Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

2011-06-18T20:16:40Z

Freyja: it's/its - gets me every time

'''I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue''' (ISIHAC) is a long-running and very popular BBC Radio comedy show which has been broadcast in two series per year on Radio 4 since 1972, and is advertised as 'The Antidote to Panel Games'.

[[Image:isihac.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Original Team members left to right: [[Graeme Garden]] , [[Barry Cryer]] , [[Humphrey Lyttelton]] , [[Tim Brooke-Taylor]] and [[Willie Rushton]])]]

In the show four regulars, primarily [[Graeme Garden]], [[Tim Brooke-Taylor]], [[Barry Cryer]] and, (until December 1996, [[Willie Rushton]]), are given 'silly things to do' under the chairmanship of originally 'Humph' ([[Humphrey Lyttelton]]) and currently [[Jack Dee]], while [[Colin Sell]] provides the musical accompaniment, and is the foil for much of the humour, for example: "We've just heard some great news — I'm very pleased to announce that the BBC have arranged a special collection of Colin's entire work... they've bagged it up and the council are sending some men round for it on Tuesday."

The show has a cult following, notably a Mrs. Trellis of [[North Wales]], and supports the care in the community initiative by providing work for geriatric comic performers and superannuated jazz musicians. Samantha sits on Humph's right hand and scores regularly.

Probably the most famous game played by the team is [[Mornington Crescent]]. As most people know the rules to this game, or can track down the International Mornington Crescent Society rulebook, they will not be repeated here. However, beginners may like to see the [http://www.isihac.co.uk/games/mcvariations/novice.html transcript from a novice’s game]. The following are the simplified rules for Mornington Crescent:
# Get to Mornington Crescent.
# Stop your opponents getting there first.

On the show the teams frequently play one of the [http://www.isihac.co.uk/games/mcvariations/index.html Variations]

Many of the comments made by the octogenarian chairman have made the show notorious for including far more and far ruder innuendo and double entendre than the BBC would ever broadcast on television in a similar early evening timeslot. The show's standard response to this is that any humour exists solely in the mind of the listener. An example of this humour is the following example, where the chairman discusses what Samantha will be doing after the show: "She's looking forward to going out for an ice cream with her Italian gentleman friend. She says she's looking forward to licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan."

Much of the true humour of the show lies in it self-deprecation; panellists and chairman frequently poke fun at the show for its supposedly low quality. For example, Humph has been heard to say:
* "Nietzsche said that life was a choice between suffering and boredom. He never said anything about having to put up with both at the same time",
* "I'm often prone to bouts of misplaced optimism. This round's going to be a hum-dinger!"

The show invariably draws to a close with Humph imparting final words of wisdom, invoking time, fate and eternity:
* "...And so, as the guardsman of time strokes the bearskin of eternity, and the sergeant major of fate orders him back to the barracks to put some clothes on..."

ISIHAC is a British Institution.

==Chairman==

From its inauguration in 1972 until his death in 2008 the show was hosted by jazz musician Humphrey Lyttelton. The next season to be made, first broadcast in June 2009, was under the rotating chairmanship of [[Stephen Fry]], [[Rob Brydon]] and [[Jack Dee]]<ref>http://www.isihac.co.uk/people.html</ref>. Subsequent series have been hosted exclusively by Dee<ref>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/6349225/Jack-Dee-takes-over-Im-Sorry-I-Havent-a-Clue.html</ref>.

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==Links==
* BBC Article about ISIHAC http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/clue/article/
* Official ISIHAC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/clue.shtml

[[Category:Radio Shows]]

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

2011-06-18T15:46:17Z

Freyja: Add up-to-date info on chairmanship.

'''I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue''' (ISIHAC) is a long-running and very popular BBC Radio comedy show which has been broadcast in two series per year on Radio 4 since 1972, and is advertised as 'The Antidote to Panel Games'.

[[Image:isihac.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Original Team members left to right: [[Graeme Garden]] , [[Barry Cryer]] , [[Humphrey Lyttelton]] , [[Tim Brooke-Taylor]] and [[Willie Rushton]])]]

In the show four regulars, primarily [[Graeme Garden]], [[Tim Brooke-Taylor]], [[Barry Cryer]] and, (until December 1996, [[Willie Rushton]]), are given 'silly things to do' under the chairmanship of originally 'Humph' ([[Humphrey Lyttelton]]) and currently [[Jack Dee]], while [[Colin Sell]] provides the musical accompaniment, and is the foil for much of the humour, for example: "We've just heard some great news — I'm very pleased to announce that the BBC have arranged a special collection of Colin's entire work... they've bagged it up and the council are sending some men round for it on Tuesday."

The show has a cult following, notably a Mrs. Trellis of [[North Wales]], and supports the care in the community initiative by providing work for geriatric comic performers and superannuated jazz musicians. Samantha sits on Humph's right hand and scores regularly.

Probably the most famous game played by the team is [[Mornington Crescent]]. As most people know the rules to this game, or can track down the International Mornington Crescent Society rulebook, they will not be repeated here. However, beginners may like to see the [http://www.isihac.co.uk/games/mcvariations/novice.html transcript from a novice’s game]. The following are the simplified rules for Mornington Crescent:
# Get to Mornington Crescent.
# Stop your opponents getting there first.

On the show the teams frequently play one of the [http://www.isihac.co.uk/games/mcvariations/index.html Variations]

Many of the comments made by the octogenarian chairman have made the show notorious for including far more and far ruder innuendo and double entendre than the BBC would ever broadcast on television in a similar early evening timeslot. The show's standard response to this is that any humour exists solely in the mind of the listener. An example of this humour is the following example, where the chairman discusses what Samantha will be doing after the show: "She's looking forward to going out for an ice cream with her Italian gentleman friend. She says she's looking forward to licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan."

Much of the true humour of the show lies in it self-deprecation; panellists and chairman frequently poke fun at the show for its supposedly low quality. For example, Humph has been heard to say:
* "Nietzsche said that life was a choice between suffering and boredom. He never said anything about having to put up with both at the same time",
* "I'm often prone to bouts of misplaced optimism. This round's going to be a hum-dinger!"

The show invariably draws to a close with Humph imparting final words of wisdom, invoking time, fate and eternity:
* "...And so, as the guardsman of time strokes the bearskin of eternity, and the sergeant major of fate orders him back to the barracks to put some clothes on..."

ISIHAC is a British Institution.

==Chairman==

From it's inauguration in 1972 until his death in 2008 the show was hosted by jazz musician Humphrey Lyttelton. The next season to be made, first broadcast in June 2009, was under the rotating chairmanship of [[Stephen Fry]], [[Rob Brydon]] and [[Jack Dee]]<ref>http://www.isihac.co.uk/people.html</ref>. Subsequent series have been hosted exclusively by Dee<ref>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/6349225/Jack-Dee-takes-over-Im-Sorry-I-Havent-a-Clue.html</ref>.

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==Links==
* BBC Article about ISIHAC http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/clue/article/
* Official ISIHAC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/clue.shtml

[[Category:Radio Shows]]

User talk:Jcw

2011-06-08T11:58:52Z

Freyja: Discussions not involving Jcw deemed inappropriate for this page

Richard Feynman

2011-06-08T11:54:36Z

Freyja: Remove editorialization.

