How does science disprove the Bible?

Evidence indicates that the first organisms were asexual, like amoeba. Sure it does. What we're missing is evidence of the specific evolutionary pathways that led to sexual reproduction. Evolution proceeds in tiny steps. No single-celled asexual organism ever divided into a sexual organism, just like that. The changes accumulated slowly over time. Like some organisms today that are able to reproduce both sexually and asexually, it is very likely that the first sexual organisms maintained the ability to reproduce asexually.I think what you actually mean to say isn't that evolution doesn't cover this and doesn't cover that, but that some of the physical events implied by evolutionary theory aren't possible.In some cases the physical events necessary are obvious and quite common, such as the reproductive errors (mutations) that occur in every generation, as well as allele mixing for sexually reproducing species. In other cases, such as the origins of sexual reproduction, the evidence for what the specific events might have been is largely absent, and so we can only speculate. If you can successfully identify an absolutely essential step in the evolution of sexual reproduction (not likely given how little we know), and if you can successfully show how that step is impossible, then you will have successfully demonstrated an insurmountable problem within evolutionary theory. The Bible doesn't even agree with itself concerning the descent from Abraham to Jesus.--Percy

The empirical evidence that we have indicates that the universe began as a singularity about 13.7 billion years ago, and that the earth completed its formation to reach its current approximate size about 4.56 billion years ago through a process of gradually dragging in material from the early solar system by way of gravity and collisions over millions and millions of years.It sounds like you're asking what if the earth was formed at the same time as the universe about 13.7 billion years ago, but was molten until about 4.56 billion years ago? Would dating only tell us the date of solidification, or would we be able to tell the earth was actually 13.7 billion years old.In order to answer your question you would have to provide more information. What kept the earth molten from 13.7 billion years ago about until 4.56 billion years ago? It only takes a few hundred million years for an object the size of the earth to cool from a molten state, so what kept it molten for so long? It couldn't have been the sun, since we know the sun has been around for less than 5 billion years. Or do you want us to assume the sun is 13.7 billion years old, too? If so, then you'd have to ask us to also ignore the evidence that the sun is a typical yellow star about 1/3 of the way through a 15 billion year life cycle.How do you want us to assume the 13.7 billion year old earth formed? If it formed at the time of the Big Bang, then where did all the heavy elements (e.g., carbon, oxygen, copper, iron, uranium) come from? None of these elements existed at the time of the Big Bang. The sun is a population I star, which is why it (and the rest of the solar system) contains a fair proportion of heavy elements, which tells us it was formed from the detritus of older population II stars after they went nova and supernova, scattering their remnants into the universe to act as the raw material for more stars.Let me provide a bit more explanation. The only elements formed in the Big Bang were hydrogen, helium and a tiny amount of lithium, and perhaps trace amounts of beryllium (though I'm not so sure about that). Those are the 1st four elements of the periodic table, element numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. No heavier elements existed until hundreds of millions of years later, after the first stars had been born and died as nova and supernova, scattering the first heavy elements into the universe. As time went by and the universe became older and older, the proportion of heavy elements in the universe gradually increased. It's still a tiny proportion compared to hydrogen and helium, but it is gradually increasing as old stars die.So if the earth were formed at the time of the Big Bang (and we won't even both with how that could have happened since immediately after the Big Bang there weren't even any elements at all - for a short while there was a quark plasma that soon condensed into protons, neutrons, electrons and other particles that were still too hot to form atoms of any permanence). Since there were no heavy elements until millions of years later, where did the heavy elements in the earth come from?Another question concerns the proportions of the elements that make up the earth. They happen to be the same as the sun and the other planets in the solar system. If the earth had formed 13.7 billion years ago and was only later somehow captured into a near-circular orbit by a then-young sun about 4.56 billion years ago, why does it have the same composition as the sun in terms of types and proportions of elements? The similarity in composition requires that the sun and earth condensed from the same material, but you're postulating a scenario where they condensed at different times billions of years apart and in places billions of light years apart. This coincidence would be very difficult to explain.To finally answer your question about whether we would be able to tell if the earth was 13.7 billion years old if it had been molten until about 4.56 billion years ago, the answer is yes. A molten state tends to reset radiometric clocks, not because melting has any atomic effect, but because it breaks up the rock crystals that hold elements firmly in place and mixes everything up again. Maybe someone knows of some direct radiometric measurement methods that are not affected by melting and remixing.But there is an indirect but obvious method, which is made by measuring the presence and proportion of elements with long half-lives. If the earth were actually 13.7 billion years old, then it should contain no radioactive elements with half-lives shorter than about 150 million years, because over 13.7 billion years elements with shorter half-lives would have decayed to undetectable levels. Since elements with half-lives of 150 million years and shorter, all the way down to 50 million years, are still present on the earth, the earth really can't be much older than about 5 billion years. The lack of longer-lived radioactive elements on the earth rules out that possibility.--Percy

