The Evolution
of a
Creationist
10 EARTH:
YOUNG OR OLD
-
GIVE ME FACTS,
NOT
ASSUMPTIONS
When
faced with lack of evidence to support their faith system, the
evolution
of molecules to man, the evolutionist will always fall back on
the
argument of "time". "Give us enough time," they say, "and
evolution will
occur." And so the evolutionists publish dates of billions of
years for
the age of the universe. These "billions and billions of years"
are
emphasized from our childhood days. As little children, we hear
famous
people and "credentialed" science writers in white lab coats
over and
over again and again refer to these long ages of time. News
broadcasters
and public television nature programs refer to billions of years
as a
matter of fact. Repetition is essential to brainwashing; and
brainwashing is essential to belief in one-cell-to-man
evolution, since
there is no factual science (science not based on assumptions)
to back
it up. Most creationists would say that the universe is
somewhere
between six and ten thousand years old. A young universe is not
a
problem for creationists because our God, the Creator-God of the
Bible,
is also the Creator of time. He does not need time. He can and
did
create fully mature people, plants and animals.
The
evolutionists make major assumptions during the course of
determining a
date of several million or billion years for the age of a piece
of rock.
If any of their assumptions are invalid, then it is impossible
to use
that technique to find a correct age for the rock. Here is how
these
dating techniques work: Let us say we find a rock and then want
to
determine how old it is. We decide to analyze the rock by
looking for
certain elements or compounds which break down over time into
certain
other elements or compounds. We might look for a special isotope
of
uranium and the element it eventually breaks down (decays) into,
which
is a special isotope of lead. In our rock specimen, we find some
of this
special uranium and some of the lead it decays into (the
"daughter"
element). The lead is called the daughter element because it
comes from
the breakdown of its mother element, uranium. We can measure how
much
lead is in the rock, and because we think we know how fast (or
slowly)
the uranium would decay into the lead, the amount of this
special lead
in the rock should then tell us how old the rock is. In other
words, the
amount of lead present in the rock would have resulted from a
certain
amount of uranium decaying over X number of years into lead. For
all of
this to yield a specific time frame in millions or billions of
years,
certain assumptions are made.
ASSUMPTION ONE: NO
CONTAMINATION
First,
it is assumed by the scientist dating the rock that his specimen
of rock
had never been contaminated. Nothing could have come into or out
of the
rock that could alter the dating technique to give an erroneous
date.
This would demand a "closed system" for the rock's
environment. As Dr. Henry Morris says in Scientific
Creationism, there
is no such thing in nature as a closed system. The closed system
is an
ideal concept convenient for analysis, but non-existent in the
real
world. Morris mentions that the idea of a system remaining
closed for
millions of years becomes an absurdity. Some evolutionists claim
that
every molecule in the universe has been in at least four
different
substances since the Big Bang. But evolutionists cannot have
both; they
cannot have molecules jumping around from one substance to
another and
molecules steadfast and immovable, as they would have to be in
the
closed system.
Therefore,
the first assumption needed to affix old dates to rocks is not
valid.
Rocks do get contaminated as things seep into them, and rocks
change
their constituents as things leech out of them. A closed system
sounds
good and must be assumed to have accuracy in dating rocks, but
it does
not occur in nature.
ASSUMPTION TWO: NO DAUGHTER
COMPONENT
The
second assumption of the rock-dating expert is that the system
must have
initially contained none of its daughter component. In order to
calculate the age of our rock specimen, for example, there can
be no
lead in the original rock. Let us say it takes l,000,000 years
for one
milligram of lead to be produced by the decay of uranium. We
then
analyze a rock and discover it has one milligram of lead in it.
The
article we publish would state, with full conviction, "This rock
was
l,000,000 years old as scientifically dated using high-tech
procedures
by Dr. Credentials who has a double Ph.D. in rock dating." Who
will
doubt how old the rock is? Almost no one. But hold on for a
minute.
Suppose God created that rock with some of the lead already in
it. Or
suppose some lead leaked into it somehow or was formed by some
other
reaction or process. How can the expert differentiate between
the lead
that God put there (or was formed in some other way) and the
lead that
came from uranium decay? Obviously, no one can know how much
lead was
there to begin with. Consequently, for laboratory "accuracy" the
evolutionist must arbitrarily decide, "There was no lead
(daughter
element) there to begin with; I can't prove it, but I will
pretend
(assume) this to be true."
Every
time you are told that a rock is several million or billion or
even tens
of thousands of years old, the scientist doing the dating has
assumed no
pre-existing daughter compound. This means he guesses every
time. Do we
take scientists' guesses as valid fact and then proceed to the
belief
that the Bible must be wrong when it talks of 24-hour creation
days
about six thousand years ago? Surely not!
ASSUMPTION THREE: CONSTANT DECAY
RATE
The third assumption listed by Dr. Henry
Morris
(Scientific Creationism, p. 138) is that "The process
rate must
have always been the same." If the process rate (the speed at
which the
mother element breaks down into the daughter element) has ever
changed
since the rock was formed, then the change of rate of decay
would have
to be corrected for the age calculation to be accurate.
