Re: [asa] Dating the Earth

An interesting newspaper article indicating on how people continue to repeat
the myth I mentioned in a previous post

Here is an extract from the article and errors indicated

But for much of that time, the effort was hobbled by scientists' need to
reconcile their observations with the biblical account of creation - whether
because they genuinely believed in the Mosaic story, or because they feared
persecution if they contradicted it.
Michael; this is myth. It is fair to say that people in the 17th cent
combined their earth studies with the Bible, but did not fear persecution.
No evidence here

It was easy to see, for instance, that some of the fossils found on the tops
of mountains resembled the skeletons of seacreatures.
Michael; this was an obvious cause in the 16th cent but even then was being
questioned.

But were these legacies of the flood, which had carried the bottom-dwellers
up to the heights? Or were they the index of an inconceivably long period of
sedimentation, the slow, regular work of the tides? Not until geologists had
banished the biblical myth, at least from their own minds, could they learn
to read the layers of the fossil record as a concrete history of the planet.
Michael More warfare mythology. when one reads peopel like Steno, Ray et al
we see that biblical ideas did not prevent reading the layers. In fact when
Smith worked out his principles of using fossils for relative age-dating he
believed in a young earth and a flood
A similar hesitation plagued Count Buffon, the great 18th-century French
naturalist. He took a different approach to figuring out the age of the
Earth, one based on the rate of cooling of the planet's surface. By heating
steel balls of various diameters, measuring how long it took them to cool,
and applying the resulting formulas to the Earth's crust, Buffon concluded
that the planet had to be at least 600,000 years old - or so he said in
public.

Michael actually 75,000

Michael actually 2-3 million In fact, he confided to his notebook, the
figure could be as high as 10 million years.

He had deliberately underestimated the age of the Earth to avoid
scandalizing his readers: "Instead of going back too far in the limits of
the duration," he wrote, "I brought them in as close as possible without
obviously contradicting the facts delivered in the archives of nature." Even
so, his clerical opponents described his calculations as "the rantings of
old age."

Michael If so why did Fr Needham writing in 1760s argue for millions? The
opposition to Buffon by Sorbonne clergy was over the Flood. At the same time
Fr Soulavie was arguing for millions as were many Christians in UK though
they tended to argue for 10s of thousands.

Those churchmen would have been surprised to learn that, in the 19th
century, Buffon's timescale already looked laughably short.

Michael Yes in the 1820s Anglican clergy were arguing for millions if not
quadrillions

Popular views need correcting

Michael

----- Original Message -----

From: "Alexanian, Moorad" <alexanian@uncw.edu>
To: "AmericanScientificAffiliation" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 4:36 PM
Subject: [asa] Dating the Earth

> http://www.nysun.com/article/56935?page_no=2
> <http://www.nysun.com/article/56935?page_no=2>
>
>
>
> June 20, 2007 Edition
>
>
>
> Dating the Earth
>
> Books
>
> BY ADAM KIRSCH
>
> June 20, 2007
>
> URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/56935
> <http://www.nysun.com/article/56935>
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Received on Wed Jul 4 18:09:54 2007