Yes, that's correct. A molten state would reset the clocks for the direct (note the bold) radiometric dating methods I'm familiar with.But my last paragraph starts, "But there is an indirect (note the bold) but obvious method..." The presence of very long-lived radiometric elements on earth says that the earth could not be 13.7 billion years old, because if it was then those elements would have had sufficient time to decay to undetectable levels. Since we can still measure detectable levels of these elements, the earth can't be 13.7 billion years old.Here's an analogy. You own a car that gets 20 miles/gallon and has a 15 gallon tank. The odometer and speedometer do not work. You fill up your tank and drive with a friend at unknown speeds for an unknown amount of time on a trip, and at the end of the trip your friend announces that he thinks you've driven 500 miles. You look down at the gas gauge, which works and is accurate, and see you have half a tank of gas left. Could your friend be correct?Of course not. With a 15 gallon tank and 20 miles/gallon, you would have run out of gas 200 miles ago. Since you have detectable amounts of gas left, in fact a whole half tank, you could not possibly have driven 500 miles. You tell your friend that you've driven only about 150 miles.So just as you know you couldn't possibly have driven 500 miles simply because you've still got a half tank of gas, scientists know the earth couldn't possibly be 13.7 million years old simply because we've still got long-lived radiometric elements left, which the passage of 13.7 billion years would have used up by now.So to conclude, while there were many unanswered questions in your proposed scenario of a 13.7 billion year-old earth that somehow formed right away and stayed molten for another 9 billion years, the fact that long-lived radiometric elements are still around is evidence that the earth is not that old. As long as you have empirical evidence and rational thinking for what you believe, you're doing science. While string theory does has cosmological implications, I'm not sure it would be accurate to say that cyclical universe hypotheses derive from string theory. Maybe Cavediver will comment.Anyway, the types of hypotheses you're hitching your horse to do not postulate that anything survives from one universe to the next. If there was another universe that preceded this one, there are no planets or stars left over from it.--Percy

There's nothing wrong with that, just realize that's revelation, not science. If within your own mind you choose to be absolutely certain that your Bible-based views are correct and science is wrong, that's fine.It only becomes a problem when you make testable claims about the natural world, because that's the realm of science. That's fine. But there's a significant difference between what God could do and what God did do. Sure, maybe God has repeated the human experiment countless times, and maybe not. How would you know? Your recent speculations come from you, not from the Bible, and as we know, it is God's word in the Bible that is infallible, not discussion board speculations.If you're doing religion, then you preach your gospel and see how many followers flock to your doors.If you're doing science, then you present your evidence and arguments to the scientific community and see if you can build a consensus.The two approaches, religion and science, don't really have much to do with one another. Conflicts only arise when religion makes testable claims about the natural world, such as that the earth is actually 6000 years old or 13.7 billion years old. Neither of these claims is supported by any empirical evidence and at present would fall into the solidly falsified category.The question of this thread, how does science disprove the Bible, might be better phrased, "To what degree are literal Biblical interpretations falsified by science?" If we're talking about YECism, then the answer is, "To a very high degree." And if we're talking ID, then ID's caginess with respect to specificity leaves it with no testable claims to validate, since saying that the bacterial flagellum looks designed carries no more weight than that a cloud passing overhead looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.--Percy

I gave the age of the earth since it completed its formation, not since it began its formation. Obviously if the formation was completed 4.56 billion years ago, it must have begun formation some time before that.Significant collisions kept the young earth molten. Once the earth had cleared out its orbital area, significant collisions ceased, and the earth began cooling, finally reaching the point where rocks could solidify on the earth's surface, bringing the mixing and resorting that resets radiometric clocks to an end, at least on the surface. The cessation of major collisions and the initiation of sustained cooling began around 4.56 billion years ago. The oldest rocks are about 3.9 billion years old, and there's no guarantee that older rocks aren't out there somewhere waiting to be found, but the presence of this 3.9 billions year old rocks means that it took no longer than about 700 million years for the earth's surface to cool sufficiently for the molten material to begin solidifying.How many years did it take for the solar nebula to condense into the planets? I'm not really sure. I'd look it up if I thought it was important. If it was 10 million years, which is probably a very reasonable number, then the earth began forming 4.57 billion years ago, which is about a quarter of 1% different from the 4.56 billion year age. A little larger than 10 million years, even 100 million years, what difference would it make, those ages of initiation of formation are still far smaller than your 13.7 billion year age.As PaulK notes, the dating of non-terrestrial rocks from meteorites and the moon and so forth have played a significant role in determining the precise time since the earth formed. They also serve as complementary supporting evidence, since meteorites and the moon are the same approximate age as the earth.I found a good general summary of how this all came about at The Formation of Planet Earth.The issue isn't what your God could do, it's what he did do. How are you going to tell whether something God could have done is actually something he really did do? Especially if it isn't in the Bible? In other words, if it has no scientific support and no Biblical support and you can't support it yourself, then this might not be a good time to introduce such ideas into the discussion.Science answers questions about what really happened by gathering data from the real world and analyzing it. This creates a direct connection between the real world and our hypotheses.--Percy