Scientists now
know that process rates can be altered by various factors. Decay
rates
can be speeded up or slowed down in certain substances when
subjected to
various types of radiation and X-rays. As Dr. Morris states,
every
process in nature operates at a rate which is influenced by a
number of
different factors (p. 139).
What
if radiation bombarded the primitive earth causing the uranium
238 to
speed up its decay process (in other words, its half-life was
shortened
due to the radiation energy). How would the scientist know that
the
decay process was speeded up during that radiation bombardment
one
billion years ago? He couldn't know, could he? This means that
he could
not accurately date the rock. What if the radiation caused the
decay
rate to speed up, but previous to the x-rays it was twice as
slow as it
is today? How would the scientist tell us the age of the rock?
He could
not do it. Yet, have we not been told that a massive bombardment
of
x-rays hit the primordial ooze of ancient planet earth causing
the
"spark" that moved dead chemicals into living cells? The
so-called
"punctuated equilibrium" theory would insist there have been
many
radiation bombardments over time to cause one kind of animal to
rapidly
mutate into a higher form. (Punctuated equilibrium teaches that
evolution happens too fast to see, in contrast to Darwinian
evolution
which teaches evolution happens too slow to see.)
It
seems that the evolutionists cannot have both. If radiation
causes decay
rates to speed up or slow down, then the radiation needed to
start life
from non-life and mutate (change) old life forms into new ones
would
totally invalidate those billion-year dates and their dating
techniques.
The atomic clocks would have speeded up or slowed down depending
upon
the radiation. Let's also look at this the other way around: if
there
were no radiation bombardments, then the third of the three
dating
assumptions listed above might even be correct (even though the
other
two would of themselves destroy the accuracy of the dating
technique) --
but now we don't have the radiation "spark" to get life going
from
non-living chemicals and to stimulate the necessary mutations
assumed to
improve the organisms! With no radiation, the decay rates may
have
remained constant for billions of years, but what energy got
evolution
started and kept it going in this case?
As Dr. Morris says, educated guesses are made
to
determine apparent ages. But the apparent age may be
completely
unrelated to the true age of the rock.
These
three assumptions: (l) a closed system, (2) no original daughter
element, and (3) the same decay rate throughout all time -- are
always
involved when a scientist dates a rock. None of these
assumptions are
valid, and none are able to be subjected to the scientific
method of
observation and reproducible experimentation. There is no way to
accurately date anything beyond several thousand years. That
means the
earth could be quite young and no scientist can absolutely prove
otherwise!
"...there is certainly no real proof
that the
vast evolutionary time scale is valid at all.
That being true, there is no
compelling reason
why we should not seriously consider once again the
possibilities in the
relatively short time scale of the creation model.
As a matter of fact, the creation
model does
not, in its basic form, require a short time
scale. It
merely assumes a period of special creation sometime in the
past,
without necessarily stating when that was. On the other hand,
the
evolution model does require
a long time scale.
The
creation model is thus free to consider the evidence on its own
merits,
whereas the evolution model is forced to reject all evidence
that favors
a short time scale.
Although the creation model is not
necessarily
linked to a short time scale, as the evolution model is to a
long scale,
it is true that it does fit more naturally in a short
chronology.
Assuming the Creator had a purpose in His creation, and that
purpose
centered primarily in man, it does seem more appropriate that He
would
not waste aeons of time in essentially meaningless caretaking of
an
incomplete stage or stages of His intended creative
work."
The
truth is that we have been taught a lie from our earliest school
days. We
are taught to believe that the earth is very old even though
there is no
factual science (see Chapter 2 "assumptions") to support
aeons of
time. But we are not taught the bountiful evidences that lead to
the
conclusion that the earth is quite possibly only a few thousand
years
old. How many evidences for a young earth can you list right
now? Did
you try to think of some? Can you write down even one solid
proof that
the earth is young? Most people (including Christians) cannot
think of
even one proof of a young age for the earth. You see, we have
been led
into one of the lies of Satan's world system -- that the
universe is
very old. If a group of Christians were asked, "Do you believe
God
created the heavens and the earth?" Every hand would go up
attesting to
their sure belief, "Yes, God created the heavens and the earth."
Should
a second question be proposed, "Do you believe God used billions
of
years of geologic ages and the process of evolution to create?",
some
pauses and waffling would occur, and if everyone was being
honest, many
hands would go up. Now, a third question is in order, "Do you
believe
that God created the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that
is in
them in a literal six 24-hour day week? In one evangelical
church in
Dallas, Texas, only five hands went up in a class of fifty
people. You
say, "They must not have understood the question!" No, they
understood,
but only five believed what the Bible says in Genesis 1-11,
Exodus 20,
John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, Revelation 4:11, etc. They had
been
brainwashed by Satan's world system into thinking there is
plenty of
scientific evidence to prove an old, old universe.
