you that the same applies to you.



Edit: And now you're back to your original question. Thank you for finally admitting you've been lying with your other Additional Details. In answer to it, go back to the start of my post. If you change your story for yet another time, I'm sure one of my previous edits already covers it so you can just read that and save me or anyone else the bother of writing it out again.

Answer 4

Trust comes from understanding. If you do not understand the rather challenging evidence in the motion of the sun, the moon and the stars, then you can assume the earth is flat, and believe it is riding on the back of a great turtle swimming through an infinite sea.



There are numerous bits of evidence that the universe is expanding, like Doppler red shift and such. The speed of light was first measured accurately about three hundred years ago using parallax measurements on the moons of Jupiter. Parallax measurements also allow measurements of the distances tot he nearer stars. Stars farther out require spectral methods involving, among other things, the afore mentioned Doppler shift. These things combine to tell us that most of the stars astronomers can see are considerably farther out that 6000 light years.



Geologically there is plate tectonics.

Answer 5

There is only one Earth. There are many copies of the Gita.



While it's possible to date a particular copy, and therefore work out the age of the oldest extant copy, it's not possible to know that there wasn't an older copy which has been lost or destroyed in the meantime. Although some clues can be obtained from the writing style and language, this again breaks down if the text has been rewritten in "modern" (at the time) language.

Answer 6

1.) What makes you believe it is impossible to determine accurately when something was written?



2.) Writing is no more than a few thousand years old, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.



3.) The dating techniques are so utterly different it makes your analogy total nonsense.



4.) The gita has been dated to the 1st century CE.



EDIT



If you were just "trying to determine how old the Gita actually is" then why didn't you ask that instead of insulting anyone that accepts scientific dating methods?



Edit 2



The gita was written by several people over a long eriod of time and added to the Mahabharata at an even later date. Which makes it pretty difficult to give it one date.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tk9YBPOl36UC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=gita+John+Brockington&source=bl&ots=99C_U7zTBG&sig=DsrpRNTJ8pgcIrmEGeeAk6gTUzk&hl=en&ei=yYu4TO-wBYvQjAfp75noDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=gita%20John%20Brockington&f=false



Plus it's a lot more important to know the date of the Earth than your stupid religious book.

Answer 7

They've shown their work. It is available for anyone to see.



They used several different tests and all of them confirmed each other. Note: Carbon Dating cannot be used to date things that are older than 50k years. Beyond this, other forms of radiometric dating must be used. Several are available, and all of them have agreed on the age of the earth at around 4.5 billion years.



I would not be surprised to find that the numbers are wrong...I really wouldn't. But I would not expect even 1 scientist to deny that they were wrong, and claim that we misinterpreted the number, that it was actually correct, but we took it out of context.



Nobody defends a theory in the face of contradictory evidence. Nobody fights for something that doesn't make sense in science.



Religion is another story.



Edit: Dating a single document like the Gita is far more difficult than dating the earth. For the Gita, we can only have limited samples, some or all of which may be known to be contaminated. Dating documents is a more of an artform than a science. It is often based on language and handwriting. For dating the earth, we've got limitless samples of elements that undergo radioactive decay, and can easily find a good, clean sample...several of them...and show that they all agree as to the age of the earth.

Answer 8

The Gita was written in the first Century BC, about the same time as the New Testament.

The date is just as accurate as it is for the bible too.

Answer 9

The bible claims that God at the 7th day rested and someplace states that a day is as one thousand years to God so hanging two+two in combination it's greatly held that round 7000 years is the authorised religion timeline..BUT.. they're beautiful loosely held in combination details with miles of assumption I do not suppose God supposed... I feel the Big Bang till the cooling of the earth used to be within the four.five billion 12 months variety however mankind and the planet lifestyles as we see this can be a appreciably shorter time given that then... probably handiest 6000 or so years... The different difficulty that has confounded me is that a day is one rotation of earth to us so how do you degree the primary day with out earth current?

Answer 10

The scientific evidence has to be interpreted, and if a person wants to believe that the earth is millions of years old, they will find a way to interpret the data to support their belief.



Here's the problem using something not quite so controversial.



If you were to use the scientific method for calculating the age of the typical male high school graduate, you would follow the following steps:



First, take the height at the beginning of their high school tenure, then measure the height at the end.



From this, you calculate the rate of growth over three years, then by dividing by the total height, you get the age.



ON AVERAGE, a male high school student gains about 1 inch of height per year. At the time of graduation, the TYPICAL male HS graduate is about 72 inches tall. 1 inch per year times 72 inches tells you that the typical male high school graduate is 72 years old - using the scientific method.



You can also do the same thing with the WEIGHT, and calculating the average weight gain at about 2.3 to 2.4 pounds per year over the three years, with a final weight of about 168 pounds, and doing the math, you again determine that the TYPICAL male HS graduate is about 72 years old!



