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Technically this could all be true even if the universe were created 4000 years ago. As somebody says in Robert Heinlein's novel Job: A Comedy of Justice, "Yes, the universe is billions of years old, but it was created 4000 years ago. It was created old." (approximate quote from memory)
I absolutely agree with science, but strictly speaking we can't know for sure the universe isn't the creation of some superbeing operating outside of it - or it could even be a simulation.
We can't prove that the world we live in wasn't created last Thursday, with our memories, the growth rings in trees, and so on created by a (near) omnipotent trickster to deceive us. But science and rationality give us tools for determining what's worth taking seriously, and sorting out the reasonable, but unconfirmed, claims from the unverifiable hogwash.
Actually the universe was created on Jan 1st 1970. That's why computers sometimes have errors with pre-1970 dates, it's the universal simulation glitching due to the high clock rate of computers compared to the universe's. Anyone who claims to have been born before 1970/01/01 is a simulation that's lying to you, and anyone born after is real, hence why now that its more player characters than NPCs things are going off the rails politically and socially!
Also, did you ever get a sense of dejavu?
QED.
We can't know anything with 100% certainty. We can always imagine some razzle-dazzle, imagined scenario to counter the rational explanation if we like.
The point of the scientific method and logical reasoning is to pick the explanation with the most evidence.
The existence of a god is something that can't be disproven. You can always find gaps in knowledge and explain the gap by saying a god / multiple gods did that. As gaps narrow with more knowledge, you can always just say that the holy books were just a metaphor in this one case, but the rest of it is literally true.
It gets even more complicated when you run into people who refuse to believe in any science, or anything outside their own personal experience.
Personally, I believe the Earth is a sphere. I've been to Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. The time the flights took and the routes the in-flight maps showed make sense for a spherical earth. So did the scenes visible out the windows, and the day/night cycle. The mere existence of time zones and seasons strongly suggests the Earth is a rotating sphere tilted slightly off vertical. But, it could be that I'm living in a Truman Show world, where everything is a lie designed to make me believe something that isn't true. I haven't personally done all the math, all the experiments, etc. to prove the Earth is a sphere. And, if this were a Truman Show world, the producers of the show could mess with my experiments anyhow.
For someone who doesn't want to believe, there's really nothing you can do to make them believe. The world really relies on trust and believing Occam's Razor.
Not to argue for creationism, but this argument sucks. Lead can be produced by supernova, not just through decay of heavier elements. But even that's besides the point, since if you believe some entity created the universe, surely said entity could have created whatever ratio of lead to uranium they wanted. It's not a falsifiable claim, there's really no disproving it, unfortunately.
(Not so fun fact: the environmental impact of leaded gasoline was discovered by trying to estimate the age of the earth using the radio of lead to uranium in uranium deposits, but the pollution from leaded gasoline was throwing the measurements off.)
Also this doesn’t say anything about the Earth.
Plus you can give a liberal reading of the bible to be:
That doesn’t have to imply the earth is 4000 years old. Even the original wording could be read as eon instead of day.
The Bible is a couple thousand chapters long. The creation story is the first two chapters. It's pretty obviously only attempting to establish that God created the universe in some ambiguous way and move on with the story. That doesn't stop people from inferring all sorts of things from what is essentially a poem.
It's literally a poem in the original language.
Also I'm amazed by how people don't seem to understand what half-life is. It's not the time it takes for an atom to decay. It's the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay, meaning there will be some U-238 that decay into Ra-226 in just a couple of seconds.
So even if the Earth was created 4000 years ago with uranium but not lead (for some weird reason), some of that lead would have decayed into lead by now.
Yeah, this is broken because all lead did not have to come from polonium, that's how half-lives work.
It's still 100% bullshit in every way, someone just needs to have chatgpt4 sort out the current mass fraction to explain why, I'm way too lazy to argue against insanity.
https://wwwrcamnl.wr.usgs.gov/isoig/period/pb_iig.html
Lead-204 is the only isotope that doesn't derive from radioactive decay, and it represents only 1.4% of the lead on earth.
Pretty sure the point of creationism is that everything was put on the earth when it was created, including fossils etc. You can't argue this with logic. My favorite spin off of this is Last Thursdayism where the earth was created last Thursday (regardless of what day it's now) which basically uses the same argument.
That does explain why I can never get the hang of Thursdays
Hence the first and only commandment of Last Thursdayism: Don't Panic.
When I was being raised as a young earth creationist, the earth was supposedly 12,000-20,000 years old. Then it was 10,000 years old. Then only 6,000. After I outgrew that nonsense, I joked that in a few decades YECs would say that their god created the earth in 1980, and anyone older than 40 are agents of the devil sent to test your faith.
Of course, the universe was actually created in 1970 and anyone claiming to be older than 54 is an agent of Microsoft sent to test your faith in Unix.
I assume someone saying this is a creationist and can just say god created Earth already with the lead in it. Therefore it is a pointless discussion.
Which raises the question of why he would create a planet with the illusion of age and send you to hell for falling for his own trick.
Real question: Is the decay of uranium the only natural way to produce lead? If so TIL.
Iron is the heaviest element capable of being created inside stars, via fusion. Once iron is fused, the star begins to rapidly collapse.
Elements heavier than iron (28) are the result of supernova explosions, which produce energies high enough to create these heavier atoms. It is further possible, as described in the image, for very heavy elements to decay into lighter more stable elements, those still being heavier than iron.
Lead is 82.
"Whatever! Pssshhh!"
But the half life of polonium 210 is just 138 days. other is a few days. radium 226 is 1602 years. Why couldn't the earth have started with a lot of radium 226? Checkmate round earthers.
Could have started with lead directly. Why go the extra mile.
I'm not even sure how you get to 4000 years old from biblical literalisim.
Edit: going strictly by the biblical account, Adam lived to 930 years, and Noah 950. IIRC, their lives did not overlap. Jesus lived 2000 years ago. A whole bunch of stuff happens in between Noah and Jesus. So even if you're working strictly from the bible, how the hell do you get 4000 years?
So even if you’re working strictly from the bible, how the hell do you get 4000 years?
You can't. The "Young Earth" people are morons.