Dr. John C. Whitcomb has done us all a great
service
with his book, The Early Earth: Revised Edition. Dr. Whitcomb lists and
discusses
many of the evidences for believing the Bible to be true as
written. He
contrasts faith in God and His word to faith in evolution and an
old
earth:
"...the non-Christian scientist must
acknowledge
that he also comes
to the
factual, observable phenomenon with a set of basic assumptions
and
presuppositions that reflect a profound "faith-commitment." No
scientist
in the world today was present when the earth came into
existence, nor
do any of us have the privilege of watching worlds being created
today!
Therefore, the testimony of an honest evolutionist could be
expressed in
terms of ...Hebrews 11:3..., as follows: "By faith, I, an
evolutionist,
understand that the worlds were not framed by the word
of any
god, so that what is seen has indeed been made out of previously
existing and less complex visible things, by purely natural
processes,
through billions of years." Thus it is not a matter of the facts of science
versus the faith of Christians!
The
fundamental issue, in the matter of ultimate origins, is whether
one
puts his trust in the written Word of the personal and living
God who was there when it all
happened,
or else puts his trust in the ability of the human intellect,
unaided by
divine revelation to extrapolate presently observed processes of
nature
in the eternal past (and future). Which faith is the
most
reasonable, fruitful and satisfying? In my own case, while
studying
historical geology and paleontology at Princeton University, I
was
totally committed to evolutionary perspectives. Since then,
however, I
have discovered the biblical concept of ultimate origins to be
far more
satisfying in every respect.
Christians who truly desire to honor
God in
their thinking, must not come to the first Chapter of Genesis
with
preconceived ideas of what could or could not have happened (in
terms of
current and changing concepts of uniformitarian scientism). We are not God's
counselors; He is
ours! `For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His
counselor?' (Romans 11:34) ...For My thoughts are not your
thoughts,
neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the
heavens are
higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and
my
thoughts than your thoughts' (Isa. 55:8-9)."
Do
we know what we believe as Christians? Are we ready to make a
defense to
everyone who ask us to give an account of the hope that is
within us? (I
Peter 3:15)
IS EARTH 6 THOUSAND OR 4.5
BILLION
YEARS OLD?
How divergent are these two views (creation
and a
young earth versus evolution and an old earth)? The Bible places
the
Beginning at about 6,000 years ago. Many evolutionists put the
beginning
of earth at about 4 l/2 billion years ago. Dennis Peterson
attempts to
help us understand the degree of difference in these two choices
of
faith:
"One way to visualize the extremes of
our
choices is to equate one year to the thinness of one page from a
typical
Bible. If you were to stack up several Bibles to a height about
equal
with your knee, you'd have about 6,000 pages before you.
Now how many Bibles would you have to
stack up
to make four and a half billion pages?
The stack would reach at least a
hundred and
fourteen miles high into the stratosphere.
So, you're standing there between your
two
stacks,and you are supposed to choose which one to believe in.
Why is it
you are made to feel rather sheepish to admit that you lean
toward the
Biblical stack of about 6,000 years? Or why is it that you start
to
arrogantly ridicule anyone who would dare to not agree with your
proud
billions?"
Petersen
lists 35 or 40 evidences for a young earth. These are scientific
reasons
to believe the universe to be quite young -- on the order of
several
thousand rather than several billion years. Petersen
states:
"Scientists are aware of over 70
methods that
can give us ideas of Earth's age. We could call these "GEOLOGIC
CLOCKS."
All of them are based on the obvious reality that natural
processes
occurring steadily through time produce cumulative and often
measurable
results. Most of these "clocks" give a relatively young age for
the
Earth. Only a few of them yield a conclusion of billions of
years. Those
few are loudly publicized to support the commonly held theory of
gradualism."
The
gravitational fields of the sun and stars pull cosmic dust
toward them.
This is known as the Poynting-Robertson effect. Our sun is
estimated to
suck in about 100,000 tons of cosmic dust every day. An old sun
should
have "pulled in" and destroyed all the particles in our solar
system.
Yet, our solar system is full of these particles! The
Poynting-Robertson
effect would demand a sun and solar system of less then 10,000
years of
age. Petersen states:
"All stars have a gravitational field
and pull
in particles like gas, dust and meteors within their range.
Stars
radiating energy 100,000 times faster than our sun have a
spiraling
effect, pulling things in all the faster. The unusual thing is
that O
and B stars are observed to have huge dust clouds surrounding
them. If
they were very old at all, every particle in close range would
have been
pulled in by now."
Two
types of stars have huge dust clouds and, hence, must be quite
young. No
one has ever seen the birth of a new star, although some
scientists have
postulated through computer simulations and theoretical
mathematics that
as many as three new stars should form every year. No scientist
ever
has, nor ever will see a star form because the Creator created
all of
His stars on the fourth day of the creation week (Genesis
1:14-19). in
the spring of 1992 some scientists claimed to be observing a
star form
out in the stellar heavens. They used various mathematical
equations to
come to their conclusion. However, if their conclusion is in
direct
contradiction to what the Bible says, then their conclusion is
wrong. So
we sit back and wait a few months or years and finally some
scientist
will sheepishly admit "We are sorry folks, all our meticulously
produced
evidence led us to believe a new star was forming, but we now
realize
that we made a mistake. We will keep looking for a new star to
form and
we will let you know as soon as we find it." God created His
last star
out of nothing on the fourth day of the creation week!
