AZspot AZspot

blue bits. red rocks.
Thursday 12 November 2009

Imagine your neighbor told you that the moon, rather than being 240,000 miles, was merely a quarter mile — a handful of city blocks — away from the earth. Or imagine attending an event with 10,000,000 other people, only to be told by someone else that there were only 10 in attendance. Certainly, these extreme disagreements in number would seem laughable. However, the argument over the age of the earth is broken into similarly extreme sides. While science agrees that the earth is five billion years old, proponents of young earth creationism argue that the earth is no older than 10,000 years. Furthermore, polls have shown that rather than a small group holding a counter-mainstream idea, as many as half of Americans agree with the idea of a young earth. What is the source of such a vast discrepancy in the numbers? Could it simply be that half of all Americans are ignorant of modern science? Is poor science education to blame? Perhaps if science textbooks, television shows, museums, and national parks among other things failed to mention the age of the earth or offered arguments for both sides this might be so. However, the five-billion-year estimate of the earth’s age appears prevalently in all of these sources. More Than a Question of Numbers

A GNT creation ©2007–2011