[[Image:Htdeyt56.png|right|thumb]]
'''Richard Feynman''' (1918-1988) was a leading American [[physicist]] and educator based at California Institute of Technology. He played a major role in shaping modern quantum physics, computer design, and nanotechnology. He attracted a following for his college lectures on physics, which he published, and for his iconoclastic personality. He popularized physics with many short essays and talks, often talking about the pranks he loved to play.

He credits his education in reading an encyclopedia when he was young, at the insistence of his father.<ref>Review of ''Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, by R.P. Feynman'' by Robert Matthews [http://jnm.snmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/47/8/1391.pdf]</ref> After studying at [[M.I.T.]] and [[Princeton University]], he assisted in the development of the [[atomic bomb]] at [[Los Alamos]].

Feynman's major contribution was to [[quantum electrodynamics]]. He introduced the diagrams, now called [[Feynman diagrams]], which are used to describe the behavior of systems of interacting particles. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965. He worked on the problem from 1939 to 1947, confronting two puzzles that were the source of the difficulties with quantum electrodynamical theories. The first was an infinite energy of interaction of the electron with itself. And this difficulty existed even in the classical theory. The other difficulty came from some infinities which had to do with the infinite numbers of degrees of freedom in the field. His solution, while still an undergraduate, was that electrons cannot act on themselves, they can only act on other electrons. That was not quite right, but as a graduate student, with help from his mentor, Princeton Professor John Wheeler, he did figure it out.<ref> see [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html "The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics"], his Nobel Prize Lecture, 1965</ref>

==Inquiring mind==
Feynman was famed for his uncanny ability to cut to the heart of a problem with novel approaches. Feynman liked to tell a story about how when he was a little kid, he asked his father, "Why do things fall?" As an adult, he praised his father for answering, "Nobody knows why things fall. It's a deep mystery, and the smartest people in the world don't know the basic reason for it." Contrast that with the average person's off-the-cuff answer, "Oh, it's because of gravity." Feynman liked his father's answer, because his father realized that simply giving a name to something didn't mean that you understood it. <ref>Lectures in Physics: The Motion of Falling Objects. Lectures on Physics is based on the series by Benjamin Crowell, "Light and Matter". (This is a secondary source.) [http://www.vias.org/physics/bk1_05_01.html]</ref>

This approach to problem solving was utterly at odds with the culture at NASA during the 1980s.<ref>"... his independent intellect and direct methods were at odds with the commission’s formal approach." [http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/richard-feynman-challenger-disaster-software-engineering Richard Feynman, the Challenger Disaster, and Software Engineering] </ref>
NASA had decided that the space shuttle ought to be so reliable that each mission had only a 1 in 100,000 chance of failure. They fudged safety figures for parts such as the infamous O-rings whose failure at unusually low launch temperatures destroyed [[Space Shuttle Challenger]].

==Manhattan Project==

Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb, assigned to the nuclear engineering section, designing some of the water shielding that protected the early reactors.

==Challenger investigation==

He had a leading role in the investigation of the crash of the [[space shuttle]] Challenger <ref>Feynman ''What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character'' [http://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/0553347845]</ref>).

Feynman cut through the red tape and figured out what caused the [[Space Shuttle Challenger|Challenger disaster]].
*I took this stuff that I got out of your seal and I put it in ice water, and I discovered that when you put some pressure on it for a while and then undo it, it doesn't stretch back. It stays the same dimension. In other words, for a few seconds at least and more seconds than that, there is no resilience in this particular material when it is at a temperature of 32 degrees.
His style of investigating with his own direct methods rather than following the commission schedule put him at odds with Rogers, who once commented, "Feynman is becoming a real pain." During a televised hearing, Feynman famously demonstrated how the O-rings became less resilient and subject to seal failures at ice-cold temperatures by immersing a sample of the material in a glass of ice water.<ref name=NYT_Feynman>{{cite web| url = http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/feynman-obit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin |title = Richard Feynman Dead at 69; Leading Theoretical Physicist|accessdate = 2007-01-28|author = Gleick, James|date = 1988-02-17|work = New York Times}}</ref>

Feynman was so critical of flaws in NASA's "safety culture" that he threatened to remove his name from the report unless it included his personal observations on the reliability of the shuttle. He argued that the estimates of reliability offered by [[NASA]] management were wildly unrealistic, differing as much as a thousandfold from the estimates of working engineers. "For a successful technology," he concluded, "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."<ref name = appendixF>Feynman, Richard P. (1986) http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm Appendix F - Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle]</ref>
*NASA officials argue that ... since the Shuttle is a manned vehicle "the probability of mission success is necessarily very close to 1.0." It is not very clear what this phrase means. Does it mean it is close to 1 or that it ought to be close to 1?"

*In fact, previous NASA experience had shown, on occasion, just such difficulties, near accidents, and accidents, all giving warning that the probability of flight failure was not so very small.<ref> [http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.html Feynman's Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident ]</ref>

==Religious views==
Feynman didn't believe in God. He once said that the Christian view of "one of the aspects of God coming to the Earth" "wasn't in proportion"<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeCHiUe1et0/</ref>
He also said:<ref>http://www.todayinsci.com/F/Feynman_Richard/FeynmanRichard-Quotations.htm/</ref>
<blockquote>
On the contrary, God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time—life and death—stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore, I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.
.
</blockquote>

==Books==
*''Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'' - his personal and academic life up to the 1960s
*''What Do You Care What Other People Think?'' - half the book is about the Challenger disaster
*''QED- A accessible explanation of quantum electrodynamics written for a layman.
*''The meaning of it all- A book of philosophy.
* ''The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman'' (2000) [http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Finding-Things-Out-Richard/dp/0738203491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243051720&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]
*
[http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html "The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics"], his Nobel Prize Lecture, 1965

==Notes==

<References/>

==External links==

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Feynman.html Biography]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feynman, Richard}}

[[Category:Nobel laureates in Physics]]
[[Category:Physicists]]
[[Category:Atheists]]

User talk:Jcw

2011-06-08T11:49:26Z

Freyja: Comment on meaningless statement

This is a [[meritocracy]], and you deserve blocking privileges. They have just been awarded to you. Congratulations!--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 09:55, 7 June 2011 (EDT)
:Thanks Andy, much appreciated. I'll endeavor to use the privileges responsibly and to the benefit of CP. If I have questions about blocking policy or anti-vandal tactics, is it alright to ask publicly on your talk page, or is there a better venue? Thanks again. [[User:Jcw|Jcw]] 12:50, 7 June 2011 (EDT)
::Wow, your new privileges were just in time! Great effort a little while ago.