Astronomers may
see stars
die since entropy and sin entered the universe, but no
star-birth is
possible; God completed His creation of the universe and rested
on the
seventh day. If a star (O and B) and/or a solar system (ours)
has
significant cosmic dust and meteoroids in the space around it,
it cannot
be billions of years old.
LIGHT FROM THE FARTHEST
STARS
You
might be thinking, "Okay, but what about the speed of light and
the
millions of years necessary to get light from the farthest stars
to our
solar system?" (This is one of the things I was thinking as I
was
"evolving" into a creationist back in the early seventies.)
Well, first
of all, how do we know it takes millions of years for light to
travel to
earth from the farthest stars? Some evolutionary professor told
us, or
some writer told us, or someone like Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather or Carl Sagan
told us.
There does seem to be a problem here, doesn't there? What if you
were to
discover that light from the farthest star could arrive at earth
instantly (God created the star and the light beams from the
star to the
earth. We can't eliminate this possibility. Our God could do
this if He
wanted to) or within three days?
Dr. Barry Setterfield has done considerable
work on
this problem. His papers can be obtained through the Institute
for
Creation Research, Box 1607, El Cajon, CA 92022. Also see I.C.R.
Impact
#121, Starlight and the Age of the Universe, by Richard
Niessen.
Setterfield and Niessen offer four possible solutions to the
problem of
light from the farthest stars. The first possibility is that God
could
create the light beam with the appearance of age. A second
possibility
is that the distance to these remote stars has not been
calculated
correctly. This is very likely when the methods used to measure
great
distances in space are closely examined in conjunction with the
basic
assumptions of Trigonometry. As I.C.R. Impact #121 states,
"There is no
guarantee that actual distances in space are as great as we have
been
told." Once you get out of our solar system it is a most
difficult
problem to accurately measure distance.
A
third consideration is that light may have taken a "shortcut"
through
space. Different types of mathematics and different assumptions
and
postulates give totally different concepts of space and
distances in
space. What we know about space is quite limited. How distances
through
space are calculated depends on the calculator's system of math
and his
or her basic set of postulates (assumptions).
Outer
space may be straight or it may be curved. If you like to think
outer
space is a straight line, you will use Euclidean Geometry and
its
accompanying assumptions. Euclidean Geometry is used to find
vast
distances in space. Its calculations are, for the most part,
straight
line calculations.
But
what if outer space is not able to be measured with straight
line from
here-to-there-type math? That would mean all the farthest stars
could be
much closer than the textbooks teach.
NON-EUCLIDEAN
GEOMETRY
Another legitimate way to measure
distances in
outer space is by using Riemannian math. Riemannian math is
classified
as Non-Euclidean Geometry. It assumes outer space to be curved.
Hence
Non-Euclidean Geometry produces much smaller distances to the
farthest
stars. Niessen (I.C.R. Impact #121) reviewed articles by Harold
Slusher
("Age of the Cosmos" I.C.R. 1980) and Wayne Zage ("The Geometry
of
Binocular Visual Space", Mathematics Magazine 53, Nov.
1980, pp.
289-2). Twenty-seven binary star systems were observed, and it
appears
that light travels in curved paths in deep space. If you convert
Euclidean straight line math into Riemannian curved math, light
could
travel from the farthest stars to earth in, as reported by
Niessen,
15.71 years! This is a whole lot less than millions of years,
isn't
it?
Is
Riemannian Geometry valid if it shows shorter distances to the
stars? H.S.M. Coxeter published a largely ignored book
in 1942
entitled Non-Euclidean Geometry. Coxeter stated, "...we
still
can't decide whether the real world is approximately Euclidean
or
approximately non-Euclidean." The
scientists do not know which is the valid way to measure space
as it
really is! They are not sure just what outer space really looks
like.
They have not been there and do not know what shape it has.
Everything
close enough to our solar system to obtain measurements (though
all
these contain assumptions) appears to have positive curvature.
That
means Riemann's method of figuring distance in space is more
likely to
be correct than the Euclidean methods. Niessen, then, has a
better than
average chance of being correct when he postulates 15.71 years
for light
from the farthest star to reach planet earth.
THE SPEED OF
LIGHT
Niessen
adds one more factor: the speed of light. Scientists have been
measuring
the speed of light for over 300 years, and it is appears to be
slowing
down. Using equations to extrapolate backwards, equations that
include
the figures observed and registered for the slowing down of the
speed of
light (the farther back in time you go the faster the light
travels),
light from a five billion light-year away star (assuming stars
are that
far away) could arrive on earth in just three days!
What
conclusion can we arrive at on the basis of the above? You do
not have
to believe it when some textbook or scientist in a white lab
coat tells
you that stars are millions of light-years and perhaps trillions
of
miles away. There is no hard, irrefutable evidence here
for a 9
to 20 billion year old universe.
