[Cerek the Barbaric]

Ar-Cunin - Just out of curiosity, why do Creation Scientists not qualify as scientists in your opinion? They are trying to prove a hypothesis based on the study of physical evidence rather than theological evidence. Is that not the definition of a scientist? Is it just because the field is in the minority in the science community? Or is it because they are trying to prove Creation rather than Evolution? IF they go about their studies and data collection using the same methodology and protocol as other scientists, why do they not qualify as scientists? I am sincerely curious about this.

Heirophant - Excellent post. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] It was a perfect illustration of exactly why it is essential to the Theory of Evolution that the Earth be declared millions of years old. Without a sufficiently long timeline to work with, the Theory of Evolution collapses in on itself. So - theoretically speaking - if scientists could conclusively prove (through whatever means is considered acceptable) that the Earth was less than one million years old, it would completely invalidate the Theory of Evolution.

I wasn't aware of that fact myself until just a few months ago. I was researching another Biblical question when I came across an article explaining that the theory of the Earth being several million years old was actually a relatively new development. This idea is less than 100yrs old IIRC. The article went on to say that the scientific community never considered the Earth to be that old until the Theory of Evolution began to gain popularity. I forget what the prevailing theory of the Earth's age was at that time, but it certainly wasn't "millions of years". But, as the Theory of Evolution gained popularity, scientists realized it could not be true unless they "extended" the current hypothesis of the Earth's age by several million years. Carbon dating became the "accepted dating methodology" shortly thereafter.

In the interest of "full disclosure", this article was on a Christian website, so it can't be considered objective. But I did find the information interesting.

Ar-Cunin gave a good explanation of why carbon dating is used and how it works. Scientists use carbon dating because all life forms contain carbon in their make-up and carbon breaks down at a very consistent rate. That's well and good, but this answer begs another question. MagiK and Yorick pointed out that the Earth is generally considered to be about 4.5 billion years old, but there were NO living organisms around for the first 3 billion years (give or take a millenium ). If "carbon based life" has only been around for approx. 1/4 of the Earth's existence, why is it considered an accurate indicator of how old the planet really is? Surely there are other elements that are present in Earth's strata that have the same reliable half-life progression as Carbon, but that are found in objects that could conceivably pre-date life on Earth. Why do we not use one of those elements instead?