A Reasonable Atheist

dakana on the Something Awful Forums posted an interesting thread about his high school physics teacher doing a presentation in class trying to show that the earth is not 4.5 billion years old.

The teacher used the following "evidence"

• The sun is shrinking. Thus, it must have been bigger in the past, and it would have been so big ~200m years ago that it would have been touching the earth.


• Carbon dating and radiometric dating methods are inaccurate. His 'proof' for this was a few examples of errors in the dating process leading to conflicting errors. He also claims that if one finds uranium and lead together, one cannot be certain that the lead is a byproduct of uranium's decay; it might have formed from another method in conjunction with the uranium.


• The moon is receding, and the earth's spin is slowing. Thus, a few million years ago, the earth would have been spinning too fast, and the moon would have been too close to the earth.


• The earth's magnetic field is weakening. Thus, it would have been too strong a few million years ago.


• Some fossils and skeletons have been found hoaxes. He ignores that fact that faked fossils are an incredibly small percentage of fossils.


• He makes the claim that there have been no transitional fossils found, such as "a half-sprouted wing," even though that's not how evolution works.


• He claims that the amount of helium in the atmosphere is indicative of a young earth.


• The amount of salt in the oceans proves a young earth


• The population of the earth wouldn't take more than a few million years to grow to its current size.

Now, I'm not sure if this teacher is just trolling his students or if he really believes this. But it looks like danaka is going to write a paper rebutting all of the teachers points. I personally think he should do it, and give proper sources for the paper and everything. He should NOT mention religion. If the teacher should happen to mention religion he should probably not get into that discussion, but keep note of it. He should also be prepared in case there is some retaliation for his paper. I hope there isn't personally, but on the other hand, if this guy really believes this and intends to teach it to classes, that's not a good thing, as he's basically teaching junk science in a science classroom, and I don't think that's fair to the students.

You can read the whole thread here.