Where
do the 9 to 20 billion years come from? A man named Hubble
(remember
"Hubble's telescope" launched into space recently?) came up with
the
theoretical, mathematical formula for measuring time back to the
initial
"Big Bang". His calculations originally estimated about 18 to 20
billion
years as the age of the universe. Then a few years ago, some
other
scientists decided Hubble had made a grievous mistake and was
50% off in
his calculations. Thus, the age of the universe was cut in half
(from 18
to 20 billion years to 9 to 10 billion years) by the stroke of
pen. Some
scientists still hold to the 20 billion year figure. They
realize that
even 20 billion years is statistically not long enough to evolve
the
universe.
COMBUSTION ENERGY OF
STARS
Now,
back to some more evidences for a young earth. Astronomers
calculate
that "O" and "B" stars may have surface temperatures of
90,000B0F. This is "... more
than 100,000
times the energy coming from our sun. Burning down at that rate,
and
clocking backward, the entire universe would have been filled
with the
mass of these stars just a few thousand years ago!"
Some
evolutionists will object, "But you can't take current processes
and
extrapolate back like that." Well, what do evolutionists do to
find and
publish their old, old dates? The same thing! They evaluate, for
example, present processes such as decay rates (l/2 life), and
extrapolate backwards assuming all was the same from the
beginning (II
Peter 3).
BRISTLE-CONE PINE
TREES
If
the Biblical Flood occurred about 5,000 years ago and destroyed
all
dry-land plant life, then we would not expect to find plants
that could
be accurately dated at older than about 5,000 years. The
bristle-cone
pine tree is such a plant. It has been called the oldest living
organism
on earth and has been accurately dated at about 5,000 years.
Peterson
states, "It's almost as though all these trees were planted on a
virgin
Earth just 5,000 years ago."
RIVERS ARE
YOUNG
Every
year the Mississippi River carries tons and tons of eroded dirt
into the
Gulf of Mexico. Scientists have been measuring the growth of the
Mississippi delta for many years.
"At the present rate the entire Mississippi
River delta
would have accumulated in only 5,000 years. But science
acknowledges
that the river has been even bigger in the past.
How could this be? Unless of course
the North
American continent, and all the other continents for that
matter, just
haven't been in their present positions any longer than
that."
Another
river that scientists carefully watch is the Niagara. It also
leads to
belief in a young earth.
"Because the rim of the falls is
wearing back at
a known rate every year, geologists recognize that is has only
taken
about 5,000 years to erode from its original
precipice."
Often
large chunks of the dirt and rock under water falls, like the
Niagara,
will break off, yielding even younger ages. Suppose that 200
years from
now you decided to calculate the age of Niagara Falls, but you
did not
know that in 1994 a huge section of rock had broken away from
the edge
of the falls. You would assume that it took thousands of years
to wear
away all that rock from the falls' edge, but it happened in an
instant.
You would date the falls much older than it actually was. This
type of
mistake is common when scientists attempt to date things.
THE RECEDING
MOON
Adding
to the evidence for a young earth is our receding moon.
Scientists know
how fast our moon is moving away from earth (about two inches
per
year).
Louis B. Slichter, Professor of Geophysics
at M.I.T.,
writes:
"The time scale of the earth-moon
system still
presents a major problem."
Dennis Petersen continues:
"...working it back would mean the
moon and
Earth would be touching only two billion years ago. Of course,
that's
ridiculous. Another way to look at it is this: At the present
rate and
starting from a realistic distance of separation between the
two, if the
Earth is five billion years old the moon should be out of sight
by
now!"
MOON ROCKS
When
the first moon rocks were dated in the early 1970's, NASA
published the
age of the moon rocks at 4 to 4.5 billion years. Several years
and many
rocks later, they published a range of dates for the rocks of
our moon
at 3 to 4 l/2 billion years. This author called one of the
geologists
who dated those rocks and the conversation went something like
this:
"I noticed in a recent news release
that the
dates of the moon rocks have been adjusted to a range of 1 1/2
billion
years. That's a pretty big difference in the dates! Was the
range any
greater than that?"
"Oh yes, the range went from
several thousand
years to over 20 billion years."
"Well then, why did NASA only publish
the 1 1/2
billion year range, instead of the full 20+ billion year
range?"
"We did not want to confuse the
public. We
know the moon is about 3 to 4 1/2 billion years old, so we
called the
dates outside of that range discordant dates and threw them
out."
Apparently,
some scientists have pre-decided that the moon is about 3 to 4
1/2
billion years old. What if, in spite of their presuppositional
belief,
the several thousand year dates were correct and not discordant?
Well,
that locks in Special Creation and eliminates the possibility of
evolution (which requires millions of years). Apparently
that
would be unacceptable to NASA. Or, what if the 20+ billion dates
were
correct? That, in effect, demolishes Hubble's math, and the time
of the
Big Bang is once again up for grabs. These scientists might
object and
say, "But we use a bell-shaped curve to arrive at our dates."
Well, what
if the assumptions which are built into their dating system skew
the
curve one way or another? We've already seen that the three
major
assumptions invariably included when scientists date rocks
(earlier in
this chapter) are not valid.
You
might ask an astronomer where our moon and its rocks came from.
