What follows is a guest-post from Mark Thompson. I really enjoyed it and I trust you will as well.
Fielding Age-of-the-Earth
Questions Evangelistically
Anyone who has gone through the public education
system or listened to the national media cover what might be called “origins
science” has been inundated with the idea that the earth is billions of years
old. Individuals whom the Spirit is
leading to consider the claims of Christianity may have legitimate questions
stemming from the assertions of evolution.
In answering their questions, we must always emphasize that when the
scientific facts are seen in their proper light they will always agree with the
Bible because the Bible is the ultimate source of truth. Scientific evidences cannot be used to
“prove” the Bible to an unbeliever because evidences may well change over time
and, more importantly, fallen men consistently interpret evidences in light of
their presuppositions (unproven starting assumptions, such as naturalism).
This said, I do believe it is appropriate and
indeed glorifying to God to show how creation testifies to His infinite wisdom
and might (Rom.1:18-22). But the goal of
our Christian witness always needs to be a respectful but authoritative
presentation of the gospel (1 Cor.2:1-5).
Do not give up the bedrock of God’s Word to stand on the shifting sands
of popular scientific opinion. The
following was my response to an age-of-the-earth question from a friend with
whom I have already shared the gospel.
As disciples of Christ, we need to consistently elevate the authority of
His Word in interpreting all of life and reality.
Mark, how many years ago did Adam & Eve arrive on earth?
3-4-5-6-7 Thousand years ago?
Hey my
friend!
It’s good
to hear from you! Have you seen the
planetary tango in the west? Friday
night I was able to put all three into a 5 degree binocular field of view. It was a stunning sight!
Life has
been a little crazy recently with our youngest graduating from High School
(though he took his last two years at Edison Community College) and preparing for his
open house this last Sunday. There is
nothing like having a whole lot of people over to motivate you to get those
neglected projects completed!
As to the
date of the first couple, I agree with many conservative Bible scholars who
place their creation and that of the earth and cosmos a little over 6,000 years
ago based on what is called a “strict” reading of the Bible’s genealogies and a
normal reading of Genesis 1 and 2. Some
conservative scholars would allow for the possibility of missing generations in
the genealogies (the term “father” could possibly mean “ancestor”, such as in
our referencing “the founding fathers” or “our forefathers”). They might push the beginning back as far as
10,000 years or so.
Obviously
God was the only one who was there in the beginning and so is the only One who
could accurately tell us when that beginning was or what it was like. As the Lord asked Job, “Where were you when I
laid the foundations of the earth? Tell
Me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:4).
I do believe that there is a large volume of scientific evidence that
would support the Bible’s chronological framework but I doubt whether you would
ever hear it mentioned, let alone be given a fair hearing in secular
publications.
Part of
the problem lies in the fact that none of us is unbiased. We all look at facts with certain
assumptions. My assumption is that an infinitely wise Creator, who was able to
design such incredibly complicated things as DNA, was able to infallibly
communicate truth about human origins and all other areas He deems important for
humans to function as He designed us. There are three questions concerning any
“clocks” that we might look to in nature that are particularly important: 1)
what were the starting conditions, 2) has the rate of change been consistent
over time or has there been factors that may have caused that rate to vary and,
3) has there been any “contamination” from outside? These three assumptions play heavily in
interpreting various radiometric clocks, which give dramatically varying ages
for rocks.
Interestingly
enough, many geologists are resorting to catastrophes to explain the geological
features of the earth and not gradual, uniform change. This is much more in keeping with what would
result from a worldwide flood as detailed in Genesis 6-8. The theory of geologic uniformitarianism and
the denial of the Genesis flood were predicted to be prevalent in the end times
by Peter when he penned 2 Peter 3:3-7.
If you are
really interested in checking out scientific evidences for a young earth, I
would suggest exploring material published or offered for free online by Answers
in Genesis or the Creation Research Institute. I have a good bit of fascinating material by
AIG. Let me briefly mention several of
the evidences that they detail in an article from their Answers magazine
(see, www.answersmagazine.com/go/10evidences):
1) Very Little Sediment on the Seafloor. If Sediments have been accumulating on the
seafloor for 3 billion years, the seafloor should be choked with sediments many
miles deep. Yet the average thickness
globally is less than 1300 feet. This
amount of sediment is easily explained by water draining off the continents
towards the end of the Biblical flood but certainly not by evolutionary models.
