[algranville2000]

Hello:

I have a friend who claims that the earth is only 10,000 years old. He also says that the Big Bang never occurred as modern science says it did. Is there any "proof" of the age of the earth at around 4 billion years old?

Also, is there any scientific "proof" that the Big Bang occurred and that the universe is about 14 billion years old?

My friend asks why science can't tell when Adam and Eve were on the earth. If it can date the earth and universe, he says, then why can't it date the Flood or Adam and Eve, our first parents. Modern Science(c. 1965) has proved that all humans can be traced back to two original parents through DNA science. But why can't science date these two parents?

Thank you for your time.

Art Granville
Hemet, CA

[gallivant_fellow]

Tell your friend he's right. God put dinosaur fossils in the ground as a joke. He also gave us tail bones and appendixes for a good laugh.

Oldest Human Fossils Identified (Lies, lies!):)

[ebaines]

There is plenty of evidence for the age of the universe and of the earth, but the word "proof" is loaded when applied to science. The only branch of study that can prove conjectures beyond an absolute doubt is mathematics. In physics we have "laws" that are pretty good at predicting how things work, but they are not proofs. For example, I can drop an object from a height and using Newtons laws make a pretty good estimate of how long it will take to hit the floor, but I can't "prove" it. I can't prove that the sun will come up tomorrow.

In talking about scientific theories about all one can do is try to develop an explanation that fits the observed data in a better way than other explanations. As more data is analyzed usually what happens is a general consensus develops in the scientific community that supports one theory over others. A good scientist should always evaluate the prevailing theories with scepticism, and should be wiling to adopt a competing theory if one comes along that explains nature better. So over time as more data comes in and new techniques are developed for analyzing phenomena, the consensus may shift. Thus while there is a lot of very compelling evidence that the earth is around 4 billion years old, it is entirely possible that some new evidence or new theory will come along that may show the earth is, say 6 billion years old, or maybe only 2 billion years. But I sincerely doubt that there will ever be strong data for an earth that's only 10,000 years old - that is a factor of 400,000 times less than the best estimates we have. That's like arguing how far it is from New York to San Francisco - you may estimate it's 3000 miles, and someone else may estimate 2800 miles, but then this friend of yours comes along and says it's only 40 feet away! That is so far off any reliable scientific evidence it's not even worth discussing.

You might ask your friend this: what sort of evidence would it take to convince him that the earth is billions of years old? If he says that nothing would ever cause him to change his mind, then you know he is arguing purely from faith, and not science. Hence there is no point in having a scientific discussion.

As for your other questions - there is no evidence of a Noah-type flood as described in the bible. Of course there have been plenty of floods; but never one that covered the entire earth, and certainly not one in the last 10,000 years. As for an Adam and Eve - there have been some analyses of mitochondrial DNA that show that the variability across the globe is consistent with a common female ancestor, but that is far from certain. Mitochondrial DNA is passed from the mother to offspring, which means the mitochondrial DNA a woman has today is identical to the mitochondrial DNA that her mother has, and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother, etc. However, minor genetic changes may occur from one generation to the next, so that through mutations the mitochondrial DNA of the daughter may not be an exact duplicate of the mother's. Scientists can estimate the rate at which these changes are expected to occur. What they find is that the differences in the mitochondrial DNA between, say, women living in Borneo versus women in Siberia is consistent with both populations having descended from a common female ancestor. But whether there actually was such a common ancestor is just conjecture. And if such a female existed, she must have lived several hundred thousand years ago to account for the variability we see today.