Old earth evidence

Old earth evidence

http://www.progressivetheology.org/principles/Science-Bible.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20081120115316/http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/creation.php



https://factandfaith.co.za/other-articles/
Evidence for an ancient world is given under the following headings:
1. Continental drift caused by plate tectonics.
2. Distribution of plants and animals around the world.
3. The origin of oxygen in our atmosphere.
4. Coal deposits and coal formation.
5. Speed of mountain erosion and upliftment.
6. Ice cores drilled in Antarctica.
7. Radiometric dating of rocks.
8. The fossil record shows stages in life complexity over time.

Modern scientists can point to many examples that demonstrate that the ages of both the earth and the universe are much older than the 6,000 or so years that one would derive from a literal reading of the Bible. These examples include:

red-shift of light from distant galaxies: suggests an age of the universe of between 13 and 15 billion years
radioisotope dating: based on observed ratios between different isotopes of radioactive elements, dates some rocks on earth older than 4.4 billion years (examples: carbon-14, uranium-thorium, potassium-argon)
plate tectonics: the slow movement of plates of the earth's crust floating on the underlying magma require the age of the earth to be at least 1 billion years old (also called continental drift)
optically stimulated luminescence: method of dating materials based on stored ionizing radiation, can date items more than 300,000 years old
thermoluminescence: method of dating materials based on stored nuclear energy, can date items more than 80,000 years old
archaeomagnetism: based on observations of reversals in the earth's magnetic field (evidenced in rocks containing iron), capable of precise age measurements up to 10,000 years, but geomagnetic reversals are observable in rocks dating back more than 100 million years
electronic spin resonance: based on observations of unpaired electrons trapped in crystal lattices, can date items at least tens of thousands of years old
pollen analysis: tracks existence of particular species of plant pollen, which can be preserved for up to 400 million years
ice core dating: samples earth's atmosphere at dates up to 650,000 800,000 (updated May 2008) years ago, for Antarctic samples
linguistic diffusion: recent studies of modern language diffusion suggest a date of at least 10,000 years for the closest possible common ancestor
soil creation by earthworms: suggests an age of several tens of thousands of years for current soil levels, assuming no erosion
erosion rates: erosion rate of Colorado River into the Grand Canyon indicates an age of several million years
molecular clock: genetic technique used to measure distance from common ancestor, indicates common ancestors of related species at tens of thousands of years, to hundreds of millions of years for distantly related species

God Himself specifically *defines* the term "day" (or "yom") as an ordinary day right there in the creation account (Gen 1:5, "And God called the light day"), and then goes on reaffirm this ordinary day definition in several other verses in that same chapter. In verse 14, for example, we see that God specifically contrasts "days" with "seasons," and "years." Also, check out verses 16 -18 where God uses the Sun and Moon to reaffirm that He is speaking of ordinary days. So according the text itself, creation week consisted of 6 ordinary days. It would be quite deceptive of God to repeatedly affirm that "day" means ordinary day, and then to use it to mean millions of years all in the same historical account.

Similarly, the Bible actually does state that Adam and Eve were the first humans, that they were created in the beginning, and that the time from Adam to Abraham spanned only about 2000 years. So according to the text itself, those 6 ordinary days were only a few thousand years ago.

Not only do we *not* have any scriptural support for OEC anywhere in the Bible, we actually *do* have scriptural support for YEC (not based on any creative interpretation of the text, but based on the text itself).

The point is that if God meant to convey a YEC chronology, then He did a fantastic job of communicating that. On the other hand, if He meant to convey an OEC chronology, then He failed miserably.

All the top 7 energy companies recognise that oil is millions of years old and state that fact on their websites:

BP: “In addition to drilling more wells and optimizing reservoir performance, we are looking ahead to the potential of the Paleogene. This is a geologic period that ended around 23 million years ago and lies over six miles beneath the ocean floor. We’ve made discoveries there in the Gulf of Mexico at Kaskida and Tiber. Lamar McKay; BP Upstream Chief Executive: http://www.bp.com/.../speeches/unlocking-the-future.html
Chevron: Page 8 “microfossils–formed from microscopic plants and animals that were buried millions of years ago–are time markers for finding (oil) sands. (http://www.chevron.com/.../pdf/chevron2008nextmagazine.pdf)
ExxonMobil: Page 20 “Reservoir found in sandstone is from the Upper Cretaceous period (~70 million years old).” (http://cdn.exxonmobil.com/.../exxonmobil-lamp-2015-v2.pdf
ConocoPhillips: Page 9 “So the Eagle Ford rocks were laid down about 90 million years ago in the Cretaceous Interior Seaway. They are organic marrows, which means they are calcite rich and organic material embedded in them”. (http://www.conocophillips.com/.../COP-Transcript-2014...
Shell: “LPG has been formed over millions of years beneath the ground”. (http://www.shell.com.hk/.../in.../lpg/all-about-lpg.html
Eni: Page 53 “The Timor Sea has been tectonically active for at least the past six million years where the Australian and Eurasian continental plates converge.” (http://www.eni.com/.../000177_DV_EX.HSE.0206.000_Final_no...)
Total S.A “The Pazflor oil field comprises four reservoirs. One of them, Acacia was formed around 25 million years ago in the Oligocene and contains light oil. The other three — Perpetua, Zinia and Hortensia — are younger, dating from the Miocene, just five to seven million years ago.” (http://www.total.com/.../total-world-first-subsea...)
It is clear that they use the old earth science model in their research and exploration. While some creationists question whether old earth or young earth models would give different results, again common sense would suggest that having an accurate understanding of where oil comes from and how and when it was made would help you find it. If the Young Earth model is more accurate then you would expect it to be more efficient in discovering oil (rather than just giving an alternative explanation of why it is there after someone else has found it using traditional methods).

