Evidence for God from Science

Hi

I am an uneducated man with no science background and i have some questions please.

Where would one start reading to gain some basic scientific fundamental knowledge on age of the earth?

There seems to be disagreement among the north american church culture about origins of life, age of the earth etc. For example in the church i attend there is no shortage of individuals that preach that the earth is about 6000 years old and it was created in 7 literal 24 hour days. Is this the prevailing theory of most people in NA that identify themselves as "Christian'"? What does the unbiased scientific evidence point to?

I personally believe that truth is truth, no matter where you find it.

I am not interested in starting a thread debating the age of the earth, there must me many of them already created. I am more interested in being led to some learning material where one could start to gather knowledge.

I welcome your input.

Welcome.. Best answered here...

"The age of the Earth is around 4.54 billion years (4.54 נ109 years ± 1%). This age has been determined by radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples. The Sun, in comparison, is about 4.57 billion years old, about 30 million years older."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_earth

There seems to be disagreement among the north american church culture about origins of life, age of the earth etc. For example in the church i attend there is no shortage of individuals that preach that the earth is about 6000 years old and it was created in 7 literal 24 hour days. Is this the prevailing theory of most people in NA that identify themselves as "Christian'"? What does the unbiased scientific evidence point to?

No... It's called Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and for the most part many find it unscriptural and unscientific..

Thank you for the reply Gman. I do enjoy concise answers. Is there a consensus among the learned in regards to the accuracy of the types of radiometric age dating used to achieve this conclusion?

How do most people who identify as Christians draw the conclusion that the earth is eactly 6000 years old, not 8000, 16,000, 100,000 etc, is it through bible genealogies?

If anyone is aware of books or online articles that deal with basic age of the earth from a beginners point of view please don't hesitate to mention them.

bereanquest wrote:Thank you for the reply Gman. I do enjoy concise answers. Is there a consensus among the learned in regards to the accuracy of the types of radiometric age dating used to achieve this conclusion?

Yes, the information comes from our scientific communities throughout the world... It is basically answered in the second paragraph.

"Following the scientific revolution and the development of radiometric age dating, measurements of lead in uranium-rich minerals showed that some were in excess of a billion years old.[4] The oldest such minerals analyzed to date — small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia — are at least 4.404 billion years old.[5][6][7] Comparing the mass and luminosity of the Sun to the multitudes of other stars, it appears that the solar system cannot be much older than those rocks. Ca-Al-rich inclusions (inclusions rich in calcium and aluminium) — the oldest known solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the solar system — are 4.567 billion years old,[8][9] giving an age for the solar system and an upper limit for the age of Earth."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_earth

bereanquest wrote:How do most people who identify as Christians draw the conclusion that the earth is eactly 6000 years old, not 8000, 16,000, 100,000 etc, is it through bible genealogies?

A lot of it has to do with the genealogies recorded in the Bible starting from Adam on up to Christ... Others are taken from a literal meaning of the Genesis account. A closer look can be found here..

http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth ... OTtEqwgaQk

bereanquest wrote:If anyone is aware of books or online articles that deal with basic age of the earth from a beginners point of view please don't hesitate to mention them.

As far as online, you've hit the right spot here at our web site. The recommended books come from Hugh Ross from RTB.

God and Science
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetic ... kwzql7UWRw

Reasons to Believe
http://www.reasons.org/

Answers in Creation (our sister site)
http://www.answersincreation.org/

One really interesting line of evidence comes from radioactive decay, but not via the traditional means of radioactive dating.

Are you familiar with the concept of half-lives? The half-life of a radioactive element is the amount of time it takes for half of the substance to undergo radioactive decay. Half-lives of elements range from less than a second, to trillions of years.

You can list all of the elements in order of the length of their half-lives from big to small. You can then go down the list and mark whether or not those elements are found to occur on earth. When you do this you will see that all of the longest-lived elements are present on earth. You will also see that any element with a half-life of about 100million years or less is not found on earth. After 10-20 half-lives have passed, a material essentially no longer exists; so if the earth is at least 1-2billion years old, this list of elements found to occur on earth is precisely what you would expect.

Here's a link explaining the concept in a bit more detail.