Re: WingNutDaily: Hal Lindsey on Bishop Ussher

"Jason Spaceman" <notreally@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e28sv3$i6g$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From the article:
--------------------------------------
Bishop Ussher's "Annals of the World" begins at the point of creation,
which he
determined was Oct. 23, 4004 B.C.

Ussher's arrival at the date of Oct. 23 was determined based on the fact
that
most peoples of antiquity, especially the Jews, started their calendar at
harvest time.

Ussher concluded there must be good reason for this, so he chose the first
Sunday following autumnal equinox.

Although the autumnal equinox is Sept. 21 today, that is only because of
historical calendar-juggling to make the years come out right.

In September 1752, 11 days were dropped to bring the calendar back in line
with
the seasons. Another day was dropped at the beginning of the 19th and 20th
century for the same reason.

Amazingly, Ussher's calculations, made centuries before these adjustments,
are
vindicated by them. Pretty impressive stuff for a guy working by
candlelight
centuries before the advent of a calculator.

The reason Ussher's work is so accurate was because he relied solely on
Scripture as his source of information.

Ussher arrived at the date of 4004 B.C. by taking known dates in history,
and
calculating backward by using the chronologies of Genesis Chapters 5 and
11 and
working backward. The calculations themselves were so complicated that, in
the
original documents, they covered more than 100 pages.

Notes Larry Pierce of the "Online Bible":

Astrogeophysicist Dr John Eddy, who was at the time solar astronomer
at the
High Altitude Observatory at Boulder, Colorado, made some revealing
comments at
a symposium in 1978, as reported in Geotimes, Vol. 23, September 1978, p.
18.

There is no evidence based solely on solar observations, Eddy stated,
that
the Sun is 4.5-5 x 109 years old. "I suspect," he said, "that the Sun is
4.5-billion years old. However, given some new and unexpected results to
the
contrary, and some time for frantic recalculation and theoretical
readjustment,
I suspect that we could live with Bishop Ussher's value for the age of the
Earth and Sun. I don't think we have much in the way of observational
evidence
in astronomy to conflict with that."

That was then, but what he meant was that there was in 1978 no observational
direct evidence that the Sun was 4.5 billion years old. But science makes
progress, and in 2006 there is direct evidence for the Sun's age as well as
the previously known evidence for the age of the planets and meteoroids
(isotopic dating of meteorite material).

Of course, there was indirect evidence, such as the concordance between
calculations of the internal evolution of the Sun and the present day
luminosity and radius of the Sun being as expected for an age of 4.5 billion
years.

The modern direct evidence includes study of the vibrational modes of the
Sun. The frequency spectrum observed allows direct calculations of the
internal structure. As the data improved over time, the ability to study
the central parts of the Sun improved, to the point where now the core
reduction in the hydrogen abundance and the increase in helium can be
"directly" observed. This central composition change is exactly the amount
expected (within an error of about 1% due to measurement uncertainties) from
the solar models of a star 4.55 billion years old.

There are other indicators known now that were not available in 1978, such
as the correlation of chromospheric activity with stellar age and the
correlation of stellar rotation with age (solar-type stars slow down with
time). The Sun's present state for these two factors also agrees with an
age of 4.5 billion years.

Incidentally, Eddy has also completely repudiated any claim that the Sun was
shrinking, based on his AAS abstract--the one that creationists like to
quote.

The author of the piece has the concepts of "accuracy" (validity) and
"precision" (number of significant figures) totally confused. Ussher's work
was remarkably precise, but totally lacking in accuracy.

-------------------------------------------------

Read it at http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49826



--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove "pants" spamblock to send e-mail)

.

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