1) No scientist relies on one analytical method unless it has been shown to be very accurate. The usual method is to correlate it against other methods and see if there is concordance.
In the case of carbon dating the scientists examined leaf litter from a Japanese lake, Lake Suigetsu and correlated it with carbon dating. http://www.the-scientist.com/...
2) Dating methods usually give a minimum age and I have a table showing 30 different methods of dating 

Evidence Years
1 Dendrochronology (tree rings) 8,000 years by California Bristle Cone pines, 12,000 by German Pines
2 Human Y-chromosomal ancestry Greater than 10,000
3 Oxidisable Carbon Ratio dating Greater than 10,000 years (20,000 +/- 200)
4 Lunar rocks 3.6 billion
5 Rock varnish Greater than 10,000
6 Thermoluminescence dating Greater than 10,000
7 Coral 400,000
8 Fission track dating Greater than 100,000
9 Ice layering Minimum from 40,000 years Chinese Dundee ice core to 900,000 EPICA ice core Antarctica
10 Lack of DNA in fossils 100,000
11 Permafrost 225,000 years from Prudhoe Bay
12 Weathering rinds 300,000
13 Amino acid racemization 1 million
14 Baptistinia asteroid family 160 million
15 Continental drift 200 million
16 Cosmogenic nucleotide dating minimum a few million
17 Erosion ex the Grand Canyon a few million
18 Geomagnetic reversals Several million
19 Impact craters a few million
20 Iron-manganese nodules Several million years
21 Length of the prehistoric day 370 million
22 Naica megacrystals 1 million
23 Nitrogen in diamonds 200 million
24 Petrified wood millions of years for complete permineralisation
24 Relativistic jets At least 1 million
26 Sedimentary varves 36,000 by Japanese diatoms
27 Stalactites over 1 metre long should take at least 10,000 years. Caves are full of many that are tens and hundreds of metres
28 Space weathering millions
29 Carbon -14 50,000 by Lake Suigetsu, Japan
30 Uranium 235 704 million

3) I have met several world class scientists and they are uninterested in the religion or lack of it of the scientist. They are only interested in the evidence.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Climate scientists have discovered a new archive of historical sea temperatures. With the help of the skeleton of a sponge that belongs to the Monorhaphis chuni species and that lived in the East China Sea for 11,000 years, an international team around scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry were now able to show that the deep ocean temperature changed several times over the past millennia. 1

Further sources: 

https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/justintaylor/2015/01/28/biblical-reasons-to-doubt-the-creation-days-were-24-hour-periods/
https://www.quora.com/Creationism-What-are-the-flaws-in-the-article-Age-of-the-Earth-101-evidences-for-a-young-age-of-the-earth-and-universe-which-supports-a-6-000-year-old-creationist-origin/answer/Steve-McKerracher
How old is the earth? How old are the geologic ages? How are these dates determined?

Scientists See Same Star Explode 4 Times
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-see-same-star-explode-4-times/

1. https://m.phys.org/news/2012-04-glass-sponge-climate-archive.html

Must Faithful Christians Believe in a Young Earth? A CP Interview With Christian Astronomer Hugh Ross 1

Amino acid racemization

http://www.icr.org/article/amino-acid-racemization-dating-method/
Since all of these factors, most of which accelerate racemization rates, cannot be known, it is suggested that the apparent ages obtained by this method are unreliable and, with few exceptions, are much older than the real ages. 1

Baptistina asteroid family,

Experiments that demonstrated that the earth is at least 10,000 years old
1) Dendrochronology,


currently the WORLD RECORD is under 30 feet in diameter; but let's imagine that they haven't discovered all trees worldwide and imagine even one 40 foot wide! 40'x12"(inches) = 480"/5500 x 2 (oldest known tree is less that 5500 years) and FAR LESS than 40' in diameter. A cross section spanning the entire diameter would in theory have 11000 total lines of "rings" to count in that 480 inches. SO 480/11000 = .043 inches. In other words VIA DENDROCHRONOLOGY those making such claims are telling the rest of the world that they saw and counted eleven thousand lines measuring 4/100ths of an inch thick. ANYONE claiming they have used such method to date trees as old as 10,000+ years is claiming they counted 20,000 rings/lines the width of a human hair!

suffice it to say, that anyone making such a claim is a LIAR!



2) Human Y-chromosomal ancestry,
3) Oxidizable carbon ratio dating,
4) Rock varnish
5) Thermoluminescence dating

Experiments that demonstrated that the earth is at least 100,000 years old
6) Coral
7) Fission track dating
8 ) Ice layering
9) Lack of DNA in fossils
10) Permafrost
11) Weathering rinds

Experiments that demonstrated that the earth is at least 1,000,000 years old (million+)
12) Amino acid racemization
13) Baptistina asteroid family
14) Continental drift
15) Cosmogenic nuclide dating
16) Erosion
17) Geomagnetic reversals
18) Impact craters
19) Iron-manganese nodules
20) Length of the prehistoric day
21) Milankovitch astronomical cycles
22) Naica megacrystals
23) Nitrogen in diamonds
24) Petrified wood
25) Relativistic jets
26) Sedimentary varves
27) Stalactites
28) Space weathering

Experiments that demonstrated that the earth is at least 1,000,000,000 years old (billion+)
29) Distant starlight
30) Helioseismology
31) Lunar retreat
32) Radioactive decay





1) http://friend.christianpost.com/people/WilliamJames/comment.html?page=149
2) http://www.icr.org/article/amino-acid-racemization-dating-method/

Old Earth Evidence 1

Level 3
Impact Craters
Radiometric Dating
Radioisotope Abundances
Atmospheric Argon
Continental Drift
Oil in the Earth
Metamorphic Rocks
River Delta Deposits
Dolomite Formation
Coal in the Earth
Ocean Minerals
Dendrochronology
Fission Track
Ice Layering
Fossil DNA
Volcanoes
Petrified Wood
Weathering Rinds
Baptistina Asteroid Family
Amino Acid Racemization
Cosmic Ray Breakdown
Cosmogenic Nuclides
Moon Dust
Fossils
Level 2
Coral Reefs
Cave Stalactite Sizes
Y-Chromosome Ancestry
Carbon Oxidization
The Grand Canyon
Geomagnetic Reversals
Diamond Nitrogen Impurities
Iron-Manganese Nodule Growth
Length of the Prehistoric Day
Ocean Sediment Layering
Lake Sediment Layering
Naica Mega-Crystals
Evaporite Deposits
Granite Batholiths
Level 1
Rock Varnish
Thermoluminescence
Permafrost


