OLD EARTH VERSUS YOUNG EARTH

In this lecture, Danny Faulkner examines the evidences for both a young and old earth. Dr. Faulkner received his PhD in astronomy from Indiana University. He is distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina-Lancaster, where he taught astronomy and physics for over 26 years.

THE EARTH IS NOT BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD

Exploring the tension between biblical and secular history, this discussion delves into complex questions—Is the Earth thousands or billions of years old? What do genealogies reveal about the Bible’s timeline, and how do we reconcile this with the dates proposed by modern science? The conversation also touches on ancient Egyptian history, carbon dating, and why these topics shape our understanding of humanity’s origins and our place in history. Beyond these scientific and historical analyses lies a more profound question: why does any of it matter? With insights drawn from Scripture, the discussion unveils how beliefs about creation and the Fall directly influence the purpose and message of redemption. These foundational elements connect directly to the role of Jesus, the “last Adam,” who reconciles creation to God. Dr. Rob Carter weaves together science, theology, and personal experience, illustrating how a firm biblical foundation can transform both understanding and faith. He is one of my favourite expositors on creation and evolution.

LATEST INFORMATION ON CARBON DATING

What do scientists find when they check for carbon-14 in fossils, rocks, and artifacts? Well, in 2001, a creationist named Paul Giem published an article reporting that he had found carbon-14 in every fossil he tested! Not only that, but his results suggested that the fossils he studied could not have been buried more than 25,000 years ago. This obviously does not fit conventional time scales, but instead opens the door for a compelling argument in favor of young-earth creationism.

This discovery did not immediately refute an old earth or Darwinian evolution. Evolutionists have an answer to their carbon-14 problem. They suggest that more recent carbon has contaminated the fossils, making them appear younger than they are. Scientists have even developed methods to remove the carbon-14 “contaminants” to get the dates that fit their model. Paul Giem already anticipated this answer, but this has not stopped evolutionists from dismissing this carbon-14 as contamination.

In more recent years, creationists have done deeper research into carbon dating, with some attempting to demonstrate that the leftover carbon-14 is not contamination. Andrew Snelling, for instance, found carbon-14 in diamonds which —due to their resistance to erosion, water, or abrasion— cannot be contaminated. In this case, evolutionists suggest the equipment used was experiencing “background radiation”. Snelling argued that the diamonds contained varying amounts of carbon-14, even when detected by the same machine. This rules out flaws in the equipment as an explanation.   

Creationists are not done with radiocarbon dating. Dr. Andrew Snelling and others are attempting to calibrate carbon dating to fit a young-earth model. When carbon dating is used, it yields dates that can reach 40,000 years of age. Why? Because an underlying assumption of carbon dating is that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has not changed drastically in the past. This is linked to uniformitarianism, the conventional theory that things today are the same as they have always been. From a creationist perspective, however, this is not the case. The worldwide flood of Noah would have dramatically reduced carbon in the atmosphere. Assuming a dramatic carbon “reset” about 4,400 years ago, followed by a gradual restoration of carbon leading up to today, creationists can (hopefully) recalibrate carbon dating to yield dates that are accurate from a young-earth perspective.

For now, however, we need not fear the older dates yielded by carbon dating. We can even trust that conventional carbon dates, while not accurate in themselves, do reflect correct chronology. In other words, an artifact dated 20,000 years old is older than an artifact dated 10,000 years old, even if those dates are not quite accurate. Thus, creationists can infer data from carbon dating even without “fixing” the dates to fit the young Earth model.

Conventional archaeologists, evolutionists, and geologists cite carbon dating as an accurate dating technique. While the technique itself is valid, there is reason to believe the dates are miscalculated. Many creationists reject carbon dating as a whole because it seemingly yields ages older than 10,000 years. Just like carbon dating itself, both views of carbon dating need recalibration. Carbon dating is a sound method that will yield different dates depending on what assumptions are fed into it. Creation researchers have yet to perfect these calibrations, but the presence of carbon-14 in artifacts is encouraging evidence that the earth is not millions of years old.

The discussion of carbon dating’s role in the age of the Earth is not over. Creationists will work to fit carbon dating into their model, while conventional scientists will continue to accept carbon dating results. Is everyone still wrong? Well, yes. But perhaps “wrong” is too harsh a word. A more accurate–and gentle–description could be “in need of some recalibration.”

