When was the Earth created?

Reposting this article about universes crashing into each other. It's on the science forum too. Great stuff.

Jess I believe you - but why do they only manage to take photographs and film of unconvincing creatures?

Nothing wrong with giant cats lilygran - there used to be a fair number as pets at one time and what the heck do you do with it once it is big enough to eat you? My son who is a very reliable witness (can tell a tench from a roach through the surface of the water at 20 metres, that kind of thing) once saw a puma from a train in the s of england in broad daylight. Although I concede that most of the signtings are felix domesticus. Or possibly wild boar, which have also escaped and are breeding quite well.

As I said above, someone, somewhere will believe the most unlikely things, sometimes before breakfast. The MoD has now closed down its surveillance of reports on UFOs but people are still seeing them. And giant cats.

It's that bit about hlding onto their beliefs and accepting the scientific facts that I find hard to understand. That's surely cognitive dissonance, with knobs on.

Reminds me of Mark Twain's definition of 'faith' as 'believing what you know ain't so'.

Just picked up on this thread while looking at some beautiful fossils on my desk which I was the first to set eyes on for 180 million years. I have photos on my laptop of even more amazing fossils our Geology group was allowed to see in Charnwood Forest - the oldest found in England at c. 570 million years, age known by isotope dating. They were discovered by the young son of a Unitarian Minister who encouraged him to find out what they were.
Like Greatnan I am genuinely interested in how some people can deny this knowledge & how they view fellow Christians who can hold their belief & accept the scientific facts. Is it just about not wanting to disagree with others in a group you value for fear of being ostracised? I do hope someone will answer this. I am sure we all live out many contradictions in our lives but I'd love to understand this contradiction more.

jess and nellie both –

It totally does your head in. It's why I enjoy the Geology.
Blissful

There are many numbers and scales of things we can't comprehend. We can't force them into our narrow human frame of reference any more than you could force an ant to see a double decker bus.
Maybe the salient point is that humans or creatures much like us have only been around for the blink of an eye in terms of the earth's existence.
This of course does not sit comfortably with the notion of an anthropocentric deity. Make planet, be very patient for a few billion years waiting for life to evolve to the point where churches emerge. Download lots of rules into heads of churches... That does my head in.

I was using the word 'created' because people believe it was 'created' 6000 years ago. Obviously it was formed millions of years ago and not 'created'

Good point, jingl!

I'm quite surprised at the acceptance of the word "created" in this thread title. #connotations.

The human population of the Earth is around seven billion, we are told. The Earth is about four and a half billion years old. If the facts/numbers are juxtaposed like that I think they are easier to 'comprehend'. Four and a half billion years is still a hell of a long time though.

I used to find the concept of distance measured in light years 'did my head in' but it's actually quite a simple concept really. I can sometimes see the Andromeda Galaxy from my bedroom window. That's two and a half million light years away from us, so what I'm seeing happened two and a half million years ago. Awesome thought.

I can't comprehend time on that scale, it 'does me 'ead in miss' as a former pupil used to say.

sorry that last post should have read .
Whoops! I got my previous sum about how many years out GrannyAs figure of 250million was, horribly wrong

I suppose we could just all agree that it was a heck of a long time ago?

Whoops! I got my previous sum about how many years out GrannyAs figure of 250million was. Her figure was 250 million and mine was 4600 Billion. I am too tired to do the sums tonight.

When I was a chair of governors some creationist club sent me a DVD in the hope that I would encourage its inclusion in science lessons. I threw it straight in the bin. Interesting though, that someone apparently had the money to mailshot all the secondary schools in this way.

Gosh! It never occurred to me that we had creationists in our midst until I read bits of this thread. I suppose it should have occurred to me.

<retires to recover from the shock>

speckie123 Scientists have a good idea when the earth was formed unless you want the figure to the nearest 100yrs.

GrannyA you are only 4350 billion years out.

4.6billion yrs that is about 4.6 thousand million. +/- 1%

www.bbc.co.uk/science/earth/earth_timeline/earth_formed

I have just spent a happy weekend on the Pembrokeshire coast walking down a sequence of very bent and twisted rocks which date from the Precambrian 600million years ago to the carboniferous 359 to 300million years ago. Many of these rocks can be dated by the radio active decay of particular minerals.

I am sorry to any creationists out there, but there is far too much evidence that 250million is nowhere near old enough.

I have a lump of rock in my back garden from sub marine volcanics that is over 600 million years old.

earthguide.ucsd.edu/eoc/teachers/t_tectonics/p_plate_reconstruction_blakey.html

How these other figures that have been speculated upon over the centuries before our current scientific understanding are still believed I cannot imagine.
See my previous post of Wed 01-May-13 18:16:56

I cannot see why this is in the in religion and spirituality thread and not the science thread.

When was the earth created? Nobody knows, including the scientists!!

I have found another reference, that states that 'Dr John Lightfoot, one of the most learned seventeenth-century scholars, concluded that creation was performed by the Trinity on 23 October 4004 B.C. at 9:00 A.M., 45th meridian time.'

So there...

The swivel-eyed looney (must have been) Bishop Ussher counted the begats since Adam I think, and then ascribed generation-length to them, giving him his Creation date... it was sometime after the domestication of the dog!

The link ga posted is very informative.

I don't want to set up any Aunt Sallies, Micelf and Lilygran, but I do want to try to understand what it is you believe. As far as I can see from this link and all the other research I have done, mainstream Christianity now accepts the theory of evolution but simply says that God set the wheels in motion. The biblical version of creation is to be seen as allegorical, a simplified version of the science for the understanding of people without the benefit of Darwin's theory.
If this is what mainstream Christianity now teaches, I cannot see that it makes any difference to either your faith or my lack of it.
I am glad that only a few deluded people want to teach creationism and I think the Churches have a duty to speak out against so-called Faith schools which are subsidised by the state.
Have I understood the position correctly?