1) http://straightforward.wikidot.com/old-earth-evidence

http://ssataotu.blogspot.com.br/

Amino acid racemization
Baptistina asteroid family
Continental drift
Coral
Cosmogenic nuclide dating
Dendrochronology
Distant starlight
Erosion
Fission track dating
Geomagnetic reversals
Helioseismology
Human Y-chromosomal ancestry
Ice layering
Impact craters
Iron-manganese nodule growth
Length of the prehistoric day
Lunar retreat
Naica megacrystals
Nitrogen impurities in natural diamonds
Oxidizable carbon ratio dating
Permafrost
Petrified wood
Radioactive decay
Relativistic jets
Rock varnish
Seabed plankton layering
Sedimentary varves
Space weathering
Stalactites
Thermoluminescence dating
Weathering rinds

http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Earth-Refuting-Dawkins-Evolution/product-reviews/1921643064

This book was loaned to me by a religious friend who decided to see if I would be opened minded. Well, as a man of science, I am open to possibilities when the evidence is there to be peer reviewed. However, when I read the first few chapters I thought it was a joke. Elementary logical fallacies out the wazoo are present in this book. The author clearly does not understand the theory of evolution or anything else for that matter, due in part to his faith in a supernatural, cosmic space daddy. Everything in the book is creationist propaganda used to appeal to massive amounts of ignorant religious people who don't care about simple things like the truth. The authors motives are quite clear, they want to discredit anything that conflicts with a literal interpretation of the bible.

CHAPTER 2, the author attempts to justify a worldwide flood with no evidence at all; also make no attempt to explain exactly where the water originated from to support his statement. The total water supply of the earth is roughly 326 million cubic miles. A cubic mile is defined as the volume of a cube with sides of 1 mile exactly. Due to the rotation of the earth, the earth has a bulge on the equator compared to the poles, so some tricky math is involved to calculate exactly how much water is required for this ridiculous statement. Genesis 7:19 outlines that a flood covered all of mountains, and Gen. 7:20 states that "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.", so that means that water was 15 'cubits' above the tallest mountain. I won't add that figure into the math below, I'll just use Mt Everest's height instead. Everest is 29,028 feet in height (Google; Height of Everest). Someone commented on my review and stated that Everest wasn't at it's present height 6000 years ago, but no matter what I've read about Everest it's been there for eons. This is yet another sad attempt to fix the holes in the bible by people who take it literally.

Per the bible, and the amount of water required to rise to a height of 29,000 feet in 40 days is around 360 inches an hour. 348,336 inches of rain in 40 days. (362.85 * 24) * 40 = 348,336 inches. (The rainiest place on earth gets 200 inches a year, for comparison.)

In order to justify how much water this is, we will have to perform some pretty difficult math as the Earth isn't exactly even due to tidal bulge. The volume of a oblate sphere is v = 4/3 * pi * a^2b, where a is 6378.137 km and b is 6356.7523 km. (Google: Volume of a oblate sphere) The earth's total volume is about 1.08321x10^12 km^3 in scientific notion (Williams, 2004 "Earth Fact Sheet"). To express this in math terms, V = 4/3 * a^2 * b * pi where a/b are the 2 different sizes of the earth, A for the equator and B for the polar region. (Wikipedia: Geodesy , Volume of the Earth), So, V = 4/3 * 6378^2 * 6356 * pi and V = 4/3 * 6386^2 * 6365 * pi for the formula. We subtract the height of Everest from the Earth, using this: (Everest - Earth) = (1.08773 x 10^12 cubic kilometers) - (1.083032 × 10^12 cubic kilometers) = 4.7×10^9 cubic kilometers.

4.7×10^9 cubic kilometers is 1.13×10^9 cubic miles. There is approximately 1,101,117,150,000 gallons of water in 1 cubic mile, so therefor the flood of 'noah' would need to leave behind 1,244,262,379,500,000,000,000 GALLONS (which is roughly 1.2442623795×10^21, aka 1.2 sextillion gallons of water). The final estimate is roughly 3.6 × volume of Earth's oceans (1.3×10^9 km^3). To place this into perspective, the 'flood of noah' would have [more/just slightly less] gallons of water than grains of sand on the Earth; ie (0.0012 to 12) × the number of grains of sand on the earth (~~ 10^20 to 10^24). So my questions, Where in the world did the water 'come' from and 'go' ? That much 'water' would have dynamically altered the various gases and density in the atmosphere. Since adding another few miles of water, the atmosphere would be pushed outward into space, causing /massive/ changes in the atmosphere. There, is however, another problem. HEAT.

To flood the Earth, we use the previous estimate 4.7 x 10^9 km^3 of water with a mass of 4.525 x 10^21 kg. When this 'flood water' is floating on the surface of the earth, it's storing a gigantic amount of energy, which is transferred to kinetic energy when it's falling from the sky (Per Genesis 7:12 where that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights continuously); When this happens it's turned into heat due to friction, for example:

E=M*G*H, M/G/H being
M = Water Mass
G = Gravity constant
H = Height of water (using previously mentioned calculation)

The flood has to last 40 days and nights, the amount of mass falling to Earth, daily, is 4.525 x 10^21 kg/40 over 1 day (24 hours, 86400 seconds)

This equals to 1.1068 × 10^17 metric tons daily. Using H as 10 miles, the energy released each day is 1.73584 x 10^25 joules. The amount of energy the Earth would have to radiate per m^2/sec is energy divided by surface area of the Earth times number of seconds in one day (86400 seconds, which is seconds * minutes * hours). That is: E = 1.735384 x 10^25/(4*PI* ((6386)2*86,400)) = 391,935.0958 j/m^2/s.

Currently, the Earth radiates energy at the rate of approximately 215 joules/m2/sec (Per Modeling Earth's Climate System with STELLA, PSU) and the average temperature is 280 K.

E (increase)/E (normal) = T (increase)/T4 (normal)
E (normal) = 215 E (increase) = 391,935.0958 T (normal) = 280.

T = 1800 Kelvin. 1800 Kelvin which is 1526.85C, therefor completely destroying the surface of the planet/all life. Noah wasn't equipped with Star Trek transporters, or force fields, to stop the heat from setting fire to his archaic tugboat. Of course, if I wanted to make a bronze age story seem rational, I'd 'inject' things to make it work as well.

