WHEN
One of the most hotly disputed
questions between scientists and religionists is that which has to be with
time. Archbishop Usher's Bible chronology seems to have been generally accepted
with an authority almost equal to that of the scriptures themselves. This is
regrettable. We might have been better off without his attempted fixing of the
historical dates of the Old Testament. Authorities of the subject say that,
"While the Old Testament contains a great many chronological notices, it
has no chronological system. A chronological system requires some fixed event
or point of time from which all dates may be reckoned. No such event finds
mention in the Old Testament. The earliest fixed date of the Old Testament
history is given us by the inscription of Shalmaneser II of Assyria 860-824 B.
C." Modern schools of archaeological research are pushing the border of
time back father and father so that our children are acquiring a far greater
range of historical vision than their parents dreamed of in their school days.
Geological time reaches back by millions and billions of years.
Sir James Jeans in the opening
paragraph of his little book already referred to, says that man has been on the
earth for approximately three hundred thousand years, and that the earth is
about two billion years old. Quoting him: "Some two thousand million years
ago our planetary system came into existence." It appears that most
scientists are in practical agreement on the matter in the May number, 1931, of
"Current History," under the department of Science Service of which
Watson Davis was editor, the following authoritative statement is made on the
subject: "The age of the earth is at least 2,000,000,000 years according
to a committee of scientists appointed by the National Research Council, who
have been investigating the problem for the past four years. The radioactive
minerals uranium and thorium, which spontaneously disintegrate into lead, give
the best clue to the earth's age. By carefully analyzing the radioactive
minerals and their products in a sample of rock, it is possible to tell how
long it has been in existence. The oldest rock from Dinyaya Pala, Carelita,
Russia. It is 1,853,000,000 years old, and as it occurs in rocks that were
intruded into the surrounding rocks which therefore must be older, the
scientists conclude that the age of the earth must be in round numbers at least
2,000,000,000 years. Estimates of the age of the earth have been multiplied by
more than twenty during the last three decades. The old idea that the amount of
sale in the ocean is an index of the earth's age was found by the National
Research Council committee to be unreliable as only 100,000,000 years can be
accounted for by this method. At the turn of the century this was a favorite
figure for the earth's age."
Professor E. W. Brown, Yale
astronomer, concluded that while there are no known astronomical methods, the
two billion year age is consistent with astronomical probabilities.
In one of these addresses of a
few weeks ago we quoted Dr. J. D. Haldane, a famous scientist of England, who
was introduced before the University of California "as possibly the most
brilliant man alive." in reporting the remarks of Mr. Haldane made on the
occasion. It was stated that he figures that "the earth was probably two
billion years old in Cambrian times and life probably had existed for some five
hundred million years at that time." Taking these figures as they are
intended the earth's age would be placed at two-and-a-half billion years. (Nephi
L. Morris, “The How When and Why of The Earth and Man—A Cosmogony Revealed Through
Joseph Smith,” box 4, folder 20, Nephi L. Morris papers, 1870-1943, Special
Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah)