Some
fanciful answers will be forthcoming! Evolutionary scientists do
not
know from whence cometh our moon. A creationist believes that
the God of
the Bible created the moon, and the sun and stars as well, on
the fourth
day of the creation week (Genesis 1:14-19). There is no hard,
factual,
scientific information that can refute a young age for the moon.
All old
ages given for the moon are not accurate because the assumptions
of the
dating techniques do not square with reality.
SHORT-TERM
COMETS
From
time to time, comets pass by the earth. Not only can scientists
not tell
us where our moon came from, they also cannot tell us about the
origin
of short-term comets. These are comets that astronomers
calculate have
lifetimes of no more than 10,000 years. If the universe is
somewhere
between 9 and 20 billion years old, and the astral bodies were
formed at
the "Big Bang", evolution is left in the embarrassing dilemma of
having
to postulate theories for the origin of short-term comets, which
it
cannot prove. You have to admire the imagination of these folks,
though.
Some actually believe that Jupiter spits comets out of high
volcanoes.
The only problem is that the short-lived comets are not made of
the
right stuff to come from Jupiter, and their
orbit is in
no way oriented to enable them to refer to Jupiter as "mother".
Scott
Huse says:
"Comets journey around the sun and are
assumed
to be the same age as the solar system. Each time a comet orbits
the
sun, a small part of its mass is `boiled off'. Careful studies
indicate
that the effect of this dissolution process on short-term comets
would
have totally dissipated them in about 10,000 years. Based on the
fact
that there are still numerous comets orbiting the sun with no
source of
new comets known to exist, we can deduce that our solar system
cannot be
much older than 10,000 years. To date, no satisfactory
explanation has
been given to discredit this evidence for a youthful solar
system."
EARTH'S MAGNETIC
FIELD
An
examination of the Earth's magnetic field proves that Earth
cannot be
very old, since the Earth's magnetic field is losing its
strength. Dr. Thomas Barnes has done volumes of work on
the
depletion of Earth's magnetic field. The conclusion of his work
establishes the age of the Earth at less than 10,000 years.
Naturally, the evolutionary community has proclaimed Barnes'
work
invalid, but Barnes answers their charges quite simply and
effectively
in the ICR Impact #122 of August 1983 entitled Earth's
Magnetic Age:
The Achilles Heel of Evolution. The earth's magnetic field
is
getting measurably weaker. Ten thousand years ago it would have
been too
strong to support life. If life could not have existed 10,000
years ago
because of the super-strength of the earth's magnetic field,
then
evolution had no time to occur.
OUR SHRINKING
SUN
Recently a controversy has arisen over the
shrinking
of our sun. If the figures of John Eddy and Adam Boornazian are
correct
("Analysis of Historical Data Suggest the Sun is Shrinking,"
Physics
Today, Vol. 32 No. 9, September 1979), our sun would have
been too
hot for life to exist on Earth even l,000,000 years ago. This
would, in
effect, knock out the possibility of the vast expanses of time
required
for evolution. Evolutionists and theistic evolutionists have
jumped on
this one to prove Eddy was mistaken. Others now claim the
measurements
of the planet Mercury crossing in front of the sun each year,
prove the
size of the sun has not changed. We will have to wait to see how
this
develops.
RADIOHALOS
Irrefutable
support for a young earth is offered by Robert V.
Gentry through his studies of radiohalos in coalified wood.
Evolutionists believe the coal deposits in the Colorado Plateau
to be
hundreds of millions of years old. Yet, Gentry's radio-halo
"clock"
demands a time period of only a few thousand years.
Gentry
discovered microscopic bits of uranium in these coal deposits.
The
effect of the radioactive uranium on the coal was to produce
radiation
halos in the coal.
"As a radioactive bit decays,
radiation extends
in all directions into surrounding coal for a small, yet precise
distance determined by the particle energy of the radiation.
Over time
this emitted radiation will change the color of the coal,
forming a
distinct sphere around the bit of uranium in the center. These
tiny
spheres of discolored rock surrounding a microscopic radioactive
center
are termed "radiohalos". Such radiohalos are Robert Gentry's
specialty."
How does the bit of radioactive uranium get into
the coal
to form the halos? Ackerman continues:
"Regarding the radioactive center, a
bit of
uranium has, at some time in the past, before the wood material
was
hardened into coal, migrated into its present position. As the
uranium
bit undergoes radioactive decay, a form of lead is created. Once
the
coal has hardened and the uranium bit has been cemented into a
fixed
position, this lead isotope begins to accumulate at the
site....
Gentry has found that the uranium/lead
ratios in
the Colorado Plateau coal formation indicate that this formation
is only
a few thousand years old."
The
halos form around the radioactive particles in the coal and
indicate a
young age of only a few thousand years for the coal. The coal of
the
Colorado Plateau was probably formed during the Flood judgment
of Noah's
day as God was destroying heaven and earth system #1.
Gentry also found halos of Polonium in
Precambrian
granite rock. These are supposedly the oldest rocks on earth.
Precambrian rock is called the "basement" rock of earth since it
is
thought to be more ancient than all other rock. Ackerman reviews
Gentry's work:
"The question Gentry has raised for
evolutionists is how the polonium bits and their resulting halos
came to
be in the basement granites....
