Skip to comments.Science and a Young Earth - Evolution Vs Creationism – Christian Perspective on Science
Posted on 07/31/2006 8:33:32 PM PDT by DaveLoneRanger
Haven't geologists proved from scientific dating methods that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old? Doesn't astronomy prove that the universe must, at least, be billions of years old since it would have required billions of years for light from the nearest stars to reach the Earth? Don't all qualified scientists, including geologists, believe in Darwinian evolution and a billions of years old Earth and universe? The simple answer is "no".
Both evolutionists and creationists have certain built-in assumptions in interpreting and using scientific data when it comes to the Earth's age. The issue many times comes down to which assumptions are more reasonable. Dating rocks is not a hard (no pun intended) science.
For example, many times one radiometric dating method will give a vast difference in age from another radiometric dating method used on dating the same rock! Radiometric dating methods have also been severely faulty when tested with the actual historical age of certain rock. For example, Hawaiian lava flows that were known to be no more than two centuries old were dated by the potassium-argon method to be up to three billion years old! (Science 141 : 634).
The reason for these huge discrepancies is that these methods are based on assumptions that no major changes have occurred in the Earth's atmosphere in the past which could have affected the initial amounts and even the rates of decay of the substances involved (Industrial Research 14 : 15). If, for example, a world-wide flood the Bible describes in Genesis had actually occurred then it would have, indeed, altered the initial conditions so as to make radiometric dating less than an exact science, to say the least. The Carbon -14 dating method has been known to have fifty percent accuracy, but it is only accurate up to thousands (not millions or billions) of years and can only be used on things that were once living.
Complicated as the subject of the Earth's age may be, a main reason for why evolutionists believe the earth is many millions of years old is because of their belief concerning how the fossil layers were deposited. What one believes about the deposition of the fossils in the Earth will, indeed, determine one's view of the earth's age.
Fossils of animals, for example, are formed when animals are buried quickly and under tremendous pressure, so that their bones, remains, and imprint are preserved in rock. If living things are not buried quickly and under enormous pressure their remains will decay rather than become preserved or fossilized. Most of the many billions of fossils in the Earth are found in rock that has been affected by water (Sedimentary Rock). Therefore, most of of the billions of fossils in the earth were formed as a result of the animals and plants being buried suddenly and quickly under tremendous water pressure.
Geologists who are evolutionists believe that local geographical floods over a period of many millions of years deposited these animals and plants and preserved their remains in the earth's crust. This is only one view.
Geologists who are creationists believe that a one world-wide cataclysmic flood, otherwise known as the Genesis Flood, buried most of these animals and preserved them as fossils in the Earth. Obviously, if it was one world-wide flood that deposited these animals and preserved them as fossils in the Earth it would not have taken very long. But, if the fossils were caused by local and limited geographical floods then it would, indeed, have required many millions of years before such local floods could have produced the billions of fossils and deposited them in various layers all over the Earth.
There are many problems, however, with the local flood theory as the cause behind the fossils. Even today local floods are not known to be able to generate the type of tremendous pressure and force necessary to fossilize creatures in rock. Among other arguments, it is difficult to explain how local floods could have carved out such majestic and geographical wonders as the Grand Canyon which is thousands of square miles and packed with billions of fossils and was clearly formed by the cataclysmic action and force of water. Yet, evolutionary geologists are content in believing that the Colorado River merely overflowing its banks, now and then, over millions of years was capable of performing such a feat!
The Bible in Genesis 7 says that much of the water that flooded the whole world came from under the ground. We know even today of vast reservoirs of water that are under the Earth. Obviously, if the Genesis account is true, there was much greater amount of water underground in the Earth's past. Genesis 7 says that this water burst through the surface of the Earth and, consequently, covered and changed the entire topography of the Earth.
Passages in the Old Testament Book of Psalms describe God as raising high mountains from the earth after the world-wide flood so that the water would recede into the ocean basins. The tremendous velocity and pressure from such receding water is what most likely caused the formation of the majestic Grand Canyon with its billions of fossils.