THE BIBLE TEACHES SATAN RULES THIS EARTH FOR 6000 YEARS AND JESUS RULES FOR 1000 YEARS.

Great message from Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. Make sure you visit their website http://www.answersingenesis.org. He omits what is next for this planet hence my addendum.

In an attempt to accept evolutionary ideas about the age of the earth (millions of years), many Christians try to add long ages somewhere into Genesis. Sometimes Christians will argue that the days of creation were not literal 24-hour days, that there was a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, or that Genesis is just poetry. But any attempt to put millions of years into Genesis puts millions of years of death, suffering, and disease before sin—and that’s a big problem!

The Bible teaches that God’s original creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31) and that death is the consequence of Adam’s sin (Genesis 2:17). Death did not exist in creation until after Adam’s sin.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.Romans 5:12

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.1 Corinthians 15:21–22

Although those passages refer specifically to human death, they are also discussing death in general. Other passages like Romans 8:22 make it clear that the whole world is groaning because of sin, and this includes the animal world. Taking Scripture with Scripture, it’s obvious there was no death, disease, or suffering of human or animal (nephesh) life before sin.

This is a big problem for those who believe in millions of years because those long ages supposedly come from the rock layers and fossils. Now, fossils are, of course, dead things, so if those rock layers are millions of years old, there’s been millions of years of death before Adam and Eve. And not just death, but also, millions of years of diseases and suffering, animal carnivory (but in God’s original creation everything was vegetarian, see Genesis 1:29–30), and thorns and thistles (a consequence of sin, Genesis 3:18).

Millions of years is incompatible with the Bible’s teaching about death!

Death is not a natural part of creation; it’s not something that has existed for millions of years—it’s an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), an intruder into God’s once “very good” creation.

As Christians, we cannot accept millions of years and remain faithful to the plain meaning of Scripture. So how old is the earth? Well, God created everything in six days, and then Genesis 5 and 11 give us detailed genealogies that allow us to determine how many years passed between Adam and Abraham (about 2,000 years). We know about 2,000 years passed between Abraham and Jesus, and then 2,000 more years gets us from Christ to us today. So, starting with the Bible’s history, the universe, earth, and life is only about 6,000 years old.

Yes, we live on a young earth impacted by death because of sin. But someday Jesus will return and create a new heavens and a new earth where death and suffering will be done away with and everyone who has placed their faith and trust in Jesus will live with him forever.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

A great message from Ken Ham except he left out the 1000 years Jesus will rule over the nations on this Earth with some, if not all of the glorified Saints. We have had 6000 years of Satan’s dominion over the Earth, next is Jesus’ Millennial Kingdom, and only then will this Earth be destroyed. The second resurrection of all of the dead will take place followed by Jesus’ White Throne judgement. It is only after the White Throne judgement that John sees the new Heaven and new Earth.

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened… Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.Revelation 20:11-12

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” Revelation 21:1-3

AGE OF THE EARTH

This is such an important topic as a Cosmos that is billions of years old undermines the authority of God’s Word. For me now, fulfilled prophecy, just of Jesus first coming to earth is sufficient proof of the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Nevertheless, I did pharmacy at Sydney University and evolution was the stumbling block for me to doubt the Scriptures. It was not until the age of 46 that I attended a Creation Ministries weekend conference that I realised that evolution does not explain the origin of you and me and the Cosmos. I was General Manager of Abbott Laboratories Hospital Products Division at the time and the only thing that got me along to the conference was Professor John Rendle-Short who at the time was Foundation Professor and Head of the Department of Child Health at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. was on the program. He was also Chairman of Creation Ministries. I knew Prof. Rendle-Short as he was doing work for the Paediatric Division of Abbott Laboratories. I admired the man and if he was talking about creation versus evolution I wanted to hear what he had to say. Well! I came away from that conference annoyed with myself and our educational establishment for believing such nonsense. There is no scientific plausible mechanism that can explain how we go from “goo to you”. Natural selection only works with what is already there it does not create anything new and mutations all go in the wrong direction they lose information. They do not generate complex new information that is required for the functioning of anything, let alone a human brain that can create all of the technology we have today.

Whilst there are billions of dead things buried catastrophically all over the world, because the world had excepted Lyle’s and Darwin’s slow gradual change (uniformitarianism) and evolution which need billions of years, the worldwide flood of Noah’s day had been put into the myths and fables bin.