The enigma is this: If the granite is
hardened,
the polonium cannot travel to its intrusion location. But if the
granite
is not hardened, no halo can form. Therefore, Gentry
argues that
the time lapse from a permeable, molten state to the present
rock state
for these precambrian granites had to be extremely brief. How
brief? One
of the polonium isotopes studies by Gentry has a half-life of
three
minutes! Another has a half-life of only 164 microseconds!
In the evolutionary model, the time
required for
the cooling and solidification of these granites is millions and
millions of years. Gentry believes these halos to constitute
powerful
evidence against evolution and its presumed vast time spans. He
believes
these halos speak of a very rapid formation of these crustal
rocks."
Radiohalos in Precambrian basement rock may
indicate a
young age for the earth's "oldest" rocks. Walter T. Brown, Jr.,
(In The
Beginning), lists about thirty time clocks for the age of
the earth
that yield an age of a few thousand years. He mentions that an
analysis
of the gases (such as helium) in the atmosphere yields a young
age (few
thousand years) for the age of the atmosphere.
River sediments and erosion rates indicate that the earth could
not have
existed as it is for millions of years.
PLANETARY
RINGS
A
study of the rings around several planets seems to demand a
young age
for our solar system:
"The rings that are orbiting Saturn,
Uranus,
Jupiter and Neptune are being rapidly bombarded by meteoroids.
Saturn's
rings, for example, should be pulverized and dispersed in about
10,000
years. Since this has not happened, planetary rings are probably
quite
young...
Jupiter and Saturn each radiate more
than twice
the energy they receive from the sun. Venus also radiates too
much
energy. Calculations show it is very unlikely that this energy
comes
from nuclear fusion, radioactive decay, gravitational
contraction or
phase changes within those planets. The only other conceivable
explanation is that these planets have not existed long enough
to cool
off."
STAR CLUSTERS
The
existence of star clusters hints at a young universe. Immense
clusters
of stars are travelling through space at supersonic speeds.
Scientists
believe that gravity holds these fast moving star clusters
together. But
scientists do not know how these star clusters could hold
together for
millions of years, while travelling at such high speeds. They
should
have "unclustered" and moved apart by now. But they are still in
a
cluster. The sole answer to this dilemma for the evolutionist
appears to
be special creation a few thousand years ago, not a "Big Bang"
billions
of years ago.
MOUNT ST.
HELENS
When
all other evidence fails to prove a very old heaven and earth
system,
evolutionists go back to rocks and rock formations, which
supposedly
require very long spans of time to form. The eruption of Mount
St.
Helens on May 18, 1980, and the rapid formation of geologic
systems
around it is challenging the claims of historical geology. Dr. Steve Austin and Institute for Creation
ReSearch
staff personnel have been documenting the phenomena of Mount St.
Helens
since its initial eruption. Some surprising results of the
volcanic
blast are being observed.
"Up to 600 feet thickness of strata
have formed
since 1980 at Mount St. Helens. These deposits accumulated from
primary
air blast, landslide, waves on the lake, pyroclastic flows, mud
flows,
air fall and stream water...
Mount St. Helens teaches us that the stratified layers
commonly
characterizing geological formations can form very rapidly by
flow
processes."
in
other words, what geologists may have thought took thousands or
hundreds
of thousands of years to form as a column of rock in fact formed
at
Mount St. Helens as the scientists watched, and in less than
eleven
years! Perhaps aeons of time are not necessary to form the
layers of
rock after all.
One
more fascinating phenomenon of the Mount St. Helens cataclysmic
explosion is the apparent formation of the beginnings of
polystrate
fossils in five years. In 1985, scientists discovered that
water-soaked
trees were floating with root end down (toward the bottom of the
lake)
in Spirit Lake. These trees:
"...are randomly spaced not clumped
together,
over the bottom of the lake, again having the appearance of
being an
in situ forest.
Scuba investigation of the upright
deposited
trunks shows that some are already solidly buried by
sedimentation, with
more than three feet of sediment around their bases. This proved
that
the upright trees were deposited at different times, with their
roots
buried at different levels. If found buried in the stratigraphic
record
(rocks), these trees might be interpreted as multiple forests
which grew
on different levels over periods of thousands of years. The
Spirit Lake
upright deposited stumps, therefore, have considerable
implications for
interpreting "petrified forests" in the stratigraphic
record."
What
does this all mean? There is a bank of polystrata fossils (one
tree goes
up through several layers or strata of sedimentary rock) in Nova
Scotia
over 2,000 feet thick with trees straight up and down at
different
levels up through the rocks. Geologists have claimed that a
formation
like the Nova Scotia formation would take hundreds of thousands
of years
to form. After observing the Spirit Lake water-soaked trees,
scientists
are reconsidering. Perhaps it does not take as long as they
originally
thought to form polystrate fossils. Those trees in Spirit Lake
are
lining up and getting buried in what should become sedimentary
rock --
but less than fourteen years have gone by, not hundreds of
thousands of
years!