The fossils in the Earth are found to exist in various layers of the Earth's crust. Evolutionary geologists claim that each layer was formed and deposited by local flooding over many millions of years. However, in various parts of the Earth there are fossils of trees that protrude through several layers! This indicates that these layers were deposited and formed almost simultaneously and not over millions of years. Otherwise, the tops of these trees would have decayed a long time ago. The tops of these trees could not wait millions of years to become deposited and fossilized so there is no other explanation except that these layers were deposited in quick succession under cataclysmic forces and conditions.
Furthermoree, evolutionary geologists believe that the lowest layers contain only fossils of simple organisms while the higher layers contain only fossils of complex organisms. This, according to him/her, is evidence that complex organisms evolved from simpler ones over many millions of years. As a result of this view, the evolutionary geologist dates fossils according to the layer of rock in which they are found and, in turn, dates rocks according to the type of fossils they contain (circular reasoning!). Thus, the evolutionary geologist simply assumes that rocks which contain fossils of simple organisms must be very old (because of his/her assumption that those organisms evolved first) while the rocks containing fossils of complex organisms must be younger (because of his/her assumption that those organisms evolved more recently) even when there is no actual physical differences between the rocks themselves!
Besides the many assumptions involved, there are other problems with this view. First, there are no actual transitional stages to connect the so-called progression of simpler organisms in the fossil record to more complex ones. Second, this idea that the lower layers contain fossils of only simpler organisms exists only on paper, in evolutionary textbooks, and not in the real world. There are many areas in the world where fossils of complex organisms are found way beneath layers containing fossils of simpler organisms with no evidence of any shifting of these layers. Of course, if a world-wide flood did occur, then in many cases the lower layers would contain fossils of simpler organisms because these would naturally be the first to be deposited.
Many have insisted that our world and universe must be billions of years old because it would have required billions of years for light from the nearest stars to reach the Earth. This is assuming that the stars, galaxies, and universe were not created complete and fully mature from the beginning, with the light already reaching the Earth from the moment of creation. Creationists believe that because God created a mature universe from the beginning, it naturally has the appearance of being much older than it actually is. For example, when God created the first man and woman they were mature adults and complete from head to toe. If we had observed them five minutes after they were created we would have thought from their appearance that they had been on earth for many years, even though they were freshly created from the hand of God.
Highly respected sientist and physicist Dr. Thomas G. Barnes has shown that according to the rate of decay of the Earth's magnetic field the earth is only thousands of years old and not billions.
According to evolutionists, the Moon is nearly as old as the Earth and, from the rate of unimpeded meteors hitting the Moon's surface over billions of years, there should have been many feet of lunar dust on the Moon. But, when we landed on the Moon we discovered only a thin layer of dust. The Moon has no atmosphere to burn up such meteors as the earth does so such collection of dust was a major concern for scientists before the astronuts landed there.
There is much more to say on this subject, and there are many positive evidences for a young earth and universe not covered in this article. Excellent articles and books have been written by highly qualified scientists, including geologists, who are creationists showing scientific evidences for a young earth and universe. M.I.T. scientist Dr. Walt Brown provides considerable information on the topic at his site www.creationscience.com. Also, considerable information on the subject is provided by scientists of the Institute for Creation Research at www.icr.org.
The author, Babu G. Ranganathan, is an experienced Christian writer. He has his B.A. with academic concentrations in Bible and Biology. As a religion and science writer he has been recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis Who's Who In The East. The author has a website at: www.religionscience.com
That's not a logical argument. You are saying that you have to know the age of the rock and be certain that it's over 100,000 years old, before you can rely on the K-Ar method. If YEC's are right, and no rock is over 100,000 years old, then every K-Ar date is bogus.
The problem with the K-Ar method is that it assumed (falsely) that all of the Argon boiled out of the hot lava. That was a bad assumption and has been proven false. Excess Argon has been reported in recent lava flows from at least 16 recent and different lava flows.
Accordingly Scientists switched to the Argon/Argon method which supposedly is not dependent on Argon boiling out. However, doubts remain.