Someone commented on this review by stating that the water originated from 'Fountains of the deep' (Gen 7:11-12). The deepest borehole in the world, Kola Superdeep Borehole, was drilled down to 40,000 feet. At that depth, the temperature was 365F / 180C (Per "Legendary Kola Superdeep" (in Russian). (Journal of Science and Life). The temperature gradient overall is 1º C for every 30 meters, so realistically there is a 166º C increase in temperature / depth ("The Heart of the Earth, San Francisco: Freeman & Cooper, 1968, p. 138.") 166 + 25º C (average earth surface temperature at sea level) = 191º C (Morton 1995). Since the bible doesn't explain how much water in terms of depth/size/layer, I'll just use a 1km , since creation.com and other nonsense sites try and justify it by using either no numbers or vague numbers.
So, 1km of water deep underground, below the crust, it would contain roughly 2.399×10^8 cubic miles of water using previously mentioned calculation with height/depth. At 191ºC, the high temperature water would contain energy equivalent of 1.7×10^17 tons of TNT (Steam Tables, New York: Combustion Engineering Inc, 1940, p. 5.) , which is 1.8 times energy output of the sun in one second. 1.7×10^17 tons of TNT /2.399×10^8 = 708.60 megatons of TNT as energy for every cubic mile of water released from 'fountains of the deep'. 700 megatons of TNT would've clearly destroyed Noah and his little leaky boat. This is a rough estimate, but no matter how much of a mistake I make, the released energy is enough to vaporize the atmosphere.

Chapter 11 "Is the earth ancient" is absolutely absurd. Amino acid racemization, Baptistina Asteroid family, Continental drift, Cosmogenic nuclide dating, Erosion, Geomagnetic reversals, Impact craters, Iron-manganese nodules, Length of the prehistoric day, Naica megacrystals, Nitrogen in diamonds, Petrified wood, Relativistic jets, Sedimentary varves, Stalactites, Space weathering, Radiometric dating, annual ice layers, tree ring dating, etc, all point to an ancient earth. The author clearly has an electrical fire in his head, by suggesting all modern scientific dating methods are wrong, and his goofy faith is right. China and many older cultures have history of pottery and some written that are far older than his goofy doomsday cult.

Page 177 - Runaway subduction. This is the same 'theory' purposed by John Baumgardner, which he stated that would release 10^28 joules of energy, about as much as the kinetic energy of the Moon in its orbit around the Earth, which is estimated at 3.856×10^28 joules. That much energy release would've left behind something, such as freaking evidence! Why is it people like the author 'make up' stories to fix the bible's flaws?

Page 189, Dr Sarfati states something about accelerated nuclear decay of isotopes in the past (more or less). There is obviously a problem with this statement; THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO THIS. The internal Earth's heat, 80% of it, comes from heat produced through radioactive decay (Turcotte, DL; Schubert, G (2002). "4". Geodynamics (2 ed.). Cambridge, England, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 136-7.), so if you cranked up the decay of isotopes, the internal heat of the mantle/core would rise by a factor of million (guesstimate), and would melt the crust of the earth, boil away the oceans, change the atmospheric gases, burn noah alive, etc. The Earth would look like a small sun! Clearly, the author doesn't care about explaining how the crust of the earth would state solid after being exposed sun-surface like temperatures from miles below, and increase in the atmospheric density, due to the simple fact that water vapor is mass, and Runaway greenhouse effect would cause Earth to become a Venus like planet with a super high atmospheric pressure. The Earth's upper atmosphere would have been contaminated with an enormous concentration of aerosols and solid particles (perhaps massive amounts of radioactive particles), rendering the atmosphere almost opaque due in part to the oceans boiling away. Why doesn't Sarfati explain this? Consider for the fact that there is simply ZERO evidence to support this nonsense, I guess people who voted 5 stars are ignorant of basic things like 8th grade science.

There are many other examples of dismal science in this book. It's clear to me that people like the author of this book want to perpetuate ancient bronze age nonsense as 21st century science. Speaking of dishonesty, the author's association with creation.com makes his 'position' clear. Under their 'About Us':

"(A) PRIORITIES: The scientific aspects of creation are important, but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer and Judge." and "(D) GENERAL: By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information. "

Celebrating Evolving Creation


The earth is generally thought by the vast majority of scientists to be at least 4 and a half billion years old. The universe is much older, at least .
Here's a list of some of the dating techniques which give an age older than 6-10,000 years for the earth. None of these techniques can give a maximum age for the earth, so we'll probably find that the earth is older than this. In fact, each time we've had to change our estimate, it has been to make it older. Each of these can give a minimum age. All of these are longer than the young-earth estimates. Some young-earth folks have suggested that the radiometric dating techniques are a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. One of the members of this group, Alasdair Crawford, a physicist has contributed the math as to why this is not true.

-Dendrochronology (tree ring chronologies, 8,000 years by California Bristle Cone Pines, 12,000 by German Pines)
 Dendrochronology typically does not actually count rings. When they compare rings in different trees they are not counting rings at all, they are looking for growth pattern matches. While this seems reasonable, the problem is the computer programs which do the matching typically report multiple high-confidence (but mutually exclusive) matches, and then a human has to decide which one is the supposedly true match. Thus the claim that dendrochronology is an objective dating method is obviously false. Then, in situations where they can't find ring patterns they fill in with C-14 dating.