What about today with all the technology that we have is the Earth really 4.5 billion years old? How can we measure age with certainty? What about radiometric dating methods—don’t they prove millions and billions of years? Does the age of the Earth even matter? Dr Mark Harwood discusses these topics and more, focusing especially on why an old Earth sits in conflict with the Bible, while also providing evidence for a younger age of the Earth.

Go to http://www.creation.com/age for 101 documents of evidence for a young earth


⏳ TIMESTAMPS ⌛ 0:00 Introduction 0:48 Mark’s story: How origins affected his faith (An old Earth undermines the Gospel narrative) 11:11 How do we determine the age of something? (You can’t measure age!) 13:32 The dripping tap example (Dating methods rely on assumptions!) 16:17 Radiometric dates aren’t definitive – assumptions rule 19:51 The importance of witness testimony 23:36 The importance of worldview / starting assumptions 26:24 So, how old is the Earth? 28:58 Evidence from radiometric dating / rocks 36:04 Evidence from sedimentation / erosion 37:41 Evidence from our solar system 40:09 Evidence from Earth’s population 41:43 Evidence from carbon-14 in fossils 43:28 Summary: You can’t measure age! (Everything depends on your assumptions!) 46:29 An old Earth calls God’s character into question 48:47 An old Earth calls the inerrancy of Scripture into question 50:38 Conclusion: Three reasons the age of the Earth matters to a Christian

DINOSAURS REFUTE MILLIONS OF YEARS

What’s the big deal with “dinosaur soft tissue”?

It is not just dinosaur soft tissue, either, but the presence of detectable proteins such as collagen, hemoglobin, osteocalcin, actin, and tubulin that they must account for. These are complex molecules that continually tend to break down to simpler ones. If the world is billions of years old these cannot be there.

Not only that but in many cases, there are fine details of the bone matrix, with microscopically intact-looking bone cells (osteocytes) showing incredible detail. Palaeontologist, Dr. Mary Schweitzer has even recovered fragments of the even more fragile and complex molecule, DNA. This has been extracted from the bone cells with markers indicating its source such that it is extremely likely to be dinosaur DNA.

Others have reported the fast-decaying carbon-14 from dino bones—not a single atom should be left after 1 million years.

Go to http://www.creation.com for more evidence of a young earth from Ph.D. scientists.

MORE EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG EARTH

The oceans show us a young earth

Another informative article by Paul Price from Creation Ministries (CMI) check out their website http://www.creation.com

Long ages of billions of years is a very widespread belief today. 

The ‘millions and then billions of years’ idea first came from geology—from the rock layers. More precisely, from the interpretation that these layers supposedly formed by the same slow and gradual processes we see happening today, at more or less the same rates. This is the belief system called uniformitarianism. It was not the result of scientific evidence, but was imposed upon the evidence.

This belief system a priori rules out the biblical Flood as a possible explanation. Conversely, the Flood would have performed all that geological work shown in the rocks in a short time, rather than billions of years. Of course, the waters of that Flood ended up in today’s seas. Just by standing on the shoreline, we can get a sense of the vastness of God’s power in creating this planet and all the water on it, as well as the awesome scope of God’s judgment in the Flood. But we can learn a great deal more from those majestic waves; there are many lines of evidence from the oceans that refute the idea of billions of years and resoundingly affirm biblical history.

The oceans present us with another way of ‘dating’, because we can measure the rates of various processes with respect to the oceans. And using the long-ager’s own belief system of uniformitarianism, we get ‘maximum ages’ that do not square with the secular long-age paradigm. They do not, however, present any problem for the biblical timeline of history. Thus, uniformitarianism is self-refuting with respect to the scientific evidence we have available.

beach
Just by standing on the shoreline, we can get a sense of the vastness of God’s power in creating this planet and all the water on it, as well as the awesome scope of God’s judgment in the Flood.

Ocean salt

The salinity of our oceans can give us a ‘clock’ of sorts, because we are able to estimate the amount of salt entering our oceans as well as the amount that leaves. It turns out that much more is entering than leaving, so the oceans are getting saltier over time. So let’s use this as a uniformitarian ‘clock’ by assuming the processes have stayed much the same. Starting with fresh water, how long would it take for the oceans to become as salty as they are?