==I could agree that the Federal Government should get out of it.
I would argue the states need to get out of the education business as well. All schools should either be based on a voucher system with little or no strings attached, or they should be based on a tax credit system, or both (the take your pick option). As an experiment, each state could even maintain a few public schools that would be accountable to state mandated curriculum for parents who have a fetish for government indoctrination (so long as the indoctrination centers can pay for themselves).
I like your ideas. Unfortunately it is apparent from some of the posts on this thread that even right wing conservatives have been stung by the indoctination bug. I know I just pissed a lot of FReepers off, but that's my honest opinion.
Your first paragraph sums up Convergent Evolution fairly succinctly. As to airplanes and motorcars: Surely we can at least both agree that they ARE the product of intelligent design...Well, except maybe for Fords. :-)
As to noticing similarities or differences being the function of the observer: Yes, but it's also the basis of the scientific method. Seeing things as they are and trying to figure out how they got that way. Cladistics, sedimentology, comparative anatomy - all require observation and comparison.
==I know I just pissed a lot of FReepers off, but that's my honest opinion.
That's ok, that's the price of progress. As Ayn Rand once said, "Judge, and prepare to be judged."
No, I'm saying that if you know the rock is 200 years old, as stated in the article, and you use a test that is known to be inaccurate on that age sample, of course you'll get bogus results.
You also validate that the specific aging system is not so reliable as many scientists would like you to believe.
From an AnswersInGenesis Article. They acknowledge the flips but still says that the system would continue to lose energy. Plus they say that records of reversals have been recorded requiring much less time than the evolutionist's
"But the major criticism of Barnes young-earth argument concerns evidence that the magnetic field has reversed many timesi.e. compasses would have pointed south instead of north. When grains of the common magnetic mineral magnetite in volcanic lava or ash flows cool below its Curie point (see side note) of 570°C (1060°F), the magnetic domains partly align themselves in the direction of the earths magnetic field at that time. Once the rock has fully cooled, the magnetites alignment is fixed. Thus we have a permanent record of the earths field through time.
"Although evolutionists have no good explanations for the reversals, they maintain that, because of them, the straightforward decay assumed by Dr Barnes is invalid. Also, their model requires at least thousands of years for a reversal. And with their dating assumptions, they believe that the reversals occur at intervals of millions of years, and point to an old earth.
"A force-field around the earth.
"The earths magnetism is running down. This world-wide phenomenon could not have been going on for more than a few thousand years, despite swapping direction many times. Evolutionary theories are not able to explain properly how the magnetism could sustain itself for billions of years.
"The nuclear physicist Dr Russell Humphreys believed that Dr Barnes had the right idea, and he also accepted that the reversals were real. He modified Barnes model to account for special effects of a liquid conductor, like the molten metal of the earths outer core. If the liquid flowed upwards (due to convectionhot fluids rise, cold fluids sink) this could sometimes make the field reverse quickly.5,6 Now, as discussed in Creation 19(3), 1997, Dr John Baumgardner proposes that the plunging of tectonic plates was a cause of the Genesis Flood (see online version). Dr Humphreys says these plates would have sharply cooled the outer parts of the core, driving the convection.7 This means that most of the reversals occurred in the Flood year, every week or two. And after the Flood, there would be large fluctuations due to residual motion. But the reversals and fluctuations could not halt the overall decay patternrather, the total field energy would decay even faster (see graph above).8
"This model also explains why the sun reverses its magnetic field every 11 years. The sun is a gigantic ball of hot, energetically moving, electrically conducting gas. Contrary to the dynamo model, the overall field energy of the sun is decreasing.
"Dr Humphreys also proposed a test for his model: magnetic reversals should be found in rocks known to have cooled in days or weeks. For example, in a thin lava flow, the outside would cool first, and record earths magnetic field in one direction; the inside would cool later, and record the field in another direction.