::I'll mark your talk page here as "watched" and you can ask any questions about blocking here, or on my talk page. Looks like you already know what you need, however!--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 13:51, 7 June 2011 (EDT)
:::Indeed, the vandals never seem to be far away... One question occurs at once: from the username policy, I'd assume that anyone with a clearly incorrect username should be gently blocked and invited to re-join. Is that something I can legitimately do, or should I leave it to the admins? [[User:Jcw|Jcw]] 13:57, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

::::Please do block inappropriate user names, even before any edits. Note that it is necessary to unblock the option boxes in those cases in order to allow re-registering under an appropriate name.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 14:22, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

:::::Ah yes, I'll be careful of that. Thanks for all the help. [[User:Jcw|Jcw]] 14:29, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

==Freyja==
Can you explain why the statement 'The motivation for atheists to insist on falsely teaching that the Earth is old is to pull students away from God's immediate presence, and to turn them away from Jesus Christ' is factual enough to appear on the main page of 'Counterexamples to an Old Earth', while the additional statement 'The motivation for non-atheists to teach that the Earth is old remains unknown.' is only allowed on the discussion page? Both are equally uncited, contentious, over-generalized and irrelevant to the topic at hand. {{unsigned|freyja}}

:For starters, "non-atheists" is a meaningless term. Moreover, "non-atheists" are aberrations rather than the norm with respect to what constitutes science education. They are simply not representative of anything.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 19:49, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

:::Andy, I have to say I found [[User:Jcw|Jcw]]'s response somewhat more informative than yours. He must be as disappointed as I that you chose to delete it.

:::It's pretty clear what the term "non-atheists" mean. There is a set of people within the population who (I'm fairly sure you'd agree) are atheists. There must therefore be a set of people not in the set "atheists" (technically this is the complement of the set "atheists"). You may have a better name, but I think most people will understand that the term "non-atheists" applies to this latter set. It's fairly basic mathematics.

:::What confuses me more is that having asserted that the term "non-atheists" is meaningless, you then go on to use the term as the basis for further assertions. If "non-atheists" is a meaningless term then "non-atheists are an aberration" is a meaningless statement. I'm sure you're not in the habit of making meaningless statements, but in this case is does seem indicative of a somewhat incoherent chain of thought. -- [[User:Freyja|Freyja]] 07:44, 8 June 2011 (EDT)

User talk:Jcw

2011-06-07T22:18:39Z

Freyja:

Counterexamples to an Old Earth

2011-06-07T19:59:53Z

Freyja: Undo revision 876601 by Jcw (talk) Please make your arguments on a talk page where we can discuss them properly.

It takes only one "counterexample" to disprove the theory of an [[Old Earth]].<ref>Most of the "evidence" for an [[Old Earth]] is based on claims that lack testability, as in [[radiometric dating]], and hence would not even satisfy minimum requirements for admissibility in court.</ref> As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of 33 counterexamples has merely a 10% chance of being valid -- an underestimate -- then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is less than 3.8%. With the total of these counterexamples at 33, '''they demonstrate that the Earth must be young with a likelihood of greater than 96%'''. The same analysis can be applied to the [[Young Earth]] theory, but no valid counterexamples have been found in centuries of atheist attempts{{Citation needed}}.

''The motivation for [[atheist]]s to insist on falsely teaching that the Earth is old is to pull students away from [[God]]'s immediate presence, and to turn them away from [[Jesus Christ]]. The motivation for non-[[atheist]]s to teach that the Earth is old remains unknown''.

== Counterexamples ==
The growing list of counterexamples to the theory of an [[Old Earth]] includes:

=== Astronomy ===
# The [[moon|moon's]] orbit is a very strong counterxample: The moon is receding from the [[Earth]] at a rate<ref>"Measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year." [http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html Measuring the Moon's Distance] ''Apollo Laser Ranging Experiments Yield Results'' by Fred Espenak, GSFC Planetary Systems Laboratory (LPI Bulletin, No. 72, August, 1994).</ref> that would have placed it too close to the Earth merely four billion years ago, causing instability in its orbit, tidal catastrophes on Earth, and other problems that would have prevented the Earth and the moon being as they are today.<br />Additionally, the [[moon]]'s orbit is becoming increasingly and unexpectedly eccentric, suggesting a lack of long-term stability.<ref>http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0212</ref>. This disproves the theory of an [[Old Earth]] even further.
# [[Spiral galaxies]] appear to be young, and only implausible proposals of the existence of [[dark matter]] can reconcile the spirals with a belief in an old universe.
# The planetary orbits in the solar system - including Earth's - are unstable and unsustainable over the long periods claimed by Old Earth believers.<ref>[http://www.newsweek.com/id/201582 Newsweek: "An embarrassing little secret of astronomy ...."]. (Newsweek has inexplicably taken down its article, but it is quoted by Google and other links)</ref><ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/nature08096.html Existence of collisional trajectories of Mercury, Mars and Venus with the Earth] by J. Laskar & M. Gastineau, ''Nature'' 459, 817-819 (11 June 2009). Believers in an Old Earth speculate that the instability would not result in problems in a billion years, but other computer simulations could be developed to demonstrate multi-body instability for the solar system far more recent than that.</ref>
# At least one [[spiral galaxy]] spins in the direction opposite to the spin of its tail, suggesting an age too young to have generated the tail and contradicting the theory that the tails of spiral galaxies were formed over a long period of time.<ref>[http://www.unisci.com/stories/20021/0207023.htm "Hubble Shows Galaxy Rotating In The Wrong Direction"]</ref>
# The primary reaction in the [[Sun]] is the fusing of [[hydrogen]] to make [[helium]], but the ratio of these remains is too high for the Sun to have been burning for millions of years.

=== Geology ===
[[Image:Stratigraphy_of_the_Grand_Canyon.png|right|thumb|300px|The Nonconformity is readily apparent in the [[Grand Canyon]] where foliage and ground cover do not obscure the rock face.]]
# The continued existence of fragile natural arches without having collapsed a short time period for erosion and stresses on them.<ref>http://www.naturalarches.org/big9.htm</ref>
# An extrapolation of time between the collapse of weaker arches<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102290.html</ref> with still-standing stronger arches supports a young earth age.
# The massive [[Great Lakes]] and freshwater lakes near the equator could not exist for millions of years, and several of these lakes are rapidly receding in volume; the third largest saltwater lake, Oroumieh Lake, could completely evaporate within the next five years.<ref>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110525/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_environmental_disaster</ref>
# The existence of inland saltwater lakes at high altitudes, such as [[Mono Lake]] and the [[Great Salt Lake]], suggest a recent global [[flood]].
# The plentiful supply of high concentrations of underground well water, which would be expected based on familiar principles of [[entropy]] to dissipate over a long period of time.
# The relative purity of underground well water, which should be a muddy slurry had millions of years of erosion taken place.
# Earthquakes alter the Earth's rotation several times each century;<ref>http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2010872/japan_quake_changed_earths_rotation/</ref> extrapolating by orders of magnitude in time would have resulted in the occurrence of much larger earthquakes that would have destabilized the rotation<ref>A similar analysis may be performed for the likelihood of devastating collisions with meteors as time is extrapolated by orders of magnitude.</ref>
# The lack of erosion between rock layers.<ref>http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WTZL8GG4H9K0</ref><ref>http://www.knowthebible.net/id115.html</ref>
# Levels of contamination in water are rising, as water proceeds through the [[water cycle]] it becomes progressively more contaminated. If earth (and life) had existed for billions of years, a limit would have long been reached where water (essential to life) was too contaminated for life to continue.
# [[Paraconformity]] and unconformity such as that seen at the [[Grand Canyon]] disprove the [[uniformitarianism (science)|uniformitarian]] view of earth history.
# All [[carbon dating]] of water supplies, even the most ancient and the deepest underground reservoirs, result in relatively young ages,<ref>http://www.betalabservices.com/PDF/Geyh.pdf</ref> and no water has been found suggesting an Old Earth.
# The ratio of strontium isotopes in seawater, which should change due to long-term erosion, has varied by only 0.35% throughout history. In fact, its value today is exactly the same as in the oldest samples, which are claimed to be from 500 million years ago.
# The interior of the earth is heated by decay of radioactive isotopes, which could not possibly still be persisting in sufficient quantities after 5 billion, or even half a billion, years.
# The relatively recent separation of the still-moving continents from one land mass -- denied for 100 years by [[atheist]]s before they accepted it -- suggest a young earth or at least a relatively recent cataclysmic event.
# Fresh tracks of motion by stationary rocks are still visible in some areas, which have baffled Old Earth scientists for more than 60 years; Old Earth magazines refer to them as "self-moving rocks."<ref>http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/18/rafting-for-rocks?s_cid=rss:rafting-for-rocks</ref>
# Beaches have long been eroding far too quickly for the Old Earth theory; "between 80 and 90 percent of the sandy beaches along America’s coastlines have been eroding for decades," sometimes by as much as 50 feet per year.<ref>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-beach-erosion</ref>
# Land is sinking into the oceans at a rate of at least 7 inches per century,<ref>http://www.app.com/article/20110319/NJNEWS/103190327/Global-warming-rising-seas-threaten-New-Jersey-expert-says</ref> which would have rendered most of the United States under water if the Earth were not young.
# The flow of water in the [[Colorado River]] has been declining since the early 20th century, even after usage is considered, and the man-made Lake Mead is at risk of drying up on the next decade.<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/13mead.html</ref>

