IF YOU’RE CURIOUS about the age of the earth and the universe, where do you go for an answer? Hint: Don’t ask a creationist.
Thanks to Eugenie Scott’s National Center for Science Education, which has this article: IPS statement on the age of the earth and universe, we visited this website:
IPS Official Statement on the Ancient Age of the Earth and Universe. IPS is the International Planetarium Society, which describes itself as follows:
The International Planetarium Society is the global association of planetarium professionals. Its nearly 700 members come from 35 countries around the world. They represent schools, colleges and universities, museums, and public facilities of all sizes including both fixed and portable planetariums.
In their official statement, which you should read in its entirety, they say that the age of the earth and the universe are measured in several different ways, all of which are in agreement. The methods are : (1) by studies of radioactive elements (for the earth); (2) measuring the rate of expansion of the Universe; (3) investigating the oldest clusters of stars; (4) measuring the ages of long-lived dying stars. They say:
These measurements of age are accepted by nearly all astronomers, including both research astronomers and planetarium educators. These astronomers come from nations and cultures around the world and from a very wide spectrum of religious beliefs.
A fundamental reason why these ancient ages are so widely accepted by the scientific community is that they are derived from several independent lines of evidence accumulated by independent and often competing teams of researchers. Each method involves different measurements and the application of different physical principles to derive ages from those measurements. The physical principles include the same thoroughly-proven principles that underlie the technology that runs the modern world. Hence the fact that the independent methods all yield similar ages reinforces confidence that the methods are sound and accurate despite their complexity and do not contain major fundamental flaws.
Before we forget, here is the answer: The earth is about 4.6 billion years old; and the age of the universe is about 14 billion years.
We’ve added a link to the IPS statement to our List-O-Links. It’s in the LINKS DEBUNKING “YOUNG EARTH” BELIEFS section.
You got lot of great load of links on you list. Why don’t you include this link to my site I highly recommended to those who want to deal with how creationists explain dinosaurs in a stupid way?
The Great Dinosaur mystery and the Big Lie
If the quality of writing on Crazyharp’s blog is represented by the above comment, I can understand a reluctance to include a link to the site.
Crazyharp, you may have many good ideas. However, if you want people to take them seriously, you need to use Standard English grammar in your writing. If English is not your native language, I would recommend you have a friend who has a better command of the language edit your postings. It would make a world of difference. I say this with all respect as a retired teacher.
Crazyharp81602 says:
You’re referring to my List-O-Links, I assume. I’ve been assembling that list for close to ten years. I don’t think I link to any blogs (there weren’t any when I started). Everything there is an institutional or academic source of information, or maybe the work of a recognized individual authority.
This is nothing personal (your blog is fine) but I think that links to blogs would lessen the authority of the list. Besides, a link from me wouldn’t have any effect on your traffic.
Retiredsciguy, thank you for pointing out the grammatical errors I have in my writings. I admit when I do write, sometimes I have the tendency to make some grammatical errors that has to be pointed out and corrected even when I tried to make my essays as well written as possible. So I went back and corrected as many errors as I can and made improvements on them.
Your welcome, Crazy. Choose your battles and keep your focus.