"Three years after this prediction, leading researchers Robert Coe and Michel Prévot found a thin lava layer that must have cooled within 15 days, and had 90° of reversal recorded continuously in it.9 And it was no flukeeight years later, they reported an even faster reversal.10 This was staggering news to them and the rest of the evolutionary community, but strong support for Humphreys model. (See also Dr Humphreys online article The Earths magnetic field is young.)
The earths magnetic field is not only a good navigational aid and a shield from space particles, it is powerful evidence against evolution and billions of years. The clear decay pattern shows the earth could not be older than about 10,000 years.
This 'model' has a flawed premise at its core and allows the man to find what he already decided would prove his premise while he ignores all the evidence that his model is not describing what IS in the geological evidence spanning far greater times past than his model is 'arranged' to support.
The only thing I'm validating is that the author of this article intentionally used a known invalid test to try to make his point.
You're not going to win any arguments doing that.
That's just it. A rock 200 years old, under the K-Ar assumptions should not have had any measurable Ar in it. The test should have failed because the lab shouldn't have been able to detect Ar. But the lab detected considerable Ar. Therefore instead of the lab saying that the result was invalid because of insufficient Ar, the lab dated the rock at an old age.
If the lab can date new rocks at an old age. There is no way to know whether any of the rocks that were dated at old ages, are new or old.
And that's why scientists abandoned K-Ar dating.
Often I wonder, where today are marine sediments being laid down? Wouldn't uniformitarianism require that layers of material that eventually would become limestone or sandstone be forming today, just as in the past?
And where may I read postulated descriptions of the erosion, transport and deposition condition that resulted in the marine sediment formations so familiarly evident to us today?
Google for river delta.
Can you elaborate on what the flawed premise is? Or provide me a link?
Because frankly, YEC's suspect the same thing of evo's.
Well, it's news to me that K-Ar dating has been abandoned.
K-Ar tests fail on young rock samples because measuring techniques don't have enough resolution to accurately determine the minute amounts of Argon present. Go out 100,000 to a couple of billion years and there's no problem.
However, in the case of this article, this is all irrelevent.
The author intentionally presented false information in an effort to make his point. That's all this is about.
The man set as his premise that if he could find a way to show the physical state of flips in a very short time span recorded in rock, then the much older rock specimens could not be old. That is not the way science works but it is the way people who try to manipulate scientific method do their mischief. If a pharmaceutical company used the same technique for 'discoverying' drugs for marketing, the starting goal would have nothing to do with treating symptoms and everything to do with cost analysis for developing a drug to treat a disease, any disease. The cost analysis would be driving the research not the disease or the treatment of the disease.
And they are. Erosion wears down mountains and washes away top soil. It travels downslope. Some eventually reaches the sea. Thats why the Mississippi needs to be dredged. It's why the Colorado tends to be brown (and why Lake Powell is filling in). Biotic mass also plays a role. Dead sea-critters and plants that aren't eaten by others sink to the bottom. For a non-marine example visit a local cemetary (one with headstones flush with the ground). If not properly tended the headstones will eventually sink from sight; not because of their weight, but because the grass and leaves of previous seasons have decayed into soil and raised the level of the ground. I've got the same problem in my back yard by the way. The sidewalk is now slightly lower than the surface of the yard, something that wasn't true 30 years ago.
I'm not really following your objection. His model says the flips happened very quickly. The evo's model says they occur slowly over thousands of years. He proposed a test of his hypothesis. And the test results show at a minimum that one or more flips have occurred very quickly.
Thus the evidence corroborates his theory while throwing the evo's slow flip theory into question. This appears to be valid science to me.
I don't know of any great general source since all formations are, by necessity, localized in nature. The best is simply to get a book on the geology of the area that interests you. A personal favorite of mine is THE COLORADO PLATEAU; A GEOLOGIC HISTORY by Donald L Baars. There's a lot out there but it's mostly dry as dust. The US Geological Society has published hundreds, if not thousands, of such studies but they're for professionals and are not recommended for casual entertainment. Baars is quite readable and the Colorado plateau is, geologically speaking, one of the most interesting spots one is likely to find. Even he can get a little tough to follow when he starts talking about lineaments though.
Geologists laughing their asses off placemarker.