The Age of the Earth

The age of the Earth is….

around 6,000 Years.

I must admit, this was one biblical fact I that had a hard time with. For my whole life I had always been told that the Earth is billions of years old and that was a scientific fact. Well, that fact, which is not repeatable and no one observed, has some major holes in it.

The scientific age of the Earth is mainly based on radioactive dating. What can be more scientific and accurate than that? Simply put radioactive dating involves taking radioactive elements such as Potassium-40, Uranium-238, Carbon-14 and measuring the half-life of these elements. How Does Radiometric Dating Work?

However, there is a major issue with radioactive dating. To do the dating you have to know how much of the element was in the sample begin with. That’s the flaw with radioactive dating.

For example, you have a 10 inch tall candle and you light it, then you observe that it burns at 1 inch per hour. You then walk into a room and see a 5 inch tall burning candle. So, has that candle been burning for 5 hours? You do NOT know. Was the candle 10 inch tall when it was lit? Was the candle lit burned for awhile and put out and then relit?

For example, the radioactive dating of rock produced from the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 have return ages ranging from 350,000 to 2.8 million years for different mineral components.

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