Age of the Earth

I've been encouraged to contribute more to the Temple, so I thought I'd bring up a topic that a lot of people disagree on.

So, in your opinion, without quoting someone else, how old is the Earth? I'll provide my answer later.

I am glad you're making this decision to take a step in a new direction, Streen.

Personally, I believe in "old earth, young life". So due to this, I think life on this planet is <7000 years, but the planet itself is much, much older.

The disagreement is between the three religious extremist science deniers (and arguably their fellow religious extremist science deniers from places where being openly not that is punishable by death) and the rest of the world. It's not exactly a controversial issue these days, not by my estimates anyway...

But, without quoting someone else, I must admit I do not know. I have neither the tools nor the expertise to determine that, and if I had, it could still not be conclusively proven that the earth was not in fact made to be last thursday at 5:19 in the morning, complete with all our individual beings and memories and the appearance of age. Can you tell me how old you are without quoting someone else?

Arisaig wrote: ... I think life on this planet is <7000 years...

Do you want a list of currently living organisms that are older than that? Here are a few samples:

• Pando, a colony of genetically identical quaking aspens in Utah at ~ 80 000 years
• The Jurupa Oak, a colony of genetically identical palmer's oaks in California at upwards of 13 000 years
• Old Tjikko, a norway spruce in Dalarna, Sweden with a root system dated to be 9558 years old
• King lomatia, another clone colony like the other examples, except this entire species only exists now in a single clone colony that has been surviving in Tasmania for no less than 43 600 years with highest estimates going as far as 135 000
• King Clone, a colony of the creosote bush in California with a humble 11 700 years of age

Gisteron wrote:

Arisaig wrote: ... I think life on this planet is <7000 years...

Do you want a list of currently living organisms that are older than that? Here are a few samples:

• Pando, a colony of genetically identical quaking aspens in Utah at ~ 80 000 years
• The Jurupa Oak, a colony of genetically identical palmer's oaks in California at upwards of 13 000 years
• Old Tjikko, a norway spruce in Dalarna, Sweden with a root system dated to be 9558 years old
• King lomatia, another clone colony like the other examples, except this entire species only exists now in a single clone colony that has been surviving in Tasmania for no less than 43 600 years with highest estimates going as far as 135 000
• King Clone, a colony of the creosote bush in California with a humble 11 700 years of age

Learning more every day. Its mostly my opinion that its that young, but perhaps I am wrong. Fun facts though.

I'd guess, it's in the billions. Circa 3.5?

without quoting anyone, all i can tell you is that its a lot older than any of us lol

im curious, does it only count as "quoting someone else" if i tell you what my biology professor told me?

what if i repeat what my preacher told me? is that still quoting someone else?

since i didnt make the earth myself i have to either make up a number from my own imagination or i have to accept a number proposed by someone else.
so i accept the numbers proposed by the people who i believe have the most likely methods for determining such things, namely, scientists, with the understanding that im not educated or trained in the sciences that are used and wouldnt know if they got it right or not

as i recall, its somewhere in the billions of years

It is not required to "quote someone else" in order to arrive at an estimate of the age of the earth. In fact people do not give us the age, evidence does. People, experts in their fields, are simply the facilitators of that evidence. There are a multitude of these scientific experts in a vast array of fields, including astronomy, geology, biology, paleontology, chemistry, geomorphology and physics that have collected this evidence and across all scientific fields the evidence converges on the same answer, that the earth is around 4.54 billion years old and the entire universe is around 13.77 billion years old.

I, personally, believe that the age of the Earth is as useless an endeavor to contemplate as the time the Earth has left to live.

But I have gone back and forth to look at the Creation Story, and what I've found was some intriguing stories. Primarily that the Creation Story and much of earlier history to Moses was written with the intent to give something at the beginning rather than tell the truth. The stories are actually derived from earlier creation stories, which is why they are so similiar. I say stories, because the theory goes- Genesis 1 and 2 are in fact two different creation stories, built from two different traditions.

"The writer believed that his story would not be complete without an explanation of how things--the sun, the earth, the seas—and life--plants, animals, and humans--came to be. For good measure, the writer decided to include two such explanations. He did so even though the two stories contradicted each other on several points."
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/gen1st.htm

This was believed because of the time that the author put it all together. According to the article, the stories were all written down long after Moses, before that they were oral tradition. Which goes directly to my point about the Earth's age. If the stories were orally given, there is a great line of time that is easily forgotten. While they may have had a lineage built, there is no telling whether or not something was a chunk of lineage not recorded between ancestors. They had a general idea that these people existed but could not put down anything hard and fast to keep it altogether.

Knowing the passage of time is wonderful, but there are certainly stories of life and even people that follow God which we will never keep in written record. They could be great names, but in time they will be lost because they were not canonized. As such, the Bible is not the only history man has with God, it's simply the one that is recorded.

Alethea Thompson wrote: I, personally, believe that the age of the Earth is as useless an endeavor to contemplate as the time the Earth has left to live.

Would you build a puzzle and then leave out a piece? Searching for the age of the earth is one more piece of corroborating evidence that provides the basic foundation for all the scientific disciplines i mentioned above. Its one of the most important things we have done as a species. Most of your post is biased towards a christian mindset and thats fine, but I have never been able to understand why anyone would just accept that the universe began when man first obtained the ability to write just because a collection of religious mythology says so.

"The Bible", or any other combination of ancient religious texts you can think of, are not an infallible mechanism that "records" mans history. In fact I would say its subjective nature leaves us only one conclusion, its not recorded there at all. None of these so called "recordings" agree with each other on a multitude of issues and even the individual "recordings" themselves are self contradictory, thus rendering them useless.

This leaves us with only one source to determine truth - the universe itself. Our true history is recorded in the stars and in the ground and inside us in our DNA. All of these things converge toward a singular set of facts that most accurately define our reality, not some musty old book written through the lense of subjective superstition.