=== Biology ===
# The intelligence of humans is rapidly declining, whether measured by SAT scores,<ref>SAT scores have been rapidly decreasing in real terms.</ref> music, personal letters,<ref>E.g., Civil War letters.</ref> quality of political debates,<ref>E.g., contrast the Lincoln-Douglas debates with debates today.</ref> the quality of news articles,<ref>''The Federalist'' was written for the newspaper audience in the late 1780s, but is far too intellectual for newspapers today.</ref> and many other measures.
# The age of onset of [[puberty|sexual maturity]] is rapidly changing, suggesting that life is in a short-term rather than long-term equilibrium.<ref>For evidence of a rapidly changing age for sexual maturity in fish, see http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/3/235</ref>
# The high observed rate of [[extinctions of species]]<ref>[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/animals-face-extinction-threat-as-conservation-efforts-slow-report-says.html One in five species are at risk of extinction]</ref> and harmful [[genetic mutation]]s suggest a relatively short period for the existence of life rather than a long one.
# The age of onset of graying of hair or balding is rapidly decreasing, with many teenagers now experiencing baldness or premature graying ([[CNN]]'s [[Anderson Cooper]] began graying as a teenager and was fully gray long before age 40);<ref name="Graying">http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-06-18/living/17299704_1_hair-taylor-hicks-american-idol</ref> many celebrities (such as [[American Idol]] winner Taylor Hicks graying in his 20s)<ref name="Graying"/> and athletes (such as Cal Ripken, Jr. graying and balding in his mid-30s)<ref>"There's a man, close-cropped gray hair, looks older than 35": Sports Illustrated's description of Cal Ripken at 35. [http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1163438/index.htm#ixzz12ONbgydd] By age 50 he was bald too.</ref> increasingly experience premature graying or balding.
# The age of onset of [[cancer]] is markedly decreasing,<ref>http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109865519/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0</ref> suggesting rapid changes inconsistent with an alleged long existence to life.
# The oldest direct evidence of life -- written documents, clothing, remnants of civilizations, tree rings, etc. -- is no older than about 3000 B.C.
# The number of natural, pure-bred bred dogs declines over time as dogs naturally crossbreed; a short period of time is suggested by the fact that there are over 100 different natural, pure breeds of dog thriving today.
# Lack of genetic diversity among the ''Homo sapiens'' species. Were evolution and the old earth true, the human population would show a much larger genetic variance.<ref>http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/descent.html#rpafAHIwKHS7</ref>
# Frequent occurrences of massive deaths of birds and fish, which if extrapolated over millions of years would result in little or no such life today.<ref>http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/technology&id=7884786</ref>

=== Science & Discovery ===
# A stalemate of significant and valid discoveries in the last several decades.<ref>Though there has been some progress in this timeframe, many of the "discoveries" are liberal propaganda, or are scientifically weak.</ref>

== External links ==
*[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth -101 evidences for a young earth and universe] by [[Creation Ministries International]]
*[http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-8-how-old-is-the-earth How old is the earth?] - ''Refuting evolution'' - Chapter 8 by Dr. [[Jonathan Sarfati]] at [[Creation Ministries International]]

== Footnotes ==

<references/>

== See also ==

*[[Counterexamples to Evolution]]
*[[Counterexamples to the Bible]]
*[[Counterexamples to Relativity]]
[[Category:geology]]

Counterexamples to an Old Earth

2011-06-07T19:09:24Z

Freyja: Argumentation belongs on the talk page.

It takes only one "counterexample" to disprove the theory of an [[Old Earth]].<ref>Most of the "evidence" for an [[Old Earth]] is based on claims that lack testability, as in [[radiometric dating]], and hence would not even satisfy minimum requirements for admissibility in court.</ref> As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of 33 counterexamples has merely a 10% chance of being valid -- an underestimate -- then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is less than 3.8%. With the total of these counterexamples at 33, '''they demonstrate that the Earth must be young with a likelihood of greater than 96%'''. The same analysis can be applied to the [[Young Earth]] theory, but no valid counterexamples have been found in centuries of atheist attempts{{Citation needed}}.

== Counterexamples ==
The growing list of counterexamples to the theory of an [[Old Earth]] includes:

=== Astronomy ===
# The [[moon|moon's]] orbit is a very strong counterxample: The moon is receding from the [[Earth]] at a rate<ref>"Measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year." [http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html Measuring the Moon's Distance] ''Apollo Laser Ranging Experiments Yield Results'' by Fred Espenak, GSFC Planetary Systems Laboratory (LPI Bulletin, No. 72, August, 1994).</ref> that would have placed it too close to the Earth merely four billion years ago, causing instability in its orbit, tidal catastrophes on Earth, and other problems that would have prevented the Earth and the moon being as they are today.<br />Additionally, the [[moon]]'s orbit is becoming increasingly and unexpectedly eccentric, suggesting a lack of long-term stability.<ref>http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0212</ref>. This disproves the theory of an [[Old Earth]] even further.
# [[Spiral galaxies]] appear to be young, and only implausible proposals of the existence of [[dark matter]] can reconcile the spirals with a belief in an old universe.
# The planetary orbits in the solar system - including Earth's - are unstable and unsustainable over the long periods claimed by Old Earth believers.<ref>[http://www.newsweek.com/id/201582 Newsweek: "An embarrassing little secret of astronomy ...."]. (Newsweek has inexplicably taken down its article, but it is quoted by Google and other links)</ref><ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/nature08096.html Existence of collisional trajectories of Mercury, Mars and Venus with the Earth] by J. Laskar & M. Gastineau, ''Nature'' 459, 817-819 (11 June 2009). Believers in an Old Earth speculate that the instability would not result in problems in a billion years, but other computer simulations could be developed to demonstrate multi-body instability for the solar system far more recent than that.</ref>
# At least one [[spiral galaxy]] spins in the direction opposite to the spin of its tail, suggesting an age too young to have generated the tail and contradicting the theory that the tails of spiral galaxies were formed over a long period of time.<ref>[http://www.unisci.com/stories/20021/0207023.htm "Hubble Shows Galaxy Rotating In The Wrong Direction"]</ref>
# The primary reaction in the [[Sun]] is the fusing of [[hydrogen]] to make [[helium]], but the ratio of these remains is too high for the Sun to have been burning for millions of years.