A study by creation scientists Steve Austin and Russell Humphreys, using the most conservative numbers available, gave an absolute upper limit (not actual age!), of 62 million years.1 While this may seem like a long time, it is actually far too low a number to accommodate the secular age for the ocean of 3.8 billion years.2 And note that the oceans would have started out with some salt in them, plus a stupendous amount of salt and other minerals would have been added during the Flood from erosion and volcanism. The only ‘out’ for long-agers is to assume that the rates have dramatically changed—which undermines the whole idea of uniformitarianism!

Where is all the seafloor sediment?

On average, the depth of sediment on the ocean floor is less than 400 metres (about 1,300 feet), with some areas of the ocean floor having no mud at all. We would not expect to find this if the oceans were extremely old. We can also estimate the maximum rate at which subduction (one crustal plate gradually being thrust under another) could be pulling sediment back into the crust. Assuming that this rate has always been the same (again, uniformitarianism against itself), it is far too slow to account for this result; not enough seafloor mud is getting eliminated by this process. In fact, at the present rate, all the sediment would have been accumulated in under 12 million years.5 And once more, the dramatic erosive power of a year-long global Flood means that it would have actually happened much more quickly even than that.

Accumulating nickel

According to a UK environmental health guideline, concentrations higher than 30 parts per billion are toxic for marine life—yet that concentration would have already been reached in just 1,076,000 years at current rates of input! Just as for salt, nickel is also entering our oceans far too quickly for the old-earth timeline of history.4

Gigantic submarine canyons

All over the world, we find examples of huge canyons offshore, some greater even than Grand Canyon, which are located in deep water and run perpendicular to the coastline. Uniformitarian geologists are at a loss, admitting that there are currently no widely accepted theories capable of explaining them. However, looking at these features from the perspective of a young earth and Noah’s Flood makes perfect sense. They were carved by ‘channelized flow’ coming off the continents in the recessive stage of the Flood. That is why they are often found seawards of valleys on the land. The same rapid channelized flow that carved the valley on land also carved the submarine valley offshore.

Summary

The oceans do not show the appearance of age we would expect if they were really billions of years old. This is consistent with the Bible; the oceans of today began on Day 1 of Creation Week, some 6,000 years ago, covering the earth.

Today’s oceans contain more than enough water to flood the whole earth. If we were to flatten out all the current unevenness on the land and seafloor, the water present would cover the whole earth nearly 3 km (2 miles) deep! Tectonic movements of the earth’s crustal plates at the onset of the Flood would account for the water flooding the land.

After the Flood, as Psalm 104:8 seems to indicate, “the mountains rose, the valleys sank down”, giving us the very uneven surface of the planet we now inhabit. Even Mount Everest, one of the planet’s tallest peaks, would have been uplifted at the closing stages of the Flood, coming into being at that time as a brand-new feature. (It is measured to be still rising, though much more slowly, today.) So no wonder it has limestone with marine fossils on its summit. All this answers the age-old questions of ‘Where did all that water come from?’ ‘Was there enough to cover the earth?’, and, ‘Where did it all go?’

As we’ve seen, our oceans not only contain many evidences that confirm the Bible’s history, but they still contain the very same waters that inundated the planet long ago – the very same waters that carried Noah’s Ark – the very same waters God used to judge a rebellious mankind.

BIBLICAL VIEW OF THE ROCKS

THE GEOLOGY TRANSFORMATION TOOL – A new way of looking at your world by Tas Walker

Like the recent article Compelling Evidence for a Young Earth this article by Tas Walker is taken from the latest Creation Magazine http://www.creation.com.

Perhaps you have seen a report in the media about a rock outcrop ‘800 million years old’ and wondered how that fits with the history of the Bible. One confronts the same puzzle when reading about a fossil dinosaur that lived in ‘Jurassic’ times. Or we may visit a tourist site with a sign that speaks about a volcano forming ‘25 million years ago’.

If you would like to see your world from a biblical perspective, the simple diagram in figure 1 is what you are looking for. It allows you to work out a first, ballpark understanding of how each situation you encounter relates to the true history of the universe, that is, to the history presented in the Bible.

A Chart of Geological transformation tool
Diagram 1: Geologic Column adapted to show Noah’s Flood sequence

The right side of the diagram has three vertical arrows, which show how these rocks relate to biblical history. The first arrow (green) indicates which rocks formed in the first 150 days of Noah’s Flood as the floodwaters were rising. The second arrow (blue) indicates which rocks formed in the last 220 days of Noah’s Flood as the waters were falling and the continents were rising. The third arrow (yellow) indicates which rocks have formed in the 4,500 years since the Flood ended.