When the atheist mockers can figure out what's wrong with this scenario (no, the numbers are accurate, that's not the problem; and yes, the math is accurate, so THAT is not the problem, either) - but when the atheist mockers can figure out what's wrong here, then they'll understand WHY the earth isn't billions or even millions of years old, because the same logical fallacy that applies to the hs graduate also applies to the measurement of the age of the earth.

Answer 11

Scientists are specialists and have various methods of determining the age of Earth.

Plus, a good scientist uses the Scientific Method.

When they have a hypothesis or theory, they invite dispute because they want to be as accurate as possible.

It's the exact opposite with Creationists. They take an idea and gather evidence to support it and disregard alternative viewpoints because they think they must be loyal to the Bible or they will burn in Hell.

Answer 12

Carbon dating is a variety of radioactive dating which is applicable only to matter which was once living and presumed to be in equilibrium with the atmosphere, taking in carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis.



Cosmic ray protons blast nuclei in the upper atmosphere, producing neutrons which in turn bombard nitrogen, the major constituent of the atmosphere . This neutron bombardment produces the radioactive isotope carbon-14. The radioactive carbon-14 combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and is incorporated into the cycle of living things.



The carbon-14 forms at a rate which appears to be constant, so that by measuring the radioactive emissions from once-living matter and comparing its activity with the equilibrium level of living things, a measurement of the time elapsed can be made.

Answer 13

Carbon dating is useless and all other methods supposedly used by evolutionists. Great Gazoo has it all wrong, Evolutionist do get together in worship, all the work they do together, how organized they are that they have infiltrated the schools with their believe of Evolution. It is a religion not science.



Real discoveries from science is just stuff that God used and allow us to find out for our own good. Everything else are inventions seeking fame and fortune, like Darwin did.



The only measure of time you will find in the Bible, there are Christians who has taken the time to do this work for us, you can go to drdino.com and search for timetable.



Here are some great videos:

http://www.drdino.com/category/type/video/creation-minute

http://www.drdino.com/category/type/video/creation-seminars

http://www.drdino.com/evidence-of-god-webcast-part-1

Answer 14

Some people trust that the Bible is accurate too, despite the evidence it was written by man and put together at a time of major political strife.

Answer 15

Friends, C dating applies only to organic materials: that contains C. The dissociation of C-14....etc

Answer 16

No-one can.



Although technology is getting better, we'll all never agree on it.



You know the (vehicle) speed Camera's, I had to laugh when not too long ago, one clocked a tree doing 60 km/hr lol!

Answer 17

I don't 'trust' it. I listen to it as the best description we have about the age of the earth. What does it matter when it was written?



Incidentally carbon dating cannot say anything about the age of the earth, other than it is more than about 100 000 years old.

Answer 18

False premise -- the dates of when "something" was written CAN be accurately determined -- within a specific margin for error.

Answer 19

We can determine when things are written if the item they are written on is tested. How close to the exact date are you concerned with?

Answer 20

you wrote this question 4 minutes ago on 15/10/2010 at 13:24:54 GMT

that was very easy to determine.

Answer 21

you might be a nice person, but you certainly aren't scientifically literate, that's for sure.

Go to your local community college and take an Earth Science course, This should help you out

Answer 22

All that you can "trust" is that honest scientists use imperfect methods to come up with their best scientific guesses about things that happened in the past when no one was around to observe or date them.

Answer 23

you are right, we are never 100% correct



radiometric dating generally ranges from 1-2% range of plus or minus. sometimes its 3-4%.

see, there is a range of failure that is plain, simple and tolerated because estimates that are close enough are good enough when the numbers are that big.

Answer 24

because written things have a 2000 year history and can't be carbon dated, but teh earth can be determined using many more methods, radiation, uranium dating, light from stars, residue from the big bang...

Answer 25

"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!' If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it."

—Dan Barker



There are at least 15 different methods to date the Earth. They ALL come out somewhere around 4.5 billion years.

Answer 26

With the help of technology of course.

But then again, science is still limited.



Oh wait! The bible has all the answers! Whew. :D

Answer 27

One suspects that asking you your opinion of how old the earth is would be the most pertinent question my darling.

Answer 28

what?



these are two fundamentally different questions.



carbon dating can typically predict very well when something is written.



looking at how planets form, heat up, and cool down gives us an accurate idea for how old our planet is.

Answer 29

"...when it is impossible to even...determine accurately when something was written?"



I beg to differ, scientific tests can determine when something was witten with great accuracy.

Answer 30

Open a science book. Its all explained.



And it makes more sense than the buybull

Answer 31

Carbon dating.



It's actually fairly easy to tell when something was written. Language and dialect, kinds of paper and ink, dating of materials, content, all are strong indicators of timeline.

Answer 32

That's like asking "how do we know how your kid is when we cant tell how old your neighbour's goldfish is?".



...

Answer 33

because its smarter than trusting an ancient book.

Answer 34

I trust it isn't 6,000 yo.