=== Geology ===
[[Image:Stratigraphy_of_the_Grand_Canyon.png|right|thumb|300px|The Nonconformity is readily apparent in the [[Grand Canyon]] where foliage and ground cover do not obscure the rock face.]]
# The continued existence of fragile natural arches without having collapsed a short time period for erosion and stresses on them.<ref>http://www.naturalarches.org/big9.htm</ref>
# An extrapolation of time between the collapse of weaker arches<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102290.html</ref> with still-standing stronger arches supports a young earth age.
# The massive [[Great Lakes]] and freshwater lakes near the equator could not exist for millions of years, and several of these lakes are rapidly receding in volume; the third largest saltwater lake, Oroumieh Lake, could completely evaporate within the next five years.<ref>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110525/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_environmental_disaster</ref>
# The existence of inland saltwater lakes at high altitudes, such as [[Mono Lake]] and the [[Great Salt Lake]], suggest a recent global [[flood]].
# The plentiful supply of high concentrations of underground well water, which would be expected based on familiar principles of [[entropy]] to dissipate over a long period of time.
# The relative purity of underground well water, which should be a muddy slurry had millions of years of erosion taken place.
# Earthquakes alter the Earth's rotation several times each century;<ref>http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2010872/japan_quake_changed_earths_rotation/</ref> extrapolating by orders of magnitude in time would have resulted in the occurrence of much larger earthquakes that would have destabilized the rotation<ref>A similar analysis may be performed for the likelihood of devastating collisions with meteors as time is extrapolated by orders of magnitude.</ref>
# The lack of erosion between rock layers.<ref>http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WTZL8GG4H9K0</ref><ref>http://www.knowthebible.net/id115.html</ref>
# Levels of contamination in water are rising, as water proceeds through the [[water cycle]] it becomes progressively more contaminated. If earth (and life) had existed for billions of years, a limit would have long been reached where water (essential to life) was too contaminated for life to continue.
# [[Paraconformity]] and unconformity such as that seen at the [[Grand Canyon]] disprove the [[uniformitarianism (science)|uniformitarian]] view of earth history.
# All [[carbon dating]] of water supplies, even the most ancient and the deepest underground reservoirs, result in relatively young ages,<ref>http://www.betalabservices.com/PDF/Geyh.pdf</ref> and no water has been found suggesting an Old Earth.
# The ratio of strontium isotopes in seawater, which should change due to long-term erosion, has varied by only 0.35% throughout history. In fact, its value today is exactly the same as in the oldest samples, which are claimed to be from 500 million years ago.
# The interior of the earth is heated by decay of radioactive isotopes, which could not possibly still be persisting in sufficient quantities after 5 billion, or even half a billion, years.
# The relatively recent separation of the still-moving continents from one land mass -- denied for 100 years by [[atheist]]s before they accepted it -- suggest a young earth or at least a relatively recent cataclysmic event.
# Fresh tracks of motion by stationary rocks are still visible in some areas, which have baffled Old Earth scientists for more than 60 years; Old Earth magazines refer to them as "self-moving rocks."<ref>http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/18/rafting-for-rocks?s_cid=rss:rafting-for-rocks</ref>
# Beaches have long been eroding far too quickly for the Old Earth theory; "between 80 and 90 percent of the sandy beaches along America’s coastlines have been eroding for decades," sometimes by as much as 50 feet per year.<ref>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-beach-erosion</ref>
# Land is sinking into the oceans at a rate of at least 7 inches per century,<ref>http://www.app.com/article/20110319/NJNEWS/103190327/Global-warming-rising-seas-threaten-New-Jersey-expert-says</ref> which would have rendered most of the United States under water if the Earth were not young.
# The flow of water in the [[Colorado River]] has been declining since the early 20th century, even after usage is considered, and the man-made Lake Mead is at risk of drying up on the next decade.<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/13mead.html</ref>

=== Biology ===
# The intelligence of humans is rapidly declining, whether measured by SAT scores,<ref>SAT scores have been rapidly decreasing in real terms.</ref> music, personal letters,<ref>E.g., Civil War letters.</ref> quality of political debates,<ref>E.g., contrast the Lincoln-Douglas debates with debates today.</ref> the quality of news articles,<ref>''The Federalist'' was written for the newspaper audience in the late 1780s, but is far too intellectual for newspapers today.</ref> and many other measures.
# The age of onset of [[puberty|sexual maturity]] is rapidly changing, suggesting that life is in a short-term rather than long-term equilibrium.<ref>For evidence of a rapidly changing age for sexual maturity in fish, see http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/3/235</ref>
# The high observed rate of [[extinctions of species]]<ref>[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/animals-face-extinction-threat-as-conservation-efforts-slow-report-says.html One in five species are at risk of extinction]</ref> and harmful [[genetic mutation]]s suggest a relatively short period for the existence of life rather than a long one.
# The age of onset of graying of hair or balding is rapidly decreasing, with many teenagers now experiencing baldness or premature graying ([[CNN]]'s [[Anderson Cooper]] began graying as a teenager and was fully gray long before age 40);<ref name="Graying">http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-06-18/living/17299704_1_hair-taylor-hicks-american-idol</ref> many celebrities (such as [[American Idol]] winner Taylor Hicks graying in his 20s)<ref name="Graying"/> and athletes (such as Cal Ripken, Jr. graying and balding in his mid-30s)<ref>"There's a man, close-cropped gray hair, looks older than 35": Sports Illustrated's description of Cal Ripken at 35. [http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1163438/index.htm#ixzz12ONbgydd] By age 50 he was bald too.</ref> increasingly experience premature graying or balding.
# The age of onset of [[cancer]] is markedly decreasing,<ref>http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109865519/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0</ref> suggesting rapid changes inconsistent with an alleged long existence to life.
# The oldest direct evidence of life -- written documents, clothing, remnants of civilizations, tree rings, etc. -- is no older than about 3000 B.C.
# The number of natural, pure-bred bred dogs declines over time as dogs naturally crossbreed; a short period of time is suggested by the fact that there are over 100 different natural, pure breeds of dog thriving today.
# Lack of genetic diversity among the ''Homo sapiens'' species. Were evolution and the old earth true, the human population would show a much larger genetic variance.<ref>http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/descent.html#rpafAHIwKHS7</ref>
# Frequent occurrences of massive deaths of birds and fish, which if extrapolated over millions of years would result in little or no such life today.<ref>http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/technology&id=7884786</ref>