-Human Y-chromosomal ancestry - greater than 10,000 years
-Oxidizable Carbon Ratio dating - greater than 10,000 years (20,000 +/- 200)
-Lunar rocks (-3.6 billion)
-Rock varnish - greater than 10,000 years
-Thermoluminescence dating - greater than 10,000 years
-Coral (400,000 years)
-Fission track dating - Greater than 100,000 years
-Ice layering (Minimums from 40,000 -Chinese Dundee ice core to 900,000 - EPICA ice core antartica)
-Lack of DNA in fossils - 100,000 years
-Permafrost - 225,000 years from Prudhoe Bay
-Weathering rinds - 300,000 years
-Amino acid racemization - 1 million years
-Baptistina asteroid family - 160 million years
-Continental drift - 200 million years
-Cosmogenic nuclide dating - minimum a few million
-Erosion - ex: the Grand Canyon, a few million
-Geomagnetic reversals - Several million years
-Impact craters - a few million
-Iron-manganese nodules - several million
-Length of the prehistoric day - 370 million
-Naica megacrystals - 1 million
-Nitrogen in diamonds - 200 million
-Petrified wood - millions of years for complete permineralization
-Relativistic jets - at least one million
-Sedimentary varves (36,000 by Japanese diatoms)
-Stalactites - stalactites over a meter long should take at least 10,000 years. Caves are full of many that are tens and hundres of meters.
-Space weathering - millions
-Distant starlight - ten billion years
-Helioseismology - 4 and a half billion
-Lunar retreat -
-Radiometric decay (Some varieties and their minimum age ranges below)
carbon -14 (below 50,000)
Uranium 238 (4.5 billion years)
Uranium 235 (704 million)
Throrium 232 (14 billion)
Rubidnium 287 (48.8 billion)
Here's Alasdairs explanation as to why the initial assumptions will not lower the value given by radiometric dating.
It's actually pretty clever how radioactive dating really works. The common explanation of it is that there's a radioisotope sample in the rock and by the amount left we know how old it is. Anti-evolutionaries wonder about the "assumption" of the initial sample's amount of radioactive material.
As with most scientific concepts, the real picture is more complex. Turns out there is no assumption at all about initial parent-daughter ratios. Basically, when the rock is molten, the parent and daughter isotopes are all mixed up, very homogenous (that's just the 2nd law of thermo). As the rock solidifies, it solidifies into different minerals within the rock - that all have different amounts of parent isotope, but the same parent-daughter ratio.
This is where the maths starts coming in - different amounts of radioisotope decay at different rates. It decays at a rate proportional to big an amount there is. Basically compound interest in reverse. Because of this, the parent daughter ratios in different minerals within the rock become more different from each other over time. The bigger the difference between them, the older the rock. There's only one possible age for each set of parent-daughter ratios. They're plotted like so:





And the slope gives you the information about the date, and the y intercept information about the initial parent daughter ratio. Zero assumption.

This also has the effect that only an exponential decay can result in these linear isochrons. Can radioisotopes leech out of the rock? Absolutely. Does this show up in the data? absolutely. Because leeching isn't an exponential process, it destroys the linear isochron. We can see if stuff has leeched
out.This also has an interesting effect. Folks who don't accept an ancient earth are often concerned about changing decay rates? Ya, when you remember how radioactive dating actually works, you'll notice that it dates the rock to the time it was last molten.

If decay rates were millions of times faster like young-earth proponents claim? Well E=mc^2 would like a word with them - it would produce so much energy, the rock would melt...and produce a YOUNGER age, not an older one.

https://discourse.biologos.org/t/otangelo-has-questions-about-the-age-of-the-earth/35106/15

Could he be talking about Bryan Osborne?
Incidentally, IMO Wiens's paper is badly in need of an update. It was written in 2002—some three years before the publication of the RATE report, and Tas Walker of creation.com has written a response to it. If it is indeed Osborne who he's talking about, I would think it highly likely that he's read—and is perhaps even referring to—Walker's response.
For what it's worth, I don't find Walker's response at all satisfactory. His tone is thoroughly inflammatory, his arguments contain a lot of ad hominem attacks, and he spends a lot of ink on dogmatically insisting that Literal Six Day Young Earth Creation is the only valid approach to the Genesis narrative and that anyone who doesn't accept it is a compromiser if not a closet atheist. This is distracting, and it makes it difficult to get to the technical parts of his arguments without getting annoyed one way or another.
However, setting tone aside there are several remarks we can make about the technical merits of his arguments. These are also general observations that can be made about any YEC attack on radiometric dating.

First, he repeatedly claims that we can not know anything about the past because nobody was there to see it happen. This is the standard YEC "were you there?" argument, and it is completely untrue. Historical assumptions can be tested by cross-checking different methods whose assumptions are independent of each other. They can also be tested by making predictions about what kind of evidence we would expect to see if they were true or false. (See also my points below.)

Second, he grossly exaggerates the extent and significance of discordances and disagreements. As far as I have been able to establish, the number of radiometric results which had no significant disagreement runs into the hundreds of thousands, while the number of discordant dates runs into the hundreds at most. This does not establish that radiometric dating never works; on the contrary, it establishes that radiometric dating mostly works with the exception of a few corner cases.
In any case, disagreements of a few percent, or even disagreements by a factor of two or three, fall far, far short of proving that radiometric dating is so unreliable that it can not tell the difference between thousands and billions. That would be like standing at the foot of Mount Everest and saying that it could plausibly be only four inches tall.
Third, he claims that different dating methods only give the same results because they are calibrated against each other. This claim is at best highly misleading, at worst completely untrue, and in any case not backed up by any evidence or citations. For starters, he gives little or no detail as to how this cross-calibration is supposedly done. On page 10 he says this:

One estimate was even obtained by measuring iron meteorites and accepting their age was 4.5 billion years based on radioactive dating by a different method. Likewise, the half-life of lutetium-176 was determined from measurements on meteorites of supposedly known age. These cases clearly involve circular reasoning.

He does not cite a source for either of these claims. Furthermore, even if they were true, this would only be circular reasoning if this were the only way in which the half-life of lutetium-176 is determined. It is not.
The forty or so different types of radiometric dating are not only cross-checked against each other, but also against multiple non-radiometric methods, including lake varves, ice cores, tree rings, coral growth, and just about everything else imaginable. One particularly spectacular example is the way in which GPS data confirms the rates of continental drift established through radiometric dating.

It may be possible to establish that one or two dating methods have been calibrated against others, or that cross-calibrations are used in some cases in conjunction with other methods to refine accuracy, but to claim that all methods rely entirely on cross-calibrations with each other simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Fourth, he repeatedly asserts that we need to know the original quantities of parent and daughter isotopes in the samples, and whether any contamination or leakage has occurred. This completely ignores the fact that isochron dating avoids both these assumptions. Even if isochron dating can be shown to be flawed for other reasons, repeating this statement without qualification is flat-out lying.

Fifth, he claims that isochron dating also makes assumptions that are not testable when in fact they are. He claims that it is impossible to tell the difference between an isochron line and a mixing line. Wiens does not address this point, but this article on Talk Origins does—and it makes it clear that there are ways of telling the difference between an isochron line and a mixing line. Furthermore, if mixing lines really were as much of a problem that they couldn't tell the difference between thousands and billions of years, isochron plots with negative gradients would be as common as ones with positive gradients, while discordances would be the rule rather than the exception. But they aren't.

