The earth is 6000-10000 years old (Talk.Origins)

Claim CH210:


 * The earth is relatively young, about 10,000 years old or less.

 Source:  Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, p. 158.

CreationWiki response:

First off there is evidence that not only points to a young Earth, but that clearly points to the Biblical time scale. Talk Origins claims to have refuted them, but those refutations do not stand up to scrutiny.


 * The decay of the Earth's magnetic field points to an age for the Earth of 6,000–8,700 years. Talk Origins' "refutation" fails to consider recent work in this area.
 * Measurements of helium diffusion rates of zircons not only provide evidence for accelerated decay but also suggest an age for the Earth of 6000 ± 2000 years. Talk Origins' "refutation" simply does not stand up to scrutiny.
 * Measured mitochondrial DNA mutation rates point to an age for mankind of 6500 years. Talk Origins' "refutation" ignores the fact that those studies that give dates of 100,000-200,000 years for Mitochondrial Eve assume evolution.

So here we have three independent dating methods that suggest an age for the Earth of about 6000 years.

It addition, some factors limit the age of the earth to less than 4.5 billion years.
 * The effect of tidal forces on the Earth / Moon system shows a maximum age of the system of 1.2 billion years. Talk Origins' "refutation" is a total failure because the paleontological data they point to require the Earth to be slowing at a faster rate than is observed, and do not show the change in rate predicted by the laws of physics. Furthermore, there is no evidence in the paleontological data for the theory used to try to salvage the Earth model from this problem.

The basis for the 4.5 billion year "age" is a lead isochron of meteorites and Earth rocks. The reason for thinking that this isochron has anything to do with the age of the Earth is the Nebula Hypothesis. Since two totally false isochrons from unrelated sets of samples could be used to form a single isochron, there needs to be a theory relating the earth rocks to the meteorites. For uniformitarian geologists the theory would be the Nebula Hypothesis. It also requires chemical differentiation to occur at the formation of the Earth and the meteors, otherwise the isochrons would only represent the isotopic makeup of the source material.

A young-Earth model offers five possible origins for such isochrons.
 * Coincidence. It is possible that the Earth rocks used just happen to match the meteorite isochron. The probability would be enhanced by any physical process that limits the range of variability of isotopic makeup of the types of rocks used.
 * The Earth and meteors&mdash;or at least the meteors' parent body&mdash;were created with a similar isotopic makeup. There is some logic to the idea that God would use similar materials in making different planets, much like an artist using the same type of paint in different paintings.
 * The Earth and meteors were formed by God out of the same source material, without chemical differentiation occurring.
 * Meteors originated from the Earth as described by Hydroplate theory. In this case chemical differentiation would not occur.
 * The Earth has been sufficiently contaminated with meteoric material that the samples used inherited their isotopic ratios from meteorites.

References:
 * Age of Meteorites and the Earth
 * Mythology of Modern Dating Methods
 * Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Creationist Research

There is no requirement within a young-Earth model that such short-lived isotopes be present. They could have been excluded for purposes of long-term stability. Many of these isotopes are heavy elements that simply may not have had any uses.

Secondly, Accelerated decay would have eliminated them within hours or days if they were originally present.

There is so little available information on these deposits that a proper analysis is not possible, but based on the available information the following analysis can be made.

These deposits consist of different types of material, and there is red clay underlying the upper layers of loess. While the upper layers (162.5 m) show evidence of being deposited by wind, the underlying red clay does not show such a pattern. This suggests the possibility that red clay may be Flood deposits while the loess is post-Flood, with most of it deposited during the early post-Flood period.

Neither source makes reference to a continuous climate record or fossils, nor is there any detail on the magnetostratigraphy. Without independent information this claim is baseless. Furthermore, none of these qualify as independent dating methods as there is mutual calibration among them and other methods. Also, paleomagnetic data tend to be somewhat chaotic, so there is likely to be plenty of room for subjectivity in the analysis of the raw paleomagnetic data&mdash;so the correlation may not be as natural as Talk Origins implies.

References:
 * Magnetic Stripes revisited
 * Problems with Plate Tectonics

Actually the degree of correlation is not that impressive beyond about 1000 B.C.

This is typical uniformitarian thinking&mdash;not proof of an old Earth. It is simply a case of your theory does not work under my theory, so your theory must be wrong. This is a form of circular reasoning, because it assumes uniformitarianism which assumes an old Earth.

What is the basis of this claim? Talk Origins fails to give any reason why this should be the case. On the contrary, experiments show that the thickness of layers in a continuous heterogranular deposition is independent of the rate of deposition, but it is related to the difference in grain size. So available experimental evidence goes against this Talk.Origins claim.

This assumes the previous baseless claim. Not only do experiments show that the thickness of the layers can be independent of the rate of deposition, but in flowing water, or at least flowing liquefied sediment, many layers can be formed simultaneously, so these millions of layers could easily have formed in less than 1000 years.

Since this lake is being used "to calibrate C-14 dating", neither can be considered independent evidence for an old Earth. The so-called "annual diatom bloom" is a doubling of the diatom count in the light-colored layers as opposed to the dark layers, and experiments with diatomite show that the same patterns are produced regardless of sedimentation rates.

Talk Origins' source shows significant discrepencies between varves counted and the C-14 "age" adding up to a 2000-year difference at the 13,000 varves mark. This pattern peaks at the 29,000 varves mark with a difference of 6000 years with the C-14 "age". In fact, when combined with data from other sources and normalized for changes in original C-14, then the results are all over the place.

This would also be consistent with rapid post-Flood deposition and a rapid increase in C-14.

Talk Origins' source article states in its abstract that they "may correspond to Milankovitch periods," suggesting that the authors themselves may at least have doubts that the sediment cycles at Lake Baikal match the Milankovitch cycles. The Milankovitch cycles are 20,000, 41,000, and 100,000 years, the cycles they referred to are 400,000, 600,000 and 1,000,000 layers, interpreted as years. Yes these are multiples of 100,000, but it hardly qualifies as a match. If the cycles were about 100,000, then they might have a case, but they are several times too long, so hardly proof.

Furthermore, while (a main indicator of climate change) seems to reach a peak negative near the 100,000 year peak in the eccentricity of the Earth orbit, closer scrutiny shows problems with this theory. The peak negative does not correspond to the variation in the size of the eccentricity peaks. That is, smaller eccentricity peaks should produce smaller peak negatives, and larger eccentricity peaks should produce larger  peak negatives, but they don't. Furthermore, the change in eccentricity produces a change in solar radiation of only 1–2%, which is about that of the difference over a single 11-year solar cycle, and the difference is too small to account for the indicated degree of climate change. The result is that the apparent match-up between Milankovitch cycles and climate change is at best a coincidence.

Reference: The role of the sun in climate forcing

What the cited paper shows is that it is possible to derive an age of the sun of 4.66 billion years if you annualize the data in the right way, based on the right model and the right assumptions. It also shows that other papers have produced ages over 5 billion years.

However, it also shows that actual seismic solar data do not fit any variation of the standard model as is shown by their figure 1 and figure 3.

More recent seismic solar data suggest an age of 6,000-12,857 years.