=== Science & Discovery ===
# A stalemate of significant and valid discoveries in the last several decades.<ref>Though there has been some progress in this timeframe, many of the "discoveries" are liberal propaganda, or are scientifically weak.</ref>

== External links ==
*[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth -101 evidences for a young earth and universe] by [[Creation Ministries International]]
*[http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-8-how-old-is-the-earth How old is the earth?] - ''Refuting evolution'' - Chapter 8 by Dr. [[Jonathan Sarfati]] at [[Creation Ministries International]]

== Footnotes ==

<references/>

== See also ==

*[[Counterexamples to Evolution]]
*[[Counterexamples to the Bible]]
*[[Counterexamples to Relativity]]
[[Category:geology]]

Counterexamples to an Old Earth

2011-06-07T18:48:32Z

Freyja:

Counterexamples to an Old Earth

2011-06-07T18:46:03Z

Freyja:

It takes only one "counterexample" to disprove the theory of an [[Old Earth]].<ref>Most of the "evidence" for an [[Old Earth]] is based on claims that lack testability, as in [[radiometric dating]], and hence would not even satisfy minimum requirements for admissibility in court.</ref> As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of 33 counterexamples has merely a 10% chance of being valid -- an underestimate -- then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is less than 3.8%. With the total of these counterexamples at 33, '''they demonstrate that the Earth must be young with a likelihood of greater than 96%'''. The same analysis can be applied to the [[Young Earth]] theory, but no valid counterexamples have been found in centuries of atheist attempts.

''The motivation for [[atheist]]s to insist on falsely teaching that the Earth is old is to pull students away from [[God]]'s immediate presence, and to turn them away from [[Jesus Christ]]. The motivation for non-[[atheist]]s to teach that the Earth is old remains unknown''.

== Counterexamples ==
The growing list of counterexamples to the theory of an [[Old Earth]] includes:

=== Astronomy ===
# The [[moon|moon's]] orbit is a very strong counterxample: The moon is receding from the [[Earth]] at a rate<ref>"Measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year." [http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html Measuring the Moon's Distance] ''Apollo Laser Ranging Experiments Yield Results'' by Fred Espenak, GSFC Planetary Systems Laboratory (LPI Bulletin, No. 72, August, 1994).</ref> that would have placed it too close to the Earth merely four billion years ago, causing instability in its orbit, tidal catastrophes on Earth, and other problems that would have prevented the Earth and the moon being as they are today.<br />Additionally, the [[moon]]'s orbit is becoming increasingly and unexpectedly eccentric, suggesting a lack of long-term stability.<ref>http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0212</ref>. This disproves the theory of an [[Old Earth]] even further.
# [[Spiral galaxies]] appear to be young, and only implausible proposals of the existence of [[dark matter]] can reconcile the spirals with a belief in an old universe.
# The planetary orbits in the solar system - including Earth's - are unstable and unsustainable over the long periods claimed by Old Earth believers.<ref>[http://www.newsweek.com/id/201582 Newsweek: "An embarrassing little secret of astronomy ...."]. (Newsweek has inexplicably taken down its article, but it is quoted by Google and other links)</ref><ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/nature08096.html Existence of collisional trajectories of Mercury, Mars and Venus with the Earth] by J. Laskar & M. Gastineau, ''Nature'' 459, 817-819 (11 June 2009). Believers in an Old Earth speculate that the instability would not result in problems in a billion years, but other computer simulations could be developed to demonstrate multi-body instability for the solar system far more recent than that.</ref>
# At least one [[spiral galaxy]] spins in the direction opposite to the spin of its tail, suggesting an age too young to have generated the tail and contradicting the theory that the tails of spiral galaxies were formed over a long period of time.<ref>[http://www.unisci.com/stories/20021/0207023.htm "Hubble Shows Galaxy Rotating In The Wrong Direction"]</ref>
# The primary reaction in the [[Sun]] is the fusing of [[hydrogen]] to make [[helium]], but the ratio of these remains is too high for the Sun to have been burning for millions of years.

=== Geology ===
[[Image:Stratigraphy_of_the_Grand_Canyon.png|right|thumb|300px|The Nonconformity is readily apparent in the [[Grand Canyon]] where foliage and ground cover do not obscure the rock face.]]
# The continued existence of fragile natural arches without having collapsed a short time period for erosion and stresses on them.<ref>http://www.naturalarches.org/big9.htm</ref>
# An extrapolation of time between the collapse of weaker arches<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102290.html</ref> with still-standing stronger arches supports a young earth age.
# The massive [[Great Lakes]] and freshwater lakes near the equator could not exist for millions of years, and several of these lakes are rapidly receding in volume; the third largest saltwater lake, Oroumieh Lake, could completely evaporate within the next five years.<ref>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110525/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_environmental_disaster</ref>
# The existence of inland saltwater lakes at high altitudes, such as [[Mono Lake]] and the [[Great Salt Lake]], suggest a recent global [[flood]].
# The plentiful supply of high concentrations of underground well water, which would be expected based on familiar principles of [[entropy]] to dissipate over a long period of time.
# The relative purity of underground well water, which should be a muddy slurry had millions of years of erosion taken place.
# Earthquakes alter the Earth's rotation several times each century;<ref>http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2010872/japan_quake_changed_earths_rotation/</ref> extrapolating by orders of magnitude in time would have resulted in the occurrence of much larger earthquakes that would have destabilized the rotation<ref>A similar analysis may be performed for the likelihood of devastating collisions with meteors as time is extrapolated by orders of magnitude.</ref>
# The lack of erosion between rock layers.<ref>http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WTZL8GG4H9K0</ref><ref>http://www.knowthebible.net/id115.html</ref>
# Levels of contamination in water are rising, as water proceeds through the [[water cycle]] it becomes progressively more contaminated. If earth (and life) had existed for billions of years, a limit would have long been reached where water (essential to life) was too contaminated for life to continue.
# [[Paraconformity]] and unconformity such as that seen at the [[Grand Canyon]] disprove the [[uniformitarianism (science)|uniformitarian]] view of earth history.
# All [[carbon dating]] of water supplies, even the most ancient and the deepest underground reservoirs, result in relatively young ages,<ref>http://www.betalabservices.com/PDF/Geyh.pdf</ref> and no water has been found suggesting an Old Earth.
# The ratio of strontium isotopes in seawater, which should change due to long-term erosion, has varied by only 0.35% throughout history. In fact, its value today is exactly the same as in the oldest samples, which are claimed to be from 500 million years ago.
# The interior of the earth is heated by decay of radioactive isotopes, which could not possibly still be persisting in sufficient quantities after 5 billion, or even half a billion, years.
# The relatively recent separation of the still-moving continents from one land mass -- denied for 100 years by [[atheist]]s before they accepted it -- suggest a young earth or at least a relatively recent cataclysmic event.
# Fresh tracks of motion by stationary rocks are still visible in some areas, which have baffled Old Earth scientists for more than 60 years; Old Earth magazines refer to them as "self-moving rocks."<ref>http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/18/rafting-for-rocks?s_cid=rss:rafting-for-rocks</ref>
# Beaches have long been eroding far too quickly for the Old Earth theory; "between 80 and 90 percent of the sandy beaches along America’s coastlines have been eroding for decades," sometimes by as much as 50 feet per year.<ref>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-beach-erosion</ref>
# Land is sinking into the oceans at a rate of at least 7 inches per century,<ref>http://www.app.com/article/20110319/NJNEWS/103190327/Global-warming-rising-seas-threaten-New-Jersey-expert-says</ref> which would have rendered most of the United States under water if the Earth were not young.
# The flow of water in the [[Colorado River]] has been declining since the early 20th century, even after usage is considered, and the man-made Lake Mead is at risk of drying up on the next decade.<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/13mead.html</ref>