Sixth, his claims of radiocarbon in ancient samples were almost certainly contamination. This refers to the RATE project's studies. However, they did not follow the correct procedures for taking contamination into account: they merely subtracted a "standard background" whereas the professionals go to great lengths to characterise individual contamination vectors even on a laboratory-specific basis. Certainly, the amounts of radiocarbon found in the samples were too small to rule out contamination, and they showed clear patterns indicating that this was indeed the case. See this article by Kirk Bertsche for a discussion.

Seventh, accelerated nuclear decay is science fiction. In most of the twenty or so studies that they have come up with in which nuclear decay rates were shown to vary, the effect was small—a few percent at most, and certainly not enough to squeeze the evidence into six thousand years. The only significant increases in nuclear decay rates observed in the laboratory occurred either by stripping 187Re it of all its electrons, or by heating 176Lu to temperatures above 200 million K. Neither of these are realistic conditions that could have occurred during either Creation Week or the Flood, and even if they had, they would have reset the radiometric "clocks" which don't start ticking until the rock crystallises and cools below its closure temperature.

The RATE team acknowledged that accelerated nuclear decay would have released enough heat to raise the temperature of the earth's surface to 22,000˚C—that's four times hotter than the surface of the sun. They themselves acknowledged that neither conduction, nor convection, nor radiation would have been sufficient to remove the heat fast enough, and that any cooling mechanism would also have had to cool some materials (e.g. rocks) faster than others (e.g. water). (Source: RATE technical report, chapter 10, pages 761-765.)
I think that they ended up claiming that God must have supernaturally intervened to remove all the heat in the end, but all they've managed to do there is propose a miracle whose only effect was to make the earth look older than it really is. Basically, it's an overly complex and convoluted version of the Omphalos hypothesis that is so absurd that it looks more like a parody than anything else.

YEC claims the stratified strata of the GC was laid down in the flood.

This is impossible, because there are trace fossils throughtout the strata.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/
http://paleo.cc/ce/tracefos.htm

Then they claim the canyon was carved out in a short period of time, by a massive amount of water.

Here are three reasons that is physically impossible.

1. The pillars would have collapsed with the weight of flood water tearing them out.

2. There could not possibly be enough water. The Grand Canyon drainage is missing, I believe, 100,000 cubic miles of material.

At a 1% carry ratio (EXTREMELY conservative, because the material needs to travel all the way to the delta a thousand miles away), you need 10 million cubic miles of water.

That much water occupies, wait for it, 10 million cubic miles of SPACE. Where does it sit waiting? How is carefully funnelled through the canyon to erode it at the correct pace for the canyon to form?

Fact is, it simply couldn't.

3. The cliffs and features of the GC would collapse under their own weight if they weren't rock yet. If they were freshly laid down by the flood, they would be soft. T

NEGLECT OF GEOLOGIC DATA: Sedimentary Strata Compared with Young-Earth Creationist Writings.
http://www.wonderlylib.ibri.org/Wonderly-Neglect/Wonderly-Neglect.htm

Fish taphonomy and environmental inference in paleolimnology

Paleolimnology and taphonomy of some fish deposits in “Fossil” and “Uinta” Lakes of the Eocene Green River Formation, Utah and Wyoming

The real problem of varves for young earth interpretations does not come from Greenriver (were all specialists agree that there are also pseudo-varves), but from locations from Lake Suigetsu where you have:
1) alternate layers of summer (with pollen) and winter sediments
2) agreement between carbon years and varve years
3) tenthousands of pairs of layers that are even under a microscope indistinguishable from the recent annual varves of which you can observe their formation

Please research Gerald Aardsma who is a Young earth creationist who worked for the Institute for Creation Research ICR on a research project trying to debunk carbon dating and tree ring chronology. However, he ultimately found that all the creationist critiques of these methods failed and lost his job at ICR. Even YECs admit that carbon dating works well for the past 4000 years because we can align it with known historic events. This means that at least the past 4000 varves of Lake Suigetsu must be annual sediments. Given the usual date for the Flood as 4300 years ago, this means that the remaining 46000 varve layers, which are indistinguishable from modern annual ones, must have been deposited within 300 years. To solve this problem it does not help to point out that in some Swiss lakes 3 pairs of varves have been deposited in some years rather than only a single one. This kind of evidence simply is incompatible with a global flood a few thousand years ago, so that the only options for YECs are:
1.) Attribute the misleading evidence to a fallen world and satanic deception.
2.) or embrace like Aardsma a version of Neo-Omphalos theory with virtual history.
What is not possible is supporting YEC with modern science, or even make it compatible with it.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2011

WHY I REJECT A YOUNG EARTH VIEW: A BIBLICAL DEFENSE OF AN OLD EARTH
by Jonathan McLatchie

The question of the meaning and proper interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis is one of the most heated subjects in Christendom today. Few other topics have evoked such polarized opinion and division. The diversity of views on Genesis, even among the most learned of exegetes and scholars, is staggering. While one extreme insists that the days of Genesis must strictly be interpreted as seven consecutive 24-hour periods (thus rendering the earth very young indeed — in the order of thousands, and not millions or billions, of years old), at the other extreme lies the notion that the early chapters of Genesis are devoid of any historical content at all. On the latter view, Genesis 1 comprises a mythological allegory; Adam and Eve are reduced to mere literary devices; and the historicity of Noah’s Flood is typically abandoned altogether. There is a plethora of competing views which reside in the middle of those polar extremes: Examples include the Day-Age Theory; the Gap Theory; and various forms of progressive creationism. In this article, I attempt to show that, while it is possible to interpret the book of Genesis in light of a young earth, there is no Biblical mandate for this conclusion: That is to say, Genesis could be interpreted in that manner, but it does not have to be.
I am trained as a scientist (I’m a postgraduate student in evolutionary biology). And, as a scientist, the arguments for an ancient earth seem to be very compelling (needless to say, when it comes to Darwinian evolution, it is a very different story). In this article, however, I simply want to read and understand the text on its own terms, not missing what the text is saying; but, at the same time, not adding to it what simply isn’t there. Having shown that Genesis does not require that one read it as conveying a young earth, I hope that readers will be convinced that we can thus read and understand the science on its own terms as well. It seems to me that there are three major subtopics which an article of this nature must address. These are:
1. The proper interpretation of Genesis One.
2. The question of the fall of man, human sin and its consequences.
3. The scale and scope of the Flood of Noah.
The proper interpretation of Genesis One
In approaching the text of Genesis 1, we notice that there are certain features which are suggestive that the text need not be read as necessitating that we take a young-earth view. Let’s take a look at each in turn.
First, there is the fact that the initial creation act described in verses 1 and 2 is separated from the six days of creation which proceed it. Consider the first three verses of Genesis 1:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Notice that there is a definite pattern associated with the days described in Genesis 1. Each one begins with “And God said…” and ends with “And there was evening and there was morning, the nth day.” This being so, there is the implication that day 1 commences in verse 3, while the description in verses 1-2 of God creating the heavens and the earth precedes it. This conclusion receives still further support from the fact that the verb “created” in verse 1 is in the perfect tense, whereas the use of the narrative tense begins in verse 3. When the perfect tense is used at the start of a pericope, its purpose is ordinarily to denote an event which sets the background and context of the storyline: That is to say, it takes place before the rest of the story gets underway. This implies that verses 1 and 2 occurred an undisclosed period of time prior to the first day! This means that, quite aside from how one interprets the days of Genesis 1, the origin of the Universe (and, indeed, the earth) occurs, as far as the information provided in Scripture is concerned, at an indeterminate time in the past.
Second, there is the fact that, in the original Hebrew, there is no definite article pertinent to the first five days, whereas there is a definite article associated with the sixth and seventh day, which seems to suggest there is something special — or different — about those latter two days. One possibility, which has been entertained by some, is that the writer did not intend us to take the first six days as consecutive days of a single earth week, but, instead, as a sequence of six creation days: That is to say, days of 24-hour duration in which God supernaturally infuses novelty at punctuated intervals. On this view, it may well be the case that the individual days were separated from one another by unspecified periods of time.
Third, there is this whole business of the seventh (or, Sabbath) day of rest. Consider the first two verses of Genesis 2:
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Do you notice something peculiar about the seventh day? What ever happened to the “evening” and “morning”? For the first six days, the text, at the close of each day, states that “And there was evening and there was morning, the nth day.” This stands in stark contrast with the seventh day, for which it is curiously missing. This has led some exegetes to argue that the seventh day, on which God rests, may be continuous, and that we may still be residing in it. This gains traction from Hebrews 4:3-7, which states,
 3 Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,
  “So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’”
  And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world. 4 For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works.” 5 And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.”
6 Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, 7 God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted:
  “Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”
If, therefore, it may be considered legitimate to take the seventh day as representative of a much longer period of time, then whence the mandate for supposing a commitment to interpreting the other six days as representative of 24-hour periods?
Fourth, there is the multiple-usage of the word “day” in Genesis 1. Let’s take a look at the manner in which the word “day” is used in the Genesis 1 (up to 2:4) narrative alone:
1. Genesis 1:5a: “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.” Here, “day” is contrasted with “night”: Thus, a 24-hour day is not in view, but rather “day” in the sense of “daytime” (i.e. 12 hours).
2. Genesis 1:5b: “And there was evening and there was morning — the first day.” Here, the word does indeed mean a 24-hour day.
3. Genesis 2:3: “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” To this, I have already alluded — the key point here is the absence of “evening” and “morning”, which denotes all of the previous six days.
4. The correct rendering of the Hebrew with respect to Genesis 2:4 is “This is the account of the heavens and the earth in the day they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.”
Fifth, it may be noticed that days 1-3 form a triad that corresponds to the triad formed by days 4-6. In day 1, God creates the light and distinguishes it from darkness; whereas on day 4, God creates the sun, moon and stars. On day 2, God separates the sky and sea; whereas, on day 5, God creates birds and sea creatures. On day 3, God causes dry land to appear; whereas on day 6, God creates the land animals and humans. This pattern may suggest that the exact chronological sequence of events is not in mind here.
Sixth, in verses 11-14 of Genesis 1, we read the following:
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.  
Notice that the text says, “Let the land produce vegetation…”. This may suggest that God allowed the trees and vegetation to germinate and grow by virtue of natural processes. This on its own may suggest that the duration of this day was significantly longer than 24 hours! Further notice that Genesis 2:8 says, “Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east…” This also suggests that God planted a garden which he thus caused to grow. Though I reject Darwinian evolution for scientific reasons, Genesis 1:24 could be interpreted as compatible with certain forms of evolution: “And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. [emphasis added]”
Seventh, many features of Genesis 1 bear a striking similarity to texts concerned with the temple, a phenomenon which has given rise to various understandings of Genesis 1 as a description of the “cosmic temple.”  For one thing, there is the curious fact that the number seven appears so pervasively in temple accounts in the ancient world and in the Bible. Thus, the seven days of the Genesis account of origins has a familiarity that can hardly be coincidental and tells us something about the seven-day structure in Genesis 1. Furthermore, in the outer courtyard of the temple were representations of various aspects of cosmic geography. For instance, there was the water basin which 1 Kings 7:23-26 designates “sea”, and the bronze pillars, described in 1 Kings 7:15-22, which perhaps represented the pillars of the earth. The horizontal axis in the temple was arranged in the same order as the vertical axis in the cosmos. From the courtyard, one would move into the organized cosmos as he entered the antechamber, which is where one would find the Menorah, the Table of Bread and the incense alter. In the descriptions of the Tabernacle, the lamb and its olive oil are provided for “light” (which is the same word used to describe the celestial bodies in day four). Then there is, of course, the veil which separates the earthly sphere from the heavenly sphere which is the dwelling place of God (thus serving the same symbolic function as the firmament). One could continue on and on in the same vein. This parallelism is particularly striking when one considers that, as John Walton points out in The Lost World of Genesis One, the temple’s inauguration ceremony was completed by God taking up his rest in the temple, as he, in fact, does on day seven.
