This isn’t a letter to try and convince my cousin that radiometric dating and background radiation measurements have come up with the best possible ages of Earth and the universe, respectively.  I merely wanted him to better understand exactly what was meant by numbers like 4.45 billion, 13.5 billion, 6 thousand, 10 thousand and other numbers that all seem so large to primary-school-aged kids that the difference between them seems meaningless.

In many of the examples from creationist propaganda I’ve seen, I’ve noticed that creationists have a terrible habit of stressing how long 6,000 years is and underplaying how long 4.54 billion years is in an effort to close the gap between them and make one of the more embarrassing tenets of young-Earth-creationism (specifically, the young-Earth part) seem more scientific and palatable to kids in science classes.

If you haven’t already, read my previous conversation with him here.

Fiddy,

I hope you don’t mind me intruding into your studies with a little bit of an exercise in science and math, but I’ve been doing some thinking on how to get those who are interested in science but don’t have access to real scientific literature to understand complex ideas like the age of the universe and of Earth.  I figured I’d try one of those out on you, since you seem to fit the bill for exactly the audience I’m wanting to target.

Be prepared for a lot of numbers.  I try my best to explain all of them, what they mean, and how I got to them, but it’s still a heckuva lotta numbers.

One major "argument" from creationists is that, even with the 4.54-billion-year age of Earth there wouldn’t be enough time for life to form through abiogenesis and get to where it is today through evolution.  4.54 billion is the age science uses, and, as you’ll see, there’s plenty of time in that amount of years to evolve a biosphere teeming with fascinating organisms, but most creationists who use that argument, I’ve noticed, don’t even believe the Earth is that old!  They’re using scientific theories they don’t believe in to try and punch holes in OTHER scientific theories they don’t believe in!

I hope to show you, through a few thought experiments involving basic arithmetic, how absurd this claim is and give you an appreciation for exactly how long everything around us has been here.  Then, just for laughs, I’ll run those same arithmetic equations on the age that "young-Earth-creationists" like Ken Ham and, I would assume, the retarded caveman who wrote your science textbook think Earth and the universe are.

I was born over 20 years ago on Monday, May 15, 1989 at 5:52 PM.  Assuming I was born exactly on the minute (5:52:00 PM), how long would it take for me to count to the age of the Earth?

Scientific evidence, through various types of radiometric dating that overlap each other and, in doing so, check each others’ accuracy and narrow the margin of error, place the time that Earth solidified at about 4.54 billion years ago.  Written out, that’s 4,540,000,000.

If I were to count to 4.54 billion (taking one second for each number) from the time I was born, it would take me 52,546 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, and 40 seconds to finish counting.  Since I’m currently only 7,488 days, 2 hours, 20 minutes and 16 seconds old (At least I was when I wrote that… now I’m 7,488 days, 2 hours, 21 minutes and 18 seconds old… and now I’m 7,488 days, 2 hours, 21 minutes and 54 seconds old…), that would take quite some time.  In fact, I wouldn’t be finished counting until Saturday, March 28, 2133 at 12:58:40 AM, when I would be 143 years, 10 months, 12 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, and 40 seconds old.  I can only wish I could live so long!

As long as that sounds, it’s really a tiny amount of time compared to the actual amount of time the Earth has been around.  In this example we’re crunching every year down to one second and there are 31,556,926 seconds in every year (give or take, depending on leap years and the occasional leap second).  So multiply the amount of time it would take to count to the age of the Earth and multiply that by 31,556,926 seconds and you’ll have the actual amount of time the Earth has been around:  143,268,444,040,000,000 seconds, give or take.  If you wanted to say that number, you would have to say, "One-hundred-forty-three-quadrillion, two-hundred-sixty-eight-trillion, four-hundred-forty-four-billion, forty-million seconds."  That’s like counting to a billion, 144 million times.

And that’s just the age of the Earth!

The universe is between 13.5 and 14 billion years old!  We know this by measuring distances from one end of the universe to the next and figuring out how long light would take to travel from one end to the other.  Since the universe expands outward at the speed of light, when we find this distance in light-years, we know how many years the universe has been around since the Big Bang.  This is an extremely simplified explanation of how we know the age of the universe, and if you want to know more detail about the various methods of dating used, let me know and we can research it together.

For the sake of my poor, battered calculator, in our next number crunch we’re going to use the lowest possible age of the universe:  13.5 billion years.

From the moment I was born, if I wanted to count to 13.5 billion, it would take me exactly 156,250 days.  I would be finished on Thursday, March 2, 2417 at 5:52:00 PM and I would be 427 years, 9 months, and 15 days old.  That would be no easy task for Jedi Master Yoda, as it would take almost half of his lifetime to count, but for a human like me, I would have to pass on the task to my children, who would pass it on to their children, who would pass it on until we reached about eighteen generations, assuming they all have kids at an average age of 23 (which is when I will probably start trying to adopt or find a surrogate mother) and also assuming that they stop counting when their kid is born and pass the counting off on them. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild would finally finish counting the age of the universe if I had started when I was born.

So how many seconds old is the universe?  Again, we’ll multiply the number of seconds in a year (31,556,926) by the number of years the universe has been around (minimum, 13,500,000,000), and we get that the universe is at least 426,018,501,000,000,000 seconds old.  If you wanted to say that number, you would have to say, "Four-hundred-twenty-six-quadrillion, eighteen-trillion, five-hundred-one-billion, seconds."  That’s like counting to a billion, 426 million times!

And, finally, how old do creationists say the world and the universe are?  Since most creationists (or at least the loudest creationists, and the ones who write the crappy textbooks you use) believe that Earth and the universe were zapped into being at the same time, we’re only going to get one number for both their ages.

Most Christian and Jewish "young-Earth-creationists" say the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old.  Since we used the shortest time in the margin of error for the scientific age of the universe, we’ll use the shortest time in the margin of error for the non-scientific age of the universe too:  6,000 years.

Once again, I was born on Monday, May 15, 1989 at 5:52:00 PM.  If I started counting from the moment I was born, I would be finished on Monday, May 15, 1989 at 7:32:00 PM.  That’s a whole 1 hour, 40 minutes!

Even if I were to take the highest number in the margin of creationist error and count to 10,000, I would be done counting on Monday, May 15, 1989 at 8:38:40 PM, 2 hours, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds after I started counting.

I hope this puts into perspective the differences between how long science theorizes the universe has been here and how long creationists insist it’s been around.

Once we squash down giant numbers into manageable sizes that we can comprehend, when we look at the evidence, the creationists can no longer fool us with their favourite tactic:  Trying to fool those of us who suck at math.

Your cousin,
Reed

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