=== Biology ===
# The intelligence of humans is rapidly declining, whether measured by SAT scores,<ref>SAT scores have been rapidly decreasing in real terms.</ref> music, personal letters,<ref>E.g., Civil War letters.</ref> quality of political debates,<ref>E.g., contrast the Lincoln-Douglas debates with debates today.</ref> the quality of news articles,<ref>''The Federalist'' was written for the newspaper audience in the late 1780s, but is far too intellectual for newspapers today.</ref> and many other measures.
# The age of onset of [[puberty|sexual maturity]] is rapidly changing, suggesting that life is in a short-term rather than long-term equilibrium.<ref>For evidence of a rapidly changing age for sexual maturity in fish, see http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/3/235</ref>
# The high observed rate of [[extinctions of species]]<ref>[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/animals-face-extinction-threat-as-conservation-efforts-slow-report-says.html One in five species are at risk of extinction]</ref> and harmful [[genetic mutation]]s suggest a relatively short period for the existence of life rather than a long one.
# The age of onset of graying of hair or balding is rapidly decreasing, with many teenagers now experiencing baldness or premature graying ([[CNN]]'s [[Anderson Cooper]] began graying as a teenager and was fully gray long before age 40);<ref name="Graying">http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-06-18/living/17299704_1_hair-taylor-hicks-american-idol</ref> many celebrities (such as [[American Idol]] winner Taylor Hicks graying in his 20s)<ref name="Graying"/> and athletes (such as Cal Ripken, Jr. graying and balding in his mid-30s)<ref>"There's a man, close-cropped gray hair, looks older than 35": Sports Illustrated's description of Cal Ripken at 35. [http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1163438/index.htm#ixzz12ONbgydd] By age 50 he was bald too.</ref> increasingly experience premature graying or balding.
# The age of onset of [[cancer]] is markedly decreasing,<ref>http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109865519/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0</ref> suggesting rapid changes inconsistent with an alleged long existence to life.
# The oldest direct evidence of life -- written documents, clothing, remnants of civilizations, tree rings, etc. -- is no older than about 3000 B.C.
# The number of natural, pure-bred bred dogs declines over time as dogs naturally crossbreed; a short period of time is suggested by the fact that there are over 100 different natural, pure breeds of dog thriving today.
# Lack of genetic diversity among the ''Homo sapiens'' species. Were evolution and the old earth true, the human population would show a much larger genetic variance.<ref>http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/descent.html#rpafAHIwKHS7</ref>
# Frequent occurrences of massive deaths of birds and fish, which if extrapolated over millions of years would result in little or no such life today.<ref>http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/technology&id=7884786</ref>

=== Science & Discovery ===
# A stalemate of significant and valid discoveries in the last several decades.<ref>Though there has been some progress in this timeframe, many of the "discoveries" are liberal propaganda, or are scientifically weak.</ref>

== External links ==
*[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth -101 evidences for a young earth and universe] by [[Creation Ministries International]]
*[http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-8-how-old-is-the-earth How old is the earth?] - ''Refuting evolution'' - Chapter 8 by Dr. [[Jonathan Sarfati]] at [[Creation Ministries International]]

== Footnotes ==

<references/>

== See also ==

*[[Counterexamples to Evolution]]
*[[Counterexamples to the Bible]]
*[[Counterexamples to Relativity]]
[[Category:geology]]

Counterexamples to an Old Earth

2011-06-07T18:34:40Z

Freyja:

It takes only one "counterexample" to disprove the theory of an [[Old Earth]].<ref>Most of the "evidence" for an [[Old Earth]] is based on claims that lack testability, as in [[radiometric dating]], and hence would not even satisfy minimum requirements for admissibility in court.</ref> As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of 33 counterexamples has merely a 10% chance of being valid -- an underestimate -- then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is less than 3.8%. With the total of these counterexamples at 33, '''they demonstrate that the Earth must be young with a likelihood of greater than 96%'''. The same argument can be applied to the [[Young Earth]] theory.

''The motivation for [[atheist]]s to insist on falsely teaching that the Earth is old is to pull students away from [[God]]'s immediate presence, and to turn them away from [[Jesus Christ]]''.

== Counterexamples ==
The growing list of counterexamples to the theory of an [[Old Earth]] includes:

=== Astronomy ===
# The [[moon|moon's]] orbit is a very strong counterxample: The moon is receding from the [[Earth]] at a rate<ref>"Measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year." [http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html Measuring the Moon's Distance] ''Apollo Laser Ranging Experiments Yield Results'' by Fred Espenak, GSFC Planetary Systems Laboratory (LPI Bulletin, No. 72, August, 1994).</ref> that would have placed it too close to the Earth merely four billion years ago, causing instability in its orbit, tidal catastrophes on Earth, and other problems that would have prevented the Earth and the moon being as they are today.<br />Additionally, the [[moon]]'s orbit is becoming increasingly and unexpectedly eccentric, suggesting a lack of long-term stability.<ref>http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0212</ref>. This disproves the theory of an [[Old Earth]] even further.
# [[Spiral galaxies]] appear to be young, and only implausible proposals of the existence of [[dark matter]] can reconcile the spirals with a belief in an old universe.
# The planetary orbits in the solar system - including Earth's - are unstable and unsustainable over the long periods claimed by Old Earth believers.<ref>[http://www.newsweek.com/id/201582 Newsweek: "An embarrassing little secret of astronomy ...."]. (Newsweek has inexplicably taken down its article, but it is quoted by Google and other links)</ref><ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/nature08096.html Existence of collisional trajectories of Mercury, Mars and Venus with the Earth] by J. Laskar & M. Gastineau, ''Nature'' 459, 817-819 (11 June 2009). Believers in an Old Earth speculate that the instability would not result in problems in a billion years, but other computer simulations could be developed to demonstrate multi-body instability for the solar system far more recent than that.</ref>
# At least one [[spiral galaxy]] spins in the direction opposite to the spin of its tail, suggesting an age too young to have generated the tail and contradicting the theory that the tails of spiral galaxies were formed over a long period of time.<ref>[http://www.unisci.com/stories/20021/0207023.htm "Hubble Shows Galaxy Rotating In The Wrong Direction"]</ref>
# The primary reaction in the [[Sun]] is the fusing of [[hydrogen]] to make [[helium]], but the ratio of these remains is too high for the Sun to have been burning for millions of years.