You will notice at the top of the diagram that the biblical arrows overlap, and that at the bottom the green arrow is shown dotted. This is to indicate that there is uncertainty in these areas. The main reason for the uncertainty is that there is not a one-to-one relationship between the rocks on the geological column and biblical history. That is because uniformitarian geologists place the rocks into the geological column using criteria that assume Noah’s Flood never happened. However, the rocks must be understood using criteria based on biblical history, which includes the Creation and Flood events.

When we do examine the geology using biblical criteria, we discover that the geological column provides a general Flood order. However, there are many exceptions and the relationship is highly non-linear. As illustrated in figure 1, most rocks (the Precambrian, Paleozoic, and Mesozoic) formed as the floodwaters were rising on the earth. These are generally of very large scale, both in thickness and geographical extent. The second part of the Flood, when the waters were receding as the continents uplifted, mainly involved huge erosion on the continents. The receding floodwaters deposited the eroded material at the continental margins. Local deposits did occur on the continents but very late in that period, after most of the water had gone.

Easy to use

The figure is easy to use. All that is required is to locate on figure 1 the ‘date’ in millions of years for your example. Then you simply check where it sits on the arrows of biblical history. Let’s look at the examples mentioned above.

For the rock outcrop 800 million years old we see on figure 1 that it fits between the numbers 541 and 2500. To the left, on the column this corresponds to the ‘Proterozoic’ as well as the ‘Precambrian’. To the right, on the biblical interpretation, this corresponds to the period when the waters of Noah’s Flood were rising, and quite early in this period. Given that the waters of Noah’s Flood were rising for 150 days, 800 million years would correspond to the first month or two of the Flood, which occurred some 4,500 years ago.

For the fossil dinosaur that lived in the ‘Jurassic’, we see that this fits between 145 and 201 million years ago. It is part of the groupings called the ‘Mesozoic’ and the ‘Phanerozoic’. On the biblical interpretation to the right we can see that this also corresponds to the time when the waters of Noah’s Flood were rising, but later than the rock described in the previous example. Its position on the arrow indicates that this would have been as the waters were approaching their peak, perhaps a month before that, which would be about four months after the Flood began, 4,500 years ago.

For the volcano ‘25 million years’ ago, we see that it corresponds to the ‘Oligocene’, which is part of the ‘Paleogene’, the ‘Tertiary’, the ‘Cenozoic’, and the ‘Phanerozoic’. On the biblical interpretation to the right we can see that this corresponds to the 220-day (approx. 7-month) period when the waters of Noah’s Flood were falling. This was as the continents were being uplifted, causing the floodwaters to flow off the land into the expanding oceans. This would have been a few months into that period after the waters peaked, which would put this some 8 months or more after Noah’s Flood began, 4,500 years ago.

NOAH’S FLOOD EXPLAINS ICE AGE

Just because uniformitarian scientists accept there was an Ice Age, or many ice ages, does not mean they can explain its origin. They realize that an ice age requires much cooler summers, much more snow, and a climate change that persists for hundreds of years.

heat-trapped
 Heat trapped in the oceans after the Flood promoted high evaporation, which precipitated as snow and sleet on the continents. Ice continued to build up on the land for hundreds of years until the oceans cooled. This lessened the evaporation and so the ice sheets on the land melted back.

What would cause these factors to come together? It has been repeatedly shown that the disruption caused by the global Flood would lead naturally to this confluence.4 However, those who reject the Flood continue to extrapolate present processes millions of years into the past, processes such as climate change and variations in Earth’s orbital geometry. Over the years more than 60 theories have been proposed. Secular Ice Age expert J.K. Charlesworth said about Ice Age theories: “Pleistocene [Ice Age] phenomena have produced an absolute riot of theories ranging ‘from the remotely possible to the mutually contradictory and the palpably inadequate.”5

That was back in 1957, however, and many people believe we have made great progress since then. However, the cause of the Ice Age still is unknown, as ice age expert David Alt stated: “Although theories abound, no one really knows what causes ice ages.”6

One of the main challenges for the secular model is that colder air is also drier air. Even if they discover a cooling mechanism, the air would be too dry for enough snow to fall for an ice age. As an example, if the average summer temperature of Canada were to fall 120C (220F), the air would become 60% drier.7 But this is not a problem for the biblical model because the warm waters just after the Flood would lead to large amounts of evaporation and precipitation.

