dogger807 said:
A valid point. I made an absolute statement and absolutes are rarely true. Ideally in science "When contradictory data is gather it is the theories that are altered to fit the data.. not the data to fit the theory." The human factor prevents this from being a complete accuracy. I call christian science an oxymoron because it doesn't even strive for this.
“Long ago (in the 4th century!) one of the Church's teachers Vasilius the Great wrote about this. He advised the Orthodox Christians neither to rely upon the scientific data in order to provide foundation for their faith in Christ, nor to try to disprove them, because “the scientists permanently disprove themselves.”
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/age-of-earth.htm
We Orthodox don't tie our faith to science. And thus, although I believe in 'creation', I am not a 'creationist' in the sense that it is most often used. The late Fr Seraphim Rose said this about Genesis “Some Protestant fundamentalists tell us it is all (or virtually all) 'literal.” But such a view places us in some impossible difficulties: quite apart form our literal or non-literal interpretation of various passages, the very nature of the reality which is described in the first chapters of genesis the very creation of all things) makes it quite impossible for everything to be understood 'literally'; we don't even have words, for example, to describe 'literally' how something can come from nothing. How does God “speak”? - does He make a noise which resounds in an atmosphere that doesn't yet exist?” (Genesis Creation and Early Man, p69).
When it says "He spoke" we just accept that it is so.
However getting back to your comment about date; the 'science' surrounding smoking to me is a good example. There's a huge amount of 'evidence' that existed to say that smoking was good for you.
1922: OPINION: “Is There a Cigarette War Coming?” in Atlantic magazine says, “scientific truth” has found “that the claims of those who inveigh against tobacco are wholly without foundation has been proved time and again by famous chemists, physicians, toxicologists, physiologists, and experts of every nation and clime.”
1925: OPINION: “American Mercury” magazine: “A dispassionate review of the [scientific] findings compels the conclusion that the cigarette is tobacco in its mildest form, and that tobacco, used moderately by people in normal health, does not appreciably impair either the mental efficiency or the physical condition.”
1938: MEDIA: Consumer Reports rates 36 cigarette brands.
CR notes that Philip Morris lays “great stress in their advertising upon their substitution of glycol for glycerin. The aura of science surrounding their 'proofs' that this makes a less irritating smoke, does not convince many toxicologists that they were valid. Of the many irritating combustion products in tobacco smoke, the modification of one has probably little more than a psychological affect in reducing irritation felt by the smoker.”
http://www.metromkt.net/viable/health27.shtml
Note here, the company issued scientific data to back up their claims about the harmless nature of their product.
And getting back to Darwin's comments; "Darwin postulated that females are ''coy,'' mating rarely and choosing their mates carefully, presumably betting their odds on the males with the best genes to contribute to their offspring. For their part, males are ''ardent'' and promiscuous, and fight amongst themselves for female partners. Later theories added that males are promiscuous because they have less to lose by making babies - unlike eggs, sperm are plentiful and small. Plus, females usually do most of the work to raise the offspring”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-02/su-sag021003.php
See also
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/2003/february19/aaassocialselection219.html
“In the mid-nineteenth century, social Darwinists invoked evolutionary biology to argue that a woman was a man whose evolution - both physical and mental - had been arrested in a primitive stage. In this same period, doctors used their authority as scientists to discourage women's attempts to gain access to higher education. Women's intellectual development, it was argued, would proceed only at great cost to reproductive development. As the brain developed, so the logic went, the ovaries shrivel. In the twentieth century, scientists have given modern dress to these prejudices. Arguments for women's different (and inferior) nature have been based on hormonal research, brain lateralization, and sociobiology.?
Londa Schiebinger, “History and Philosophy”, in Sex and Scientific Inquiry, eds. Sandra Harding and Jean F. O'Barr, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 26-27.
Quoted at:
http://www.dean.sbc.edu/bart.html
Thus the science of the time matched the 'maleness' of the time.
All of this I know doesn't directly answer the question "How old is the earth?", but I should note that when evolution needed an older earth, evidence for an older earth was found.