Flood geology: Encyclopedia II - Flood geology - Age of the Earth

Flood geology - Age of the Earth

Most believers in young Earth creationism – a position held by the majority of proponents of flood geology – accept the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar which in turn is based on the Masoretic version of the Genealogies of Genesis, believe that God created the universe approximately 6000 years ago, in the space of six days. Much of creation geology is devoted to debunking the dating methods used in anthropology, geology, and planetary science that give ages in conflict with the young Earth theories. In particular, creationists dispute the reliability of radiometric dating and isochron analysis, both of which are central to mainstream geological theories of the age of the Earth. They usually dispute these methods based on uncertainties concerning initial concentrations of individually considered species and the associated measurement uncertainties caused by diffusion of the parent and daughter isotopes. However, a full critique of the entire parameter-fitting analysis, which relies on dozens of radionuclei parent and daughter pairs, has not been done by creationists hoping to cast doubt on the technique.

Radiometric dating analysis indicates that the Earth is at least 4.5 billion years old. Young Earth creationists reject these ages on the grounds of what they regard as being tenuous and untestable assumptions in the methodology. Apparently inconsistent radiometric dates are often quoted to cast doubt on the utility and accuracy of the method. Mainstream proponents who get involved in this debate point out that dating methods only rely on the assumptions that the physical laws governing radioactive decay have not been violated since the sample was formed (harking back to Lyell's doctrine of uniformitarianism). They also point out that the "problems" that creationists publicly mentioned can be shown to either not be problems at all, are issues with known contamination, or simply the result of incorrectly evaluating legitimate data.

Creationists do not claim to have a scientifically verifiable method for dating the Earth, and instead rely solely on Biblical chronologies.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Age of the Earth", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki