Most scientists believe the earth is over 4 billion years old. They have arrived at this figure by studying the natural processes at work in the earth and calculating how long it would take for these processes to bring about the conditions that exist now.
One method scientists use is radiometric dating. Radioactive elements break down and form other elements; one example is uranium breaking down to become lead. The rate of the process is known, so by measuring the amount of uranium and lead it is possible to determine how long it would take the lead to form. If all of the lead that exists is the result of radioactive decay it would take over 4 billion years to produce the amount of lead that exists today.
Another fact that leads scientists to conclude that the earth is very old is the existence of large numbers of fossils. Most organisms decay or are eaten when they die. The conditions required for fossilization are so rare that it would take millions of years for the vast number of fossils that exist to be formed.
The evidence that the earth is old is based on the assumption that everything that exists came into existence as a result of the natural processes that are going on today and that there has never been any major interruption of these processes. But the Bible tells us that God created the earth and that there was once a flood that covered the whole earth. If these things actually happened scientists who think the earth is old are making the same mistake as the doctor who tried to guess Adam’s age. Their estimate is too high because they fail to consider historical as well as scientific data.
If God created the world to be inhabited it would already have lead and other elements that are the products of radioactive decay. A worldwide flood would produce conditions favorable to fossilization over the entire earth so the fossils we find could all be produced in a short period of time. Those who believe the earth is young are often accused of rejecting science. That simply isn’t true. We believe that the scientists who claim the earth is old are competent. The reason for their error is that they reject the historical information they need to properly interpret their data.
The doctor who examined Adam didn’t have enough information to discover Adam’s age but the fact that Adam didn’t have a navel should have told him that he wasn’t born the same way his other patients had been. Science alone can’t tell us the true age of the earth but there is scientific evidence that the earth can’t be as old as is generally believed.
One example of this evidence is finding soft tissue in the bones of dinosaurs that supposedly lived millions of years ago. This is from an article titled “Soft Tissue in Fossils” in the October 2012 issue of Answers magazine.
Soft tissue couldn’t have survived for such a long time so this is evidence that previous estimates of the age of the world must be wrong. Unfortunately belief that the world is old is so strong that most scientists ignore or try to explain away the evidence rather than changing their theories to conform to the evidence.Ask the average layperson how he or she knows that the earth is millions or billions of years old, and that person will probably mention the dinosaurs, which nearly everybody “knows” died off 65 million years ago. A recent discovery by Dr. Mary Schweitzer, however, has given reason for all but committed evolutionists to question this assumption.
Bone slices from the fossilized thigh bone (femur) of a Tyrannosaurus rex found in the Hell Creek formation of Montana were studied under the microscope by Schweitzer. To her amazement, the bone showed what appeared to be blood vessels of the type seen in bone and marrow, and these contained what appeared to be red blood cells with nuclei, typical of reptiles and birds (but not mammals). The vessels even appeared to be lined with specialized endothelial cells found in all blood vessels.
Amazingly, the bone marrow contained what appeared to be flexible tissue. Initially, some skeptical scientists suggested that bacterial biofilms (dead bacteria aggregated in a slime) formed what only appear to be blood vessels and bone cells. Recently Schweitzer and coworkers found biochemical evidence for intact fragments of the protein collagen, which is the building block of connective tissue. This is important because collagen is a highly distinctive protein not made by bacteria. (See Schweitzer’s review article in Scientific American [December 2010, pp. 62–69] titled “Blood from Stone.”)
http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... in-fossilsSome evolutionists have strongly criticized Schweitzer’s conclusions because they are understandably reluctant to concede the existence of blood vessels, cells with nuclei, tissue elasticity, and intact protein fragments in a dinosaur bone dated at 68 million years old. Other evolutionists, who find Schweitzer’s evidence too compelling to ignore, simply conclude that there is some previously unrecognized form of fossilization that preserves cells and protein fragments over tens of millions of years. Needless to say, no evolutionist has publicly considered the possibility that dinosaur fossils are not millions of years old.
The existence of soft dinosaur tissue isn’t the only evidence that the earth is young. You can read about some of the other evidence here.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/article ... -evidences
This evidence alone doesn’t prove that the Bible is true but it does show that the earth can’t be billions of years old and there is no scientific reason to reject the truth of the Bible.
Here are some sites where you can find more evidence that the generally accepted beliefs regarding the earth’s origins are wrong.
http://www.piltdownsuperman.com/
http://scienceagainstevolution.info/
http://sixdaysblog.com/