With
the many evidences for a young earth, evidences which can only
be
answered with an earth that once was greenhouse warm and
suddenly (at
the Flood) became permanently frozen at the poles, why do
evolutionists
still cling to their theories? Only one answer seems plausible:
they do
not want to submit themselves in humble obedience to their
Creator. They
refuse to accept God even though He reveals Himself through His
creation. Evolution from one cell to man is a lie and a foolish
speculation of men in rebellion against their Creator.
"For the
wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in
unrighteousness;
Because that which may be known of God
is
manifest in them; for God hath shewed it to them.
For
the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly
seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his
eternal
power and divine Godhead; so that they are without excuse.
Because that, when they knew God, they
glorified
him not as God,
neither were
thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their
foolish heart
was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they
became
fools." Romans 1:18-22 (Emphasis added)
[ Dr. Henry
Morris, Scientific Creationism
(San
Diego: Creation-Life Pubs., 1974), Chapter VI.
[ Dr. Henry
Morris, Scientific
Creationism, p.
136.
[ An
in-depth study of
the lies and consequences of evolution is Ken
Ham's
book, The Lie:
Evolution (El
Cajon, CA: Master Books, 1987).
[ Dr. John
C.
Whitcomb, The Early
Earth:
Revised Edition (Grand Rapids: Baber Book House, 1986), p.
52.
[ Petersen,
Unlocking the
Mysteries of Creation, Vol. I, p. 34.
[ For more
about the
Poynting Robertson phenomenon, see: R.L. Wysong,
The Creation-Evolution
Controversy (Midland, Mich: Inquiry Press, 1981), p. 454ff.
Also:
Scott Huse, The
Collapse of
Evolution (Baker Books, 1983), p.
29.
[ "The full
recognition that spherical geometry is itself
a kind of
non-Euclidean geometry, without parallels, is due to Riemann
(1826-1866). He realized that Saccheri's hypothesis of the
obtuse angle
becomes valid as soon as Postulates I,II, and V are modified to
read:
I. Any two points determine
at least
one line.
II. A line is
unbounded.
V. Any two lines in a plane
will
meet.
For a line to be
unbounded
and yet of finite length, it merely has to be re-entrant, like a
circle.
The great circles on a sphere provide a model for the finite
lines on a
finite plane, and, when so interpreted, satisfy the modified
postulates.
But if a line and a plane can each be finite and yet unbounded,
why not
also an n-dimensional
manifold, and in particular the three-dimensional space of the
real
world? In Riemann's words of 1854: "The unboundedness of space
possesses
a greater empirical certainty
than any
external experience. But its infinite extent by no means
follows
from this;
on the
other hand, if we assume independence of bodies from position,
and
therefore ascribe to space constant curvature, it must
necessarily be
finite provided this curvature has ever so small a positive
value."
According to the
General
Theory of Relativity, astronomical space has positive curvature
locally
(wherever there is matter), but we cannot tell whether the
curvature of
"empty" space is exactly zero or has a very small positive or
negative
value. In other words, we still cannot decide whether the real
world is
approximately Euclidean or approximately non-Euclidean." H. S.
M.
Coxeter, Non-Euclidean
Geometry, 5th ed. (Canada: University of Toronto Press,
1965), pp.
11,12.
[ Louis B.
Slichter,
"Secular Effects of Tidal Friction upon
the
Earth's Rotation," Journal of
Geophysical Research, Vol. 8 No. 14 (1964),
4281-4288.
[ Huse, The Collapse of
Evolution, pp.
28,29.
[
For
more see:
Origin and Destiny of
the Earth's
Magnetic Field, T.G. Barnes, I.C.R. Technical Monograph No.
4, 1973;
also I.C.R. Impact #100, October 1981.
[ Science
Held Hostage is a book
by three
men from Calvin College who appear to be theistic evolutionists.
They do
not believe in a young earth. The "evolution/creation in six
days"
controversy is not an issue to cause the elect to lose
fellowship with
each other. (Howard J. Van Till, Davis A. Young and
Clarence
Menninga,
Science Held
Hostage(Downers
Grove, Ill: Inter Varsity Press, 1988). Theodore Rybka in his
book,
Geophysical and Astronomical Clocks (American Writing and
Publishing Co.: Irvine, CA, 19) refutes the arguments of Hugh
Ross and
Van Till, Young and Menninga by showing that the sun's heat is
generated
by gravitational collapse and not nuclear
fusion.
[
Robert V.
Gentry, et al., " Radiohalos in Coalified Wood: New Evidence
Relating to
the Time of Uranium Introduction and Coalification," Science, 194 (October
15, 1976),
315-317.
[ Paul D.
Ackerman, It's a
Young World
After All: Exciting Evidences for Recent Creation (Grand
Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1986), pp. 104,105.
[ Ibid,
Ackerman, pp.
108-110.
[ Brown, In the Beginning, p.
16.
[ Steven A.
Austin,
Ph.D., "Mount St. Helens and Catastrophism," ICR Impact #157,
July 1986,
p. 1,2. Dr. Austin also has an excellent video on this
topic.
[ Austin,
ICR Impact
#157, p. iii.
TOP NEXT
CHAPTER PREVIOUS
CHAPTER TABLE
OF CONTENTS