When secular scientists run their computer models to explore the Ice Age, they find it difficult for any of their models to develop an ice age. But when they force their models to decrease the amount of sunshine by 6%, snow and ice begins to build up. However, the snow and ice sometimes grows over areas that have never been glaciated, such as Tibet and the lowlands of the far north: “We now have glaciation [in their climate model], but mainly outside the area where it existed during the last ice age.”13 In stark contrast, the biblical model easily explains the lack of glaciation in these lowlands. The oceans were warm at the beginning of the Ice Age, so the land near them was too warm for glaciation, except in the high mountains.

Because secular Ice Age models ignore the effects of Noah’s Flood, they have numerous difficulties, only some of which are mentioned here. These models are unable to explain either the distribution of large ice sheets or how they developed, demonstrating that their foundational assumptions—uniformitarianism and millions of years—are flawed. However, the biblical post-Flood model provides very plausible explanations and mechanisms for the various Ice Age phenomena.

Noah’s worldwide flood also provides the explanation for dead things buried all over the world ie. the fossils, fossil fuels – oil and coal. As a result, it provides the right answer to the age of the earth. It is thousands not billions of years old. It also demonstrates God does control events on His planet and that He judged and destroyed a lawless humanity just 4000 years ago (all but eight people).

God’s word reveals that in the “last days” before Jesus returns the world will ridicule those that believe Noah’s Flood was a real event when God judged the world. Scripture reveals Jesus will return to judge the nations and He will rule and reign with the resurrected saints on this earth for 1000 years. At the end of His Millennial reign this fallen earth will be destroyed by fire. This immediately precedes the White Throne judgement of the ungodly. God then creates a new heaven and a new earth where the saints will live on for eternity. The ungodly end up in the Lake of Fire which is the second death.

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,  And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.  For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 2 Peter 3:3-7.

4. Oard, M.J., What caused the Ice Age? Creation 36(3):52–55, 2014; creation.com/ice-age-cause.  5. Charlesworth, J.K., The Quaternary Era, Edward Arnold, London, UK, p. 1,532, 1957.  6. Alt, D., Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods, Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, MT, p. 180, 2001.

This article by Michael Oard was taken from Creation Magazine 36 (3) pages 52-55, July 2014  http://www.creation.com

EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG WORLD

As I mentioned in my post, “Age of the World is a Critical Issue for Understanding the Bible”, Dr. Humphreys reveals in his book Evidence for a Young World that there is a great deal of evidence for the short timescale given in the Bible: galaxies wind themselves up too fast, comets disintegrate too quickly, not enough mud on the seafloor, not enough sodium in the sea, the earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast, biological materials (found in dinosaur bones) decay too fast, too much helium in minerals, and too much carbon -14 in deep geologic strata.

Last post we looked at the earths magnetic field and the fact it is decaying too fast for the world’s history to be more than thousands of years, certainly not billions.

Dr. Humphreys was part of a very important RATE project (Radioisotopes and the age of the Earth). It involved eleven Ph.D. scientists pictured below. This helped answer a major old-earth argument about radiometric-dating.

image of people
Front row: John Bamgardner, Larry Vardiman, Russell Humphreys, Gene Chaffin, Middle row: Andrew Snelling, Steve Austin, Don DeYoung, Back row: John Morris, Ken Cumming, Bill Hoesch, Steven Boyd.

Dr Humphreys work concerned small, hard mineral crystals called zircons, which often contain radioactive elements. As these decay, they produce helium. Helium leaks out quickly due to its very small hard atoms. The hotter the material the faster it leaks out. Dr Humphreys measured amounts of helium in zircons, and compared it to the amount expected from the decay and helium leakage measured in the laboratory.

Zircon crystals from a borehole in New Mexico have a helium leakage of about 6000 years. In contrast the uranium-lead age of the crystals is about 1.5 billion years. The uranium-lead age of course assumes that the decay rate is the same slow rate we measure today.

The Bible reveals that God created a mature world. Hence the Rate Team believes the decay rate initially was speeded up, also the catastrophic plate tectonic upheaval at Noah’s Flood would have had an effect on the decay rate. It cannot be assumed that no daughter elements existed at the beginning and the decay rate was uniform.

There is a great deal of evidence for a young world that supports the Bible’s history of around 6000 years, certainly not billions of years.

The book and video, Evidence for a Young World are available from http://www.creation.com.