=== Geology ===
[[Image:Stratigraphy_of_the_Grand_Canyon.png|right|thumb|300px|The Nonconformity is readily apparent in the [[Grand Canyon]] where foliage and ground cover do not obscure the rock face.]]
# The continued existence of fragile natural arches without having collapsed a short time period for erosion and stresses on them.<ref>http://www.naturalarches.org/big9.htm</ref>
# An extrapolation of time between the collapse of weaker arches<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102290.html</ref> with still-standing stronger arches supports a young earth age.
# The massive [[Great Lakes]] and freshwater lakes near the equator could not exist for millions of years, and several of these lakes are rapidly receding in volume; the third largest saltwater lake, Oroumieh Lake, could completely evaporate within the next five years.<ref>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110525/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_environmental_disaster</ref>
# The existence of inland saltwater lakes at high altitudes, such as [[Mono Lake]] and the [[Great Salt Lake]], suggest a recent global [[flood]].
# The plentiful supply of high concentrations of underground well water, which would be expected based on familiar principles of [[entropy]] to dissipate over a long period of time.
# The relative purity of underground well water, which should be a muddy slurry had millions of years of erosion taken place.
# Earthquakes alter the Earth's rotation several times each century;<ref>http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2010872/japan_quake_changed_earths_rotation/</ref> extrapolating by orders of magnitude in time would have resulted in the occurrence of much larger earthquakes that would have destabilized the rotation<ref>A similar analysis may be performed for the likelihood of devastating collisions with meteors as time is extrapolated by orders of magnitude.</ref>
# The lack of erosion between rock layers.<ref>http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WTZL8GG4H9K0</ref><ref>http://www.knowthebible.net/id115.html</ref>
# Levels of contamination in water are rising, as water proceeds through the [[water cycle]] it becomes progressively more contaminated. If earth (and life) had existed for billions of years, a limit would have long been reached where water (essential to life) was too contaminated for life to continue.
# [[Paraconformity]] and unconformity such as that seen at the [[Grand Canyon]] disprove the [[uniformitarianism (science)|uniformitarian]] view of earth history.
# All [[carbon dating]] of water supplies, even the most ancient and the deepest underground reservoirs, result in relatively young ages,<ref>http://www.betalabservices.com/PDF/Geyh.pdf</ref> and no water has been found suggesting an Old Earth.
# The ratio of strontium isotopes in seawater, which should change due to long-term erosion, has varied by only 0.35% throughout history. In fact, its value today is exactly the same as in the oldest samples, which are claimed to be from 500 million years ago.
# The interior of the earth is heated by decay of radioactive isotopes, which could not possibly still be persisting in sufficient quantities after 5 billion, or even half a billion, years.
# The relatively recent separation of the still-moving continents from one land mass -- denied for 100 years by [[atheist]]s before they accepted it -- suggest a young earth or at least a relatively recent cataclysmic event.
# Fresh tracks of motion by stationary rocks are still visible in some areas, which have baffled Old Earth scientists for more than 60 years; Old Earth magazines refer to them as "self-moving rocks."<ref>http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/18/rafting-for-rocks?s_cid=rss:rafting-for-rocks</ref>
# Beaches have long been eroding far too quickly for the Old Earth theory; "between 80 and 90 percent of the sandy beaches along America’s coastlines have been eroding for decades," sometimes by as much as 50 feet per year.<ref>http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-beach-erosion</ref>
# Land is sinking into the oceans at a rate of at least 7 inches per century,<ref>http://www.app.com/article/20110319/NJNEWS/103190327/Global-warming-rising-seas-threaten-New-Jersey-expert-says</ref> which would have rendered most of the United States under water if the Earth were not young.
# The flow of water in the [[Colorado River]] has been declining since the early 20th century, even after usage is considered, and the man-made Lake Mead is at risk of drying up on the next decade.<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/13mead.html</ref>

=== Biology ===
# The intelligence of humans is rapidly declining, whether measured by SAT scores,<ref>SAT scores have been rapidly decreasing in real terms.</ref> music, personal letters,<ref>E.g., Civil War letters.</ref> quality of political debates,<ref>E.g., contrast the Lincoln-Douglas debates with debates today.</ref> the quality of news articles,<ref>''The Federalist'' was written for the newspaper audience in the late 1780s, but is far too intellectual for newspapers today.</ref> and many other measures.
# The age of onset of [[puberty|sexual maturity]] is rapidly changing, suggesting that life is in a short-term rather than long-term equilibrium.<ref>For evidence of a rapidly changing age for sexual maturity in fish, see http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/3/235</ref>
# The high observed rate of [[extinctions of species]]<ref>[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/animals-face-extinction-threat-as-conservation-efforts-slow-report-says.html One in five species are at risk of extinction]</ref> and harmful [[genetic mutation]]s suggest a relatively short period for the existence of life rather than a long one.
# The age of onset of graying of hair or balding is rapidly decreasing, with many teenagers now experiencing baldness or premature graying ([[CNN]]'s [[Anderson Cooper]] began graying as a teenager and was fully gray long before age 40);<ref name="Graying">http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-06-18/living/17299704_1_hair-taylor-hicks-american-idol</ref> many celebrities (such as [[American Idol]] winner Taylor Hicks graying in his 20s)<ref name="Graying"/> and athletes (such as Cal Ripken, Jr. graying and balding in his mid-30s)<ref>"There's a man, close-cropped gray hair, looks older than 35": Sports Illustrated's description of Cal Ripken at 35. [http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1163438/index.htm#ixzz12ONbgydd] By age 50 he was bald too.</ref> increasingly experience premature graying or balding.
# The age of onset of [[cancer]] is markedly decreasing,<ref>http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109865519/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0</ref> suggesting rapid changes inconsistent with an alleged long existence to life.
# The oldest direct evidence of life -- written documents, clothing, remnants of civilizations, tree rings, etc. -- is no older than about 3000 B.C.
# The number of natural, pure-bred bred dogs declines over time as dogs naturally crossbreed; a short period of time is suggested by the fact that there are over 100 different natural, pure breeds of dog thriving today.
# Lack of genetic diversity among the ''Homo sapiens'' species. Were evolution and the old earth true, the human population would show a much larger genetic variance.<ref>http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/descent.html#rpafAHIwKHS7</ref>
# Frequent occurrences of massive deaths of birds and fish, which if extrapolated over millions of years would result in little or no such life today.<ref>http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/technology&id=7884786</ref>

=== Science & Discovery ===
# A stalemate of significant and valid discoveries in the last several decades.<ref>Though there has been some progress in this timeframe, many of the "discoveries" are liberal propaganda, or are scientifically weak.</ref>

== External links ==
*[http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth Age of the earth -101 evidences for a young earth and universe] by [[Creation Ministries International]]
*[http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-8-how-old-is-the-earth How old is the earth?] - ''Refuting evolution'' - Chapter 8 by Dr. [[Jonathan Sarfati]] at [[Creation Ministries International]]

== Footnotes ==

<references/>

== See also ==

*[[Counterexamples to Evolution]]
*[[Counterexamples to the Bible]]
*[[Counterexamples to Relativity]]
[[Category:geology]]