Giant Mystery Blob Discovered near Dawn of Time

[Jess]

TK wrote:

"I have often wondered what evidence Young earth creationists would accept as "proof" that the earth is over 15000 or
so years old."

Well, first I just want to say I haven't decided which side of this fence I come down on. I think there are evidences that can be used to support both. That being said, I think one thing that might make Young earthers take pause would be a world wide uncomformity. As we all know sediments are deposited in layers based on fairly well understood hydrologic principles. For example an object being carried in a flow of water deposits more quickly if it is large. Sandy particles, being quite small, can be carried in turbulent water longer than large rock or boulders. The water has to become much more still for the smaller particles to sink to the bottom and be deposited. Sometimes the water has to completely dry up for all the material it carries to be deposited.

If there is time for a layer to settle before the next layer is deposited what one often finds is evidence of water action or erosion between layers. If you look at the bottom of the sea near the shore you will see that the sand on the bottom is usually somewhat scallopped and arrayed in ridge-like waves perpendicular to the direction of the waves (you find much the same thing in other areas as well, not just on shore). Now. if a new layer gets deposited on top of the sandy bottom the wave-like pattern is not necessarily lost. It persists, even after the layers have hardened into solid rock layers. This is called an "unconformity" and is taken as evidence of a break in time between the deposition of the two layers. These kinds of findings exist throughout the rock strata. The problem is an unconformity existing in, say Texas, between two layers does not demonstrate an unconformity when unearthed in Kansas, for example. This means that there may have been some local phenomenon in Texas that resulted in a delay between one layer and the next but there was no delay in Kansas. An unconformity therefore cannot be used as evidence of long periods of time between layers unless the unconformity is actually word-wide. To date, NO world-wide unconformities have been found. This suggests the rock strata were indeed deposited in one continuous world-wide cataclysm and not successively over vast eons of time with millions of years in between the layers.

If evidence of a world wide unconformity were found we would have to posit at least some unknown amount of time between the layers above and below the unconformity.

[TK]

Thanks, Jess. that's a good one.

I also want to reiterate that I am not dogmatic either way either, but it may seem like i lean toward the OE side. But that's just because i cant grasp how scientists could possibly be THAT wrong when dating the earth and the universe. but if i find out someday that the earth is really quite young, then that would be wonderful too.

TK

[Paidion]

What?!?! He [the guy from Aaron's church] couldn't put a month and day on it?? Tell him come back when he gets a little more precise!

Right. If he had spent adequate time studying the genealogies in the Old Testament as Bishop Ussher had done, he would have come up with the precise date.

Ussher said the first day of creation began at nightfall on Sunday, October 23, 4004 B.C. (Julian Calendar). That's about as precise as you can get!

And he figured this out way back in the 1600s. So we moderns better get cracking!

Ussher chronology

[TK]

Thanks, Paidion. I appreciated Stephen Jay Gould's quote:

I shall be defending Ussher's chronology as an honourable effort for its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a distant and different past

Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology…

TK