In regard to the fourth day of Creation Week, which is often a point of tension (it is on day 4 that God apparently creates the sun, moon and stars, after the creation of both plants and light, as well as the progression of days 1-3, which presumably required the sun), the verb “made” in Genesis 1:16 does not specifically mean ‘create’, but can instead refer to ‘working on something that is already there’ or even ‘appointed’. Such an interpretation makes sense in the context of the very next verse, in which we are told that the function of the sun and moon is as visible lights in the sky. If this interpretation is correct, it would entail that God appoints the role of the sun and moon, and is not a reference to their creation de novo.
A discussion of the meaning of Genesis 1 would not be complete without some mention of Exodus 20:11, which occurs in the context of the ten commandments which God gives to Moses. We read, “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” As John Lennox observes in his recent book, Seven Days that Divide the World, however, “there [are] similarities between God’s creation week and our work week, but also obvious differences. God’s week happened once; ours is repeated. God’s creative activity is very different from ours; God does not need rest as we do, and so on. So it is not possible to draw straight lines from Genesis to our working week. God’s week is a pattern for ours, but it is not identical. Thus Exodus 20:8-11 does not demand that the days of Genesis 1 be the days of a single week, although it could of course be interpreted in that way.”
While one could continue in this vein, enough has been said. Let’s move on to consider our second question, which is concerned with the Fall of man, human sin, and its consequences.
What Exactly Happened at the Fall?
One of the most frequent theological arguments for a young-earth pertains to the common presumption that death did not exist prior to the Fall. The claim is based upon several demonstrably false assumptions. For one thing, it cannot be dogmatically specified (from a young earth standpoint) which particular class of living creatures for which suffering and death before the fall is unacceptable. The insistence that physical death is the immediate (‘on the day’) result of the fall makes God a liar and the snake the truth-teller. Thus the argument is based entirely on a fallacy.
Further, the text of Genesis 1-3 nowhere states that there was no death prior to the Fall. Certainly, the second law of thermodynamics (things tending toward increased entropy) was in place, for they were eating plants and fruit. So, at least some kind of death and degradation preceded the Fall. We also know that God said to Eve that he would greatly increase her pains in childbearing, not give her ones which she did not have before. God’s statement, ‘in the day you eat of it you shall die’ was said only to the first human being and had no relationship at all to any of the other animals, as is indeed the context of Romans 5 which addresses this very issue. The view that all animals were herbivores and that following the fall there was an instant re-creation act, in which body chemistry and behavior patterns were changed seems to be an enormous extrapolation and an unwarranted eisegetical reading into the text. The Tyrannosaur was a machine designed for killing. According to the young earth view, not only would its teeth and anatomical and physiological features need to be radically altered, but it would require a whole new digestive system. Then we have the fact that the names of the animals which Adam named prior to the Fall have connotations of violence. For example, the Hebrew name for lion is derived from the Hebrew root that means ‘in the sense of violence’.
As I said previously, Adam did not die physically on the day that he ate of the tree, but lived a full life afterwards. The conclusion is thus necessitated that God was not talking about biological death or that he was not intending it to be taken literally. To quote N.T. Wright, “The result is that death, which was always part of the natural transience of the good creation, gains a second dimension, which the Bible sometimes calls ‘spiritual death’.”
What About the Flood?
Another frequent objection to an old earth lies with the apparently global scope of the Flood. But this argument, too, hardly seems watertight. For one thing, it fails to take into account that the ancients often spoke of localized or regional events in hyperbolic terms. One does not need to look too far for examples. Consider the following from the Old and New Testaments:
1. Genesis 41:57 – “And all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world.”
2. 1 Kings 10:24 – “The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart.”
3. Luke 2:1 – “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire world.”
4. John 12:19 – “So the Pharisees said to one another, ‘See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”
5. Acts 2:5 – “Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.”
6. Romans 1:8 – “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world.”
7. Colossians 1:6 – “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.”
The ancient Hebrews did not think of “the world” as being a spherical globe, as one would today. Rather, to say that God had “flooded the world” would be simply to say that God had “flooded the known world” or “the land”. Indeed, 2 Peter 3:6 reports that, “By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. [emphasis added]”.
One feature of the Flood narrative, which is often overlooked, is the statement that “on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, [emphasis added]“. This stands in marked contrast with respect to the often quoted “the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat. “According to Armenian scholars, “the mountains of Ararat” cover an area of about 100,000 square miles of eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iraq, and southern Russia. Since the focal point of the flood is Mesopotamia, it seems probable that the ark came to rest in the foothills of Ararat, which is just north of Nineveh. Moreover, it must be borne in mind, the Hebrew word for mountains, har, is a general term referring to any geologic relief, from a small hill up to a towering peak, which makes sense of Genesis 7:19, which reports that “They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.”
Conclusion
In this short essay, I have hoped to show that, while Genesis 1 allows for the strict “seven consecutive 24-hour day” interpretation, it does not demand that we take it that way. While one wants to be careful to consider all of Scripture, we must be similarly careful not to read beyond what the text actually says. While the issue of the age of the earth will undoubtedly continue to be a point of disagreement among Christians, it should not be made into a hill on which to die. It should not be a point over which the church should divide. As we read in Romans 14, “One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord.” Old earth and young earth advocates ought to unite under the banner which is the glorious Gospel of Christ. Salvation is not contingent on what one believes about the age of the earth. This article has not, of course, dealt with the larger issues of science, nor has it offered a scientific critique of the young-earth perspective. What I have hoped to show, however, is that the Bible is silent on matters concerning the age of the cosmos and world. We may thus turn to science and other realms of epistemology — engaging with them on their own terms — for the answers to these questions.

Independent evidences for an old earth include unbroken overlapping patterns of tree rings (12,400 years), lake varves (60,000 years), ice core data (800,000 years), annual laminations in cave formations (200,000 years), radiometric dating of earth rocks by multiple independent methods (4 t0 4.2 billion years), radiometric dating of moon rocks and meteorites by multiple independent methods (4.4 to 4.6 billion years), cosmic microwave background radiation (13.8 billion years), annual coral growth layers (300,000 years), thermoluminescence measurements of crystalline minerals (300,000 years), continental drift movement rates, etc. [“Dictionary of Christianity and Science: The Definitive Reference for the Intersection of Christian Faith and Contemporary Science” (Zondervan, 2017), pp.28-32]

A Christian Physicist Examines the Age of the Earth 
https://www.letu.edu/academics/arts-and-sciences/files/age-of-earth.pdf

https://researcherslinks.com/current-issues/Scandal-of-the-Evangelical-Mind-A-Biblical-and-Scientific-Critique-of-Young-Earth-Creationism/9/5/43/html