2) Bent Rock Layers. In many mountainous areas, rock layers
thousands of feet thick have been bent and folded without fracturing. How could that have possibly happened if
layers were laid down separately over hundreds of millions of years and already
hardened? Hardened rock layers,
including sedimentary layers, are very brittle (think about hardened
cement). Fossil-bearing layers in places
like the Grand
Canyon
were laid down quickly and folded while still wet and, hence, are not
fractured!
3) Soft Tissue in Fossils. Bone slices from the fossilized thigh bone of
a Tyrannosaurus Rex recently found by Dr. Mary Schweitzer in Montana and reported in Scientific America (Dec. 2010, pp.
62-69) contain blood vessels with red blood cells and nuclei along with
specialized lining cells. The bone
marrow contained flexible tissue, proteins and complex molecules. There is no known way to explain these
features from a specimen a supposed 68 million years old, but it has repeatedly
been demonstrated by many studies of Egyptian mummies and other humans
historically dated to more than 4,000 years old.
4) The Faint Sun Paradox. Evidence
supports astronomer’s belief that the sun’s power comes from the fusion of
hydrogen into helium. As the hydrogen
fused, it should change the composition of the sun’s core, gradually increasing
the sun’s temperature. If true, this
means that the earth was colder in the past.
Indeed, it should have been below freezing 3.5 billion years ago when
life supposedly evolved. Evolutionists
acknowledge that there is no evidence of this in the geologic record and even
call this the “faint young sun paradox”.
Obviously, this is not a problem if the solar system is only thousands
of years old.
5) Rapidly Decaying Magnetic Field. The earth is surrounded by a magnetic field
that protects living things from solar radiation. Without it, life could not exist. The magnetic field around the earth has been
measured since 1845 and consistently found to be wearing down at a rate that
testifies that the earth could not be older than 20,000 years old. “Reliable, accurate, published geological
field data have emphatically confirmed the young-earth model” (Dr. Andrew
Snelling).
6) Helium in Radioactive Rocks. Radioactive elements in rocks produce a lot
of helium as they decay; and this gas quickly escapes into the atmosphere,
especially when the rocks are hot. Yet
radioactive rocks in the earth’s crust contain a lot of helium. The only possible explanation is that the
helium hasn’t had enough time to escape.
Rocks mined in New Mexico show an average diffusion
age of only 6,000 years (+/- 2,000 yrs.).
7) Carbon-14 in Fossils, Coal, and Diamonds.
Carbon-14 (Radiocarbon) is a radioactive form of carbon that scientists use to
attempt to date fossils. Because its
decay half-life is a mere 5,730 years none is expected to remain in fossils
after only a few hundred thousand years.
Yet carbon-14 has been detected in “ancient” fossils – supposedly up to
hundreds of millions of years old- ever since the earliest days of radiocarbon
dating. Diamonds supposedly 1 to 3
billion years old yield carbon-14 ages of only 55,000 years. (This assumes that the earth’s magnetic field
was not stronger in the past, which would have protected the atmosphere from
solar radiation and reduced the radiocarbon production. Hence, the amount of radiocarbon to begin
with in every creature was less and their deaths occurred much more recently
than reported.)
8) Short-lived Comets. (My friend), as you know, comets have little
mass and each close encounter with the sun greatly reduces the comet’s
size. Given that the loss rates are well
known, it is easy to calculate the absolute maximum age of comets, which is
only a few million years (not billions).
Kuiper Belt objects do not correspond to the composition or size of
comets and astronomer Carl Sagan said that there was not a shred of evidence
for the Oort cloud. This assessment has
not changed since his death in the 80’s.
The Oort cloud was hypothesized without any evidence simply to cover
this huge evolutionary problem.
9) Very Little Sea Salt. If the world’s oceans have been around for 3
billion years, they should be filled with vastly more salt than they are
today. Every year, the continents,
atmosphere, and seafloor add 458 million tons of salt into the oceans but only
122 million tons (27%) is removed. At
this rate, today’s saltiness would be reached in 42 million years just from
runoff. Surely, God created the salty
ocean for sea creatures He created on day 5 of Creation, and the Flood quickly
added more salt.
10) DNA in “Ancient” Bacteria. In 2000 scientists claimed to “resurrect”
bacteria discovered in a salt crystal conventionally dated at 250 million years
old. They were shocked to find that the
“ancient” bacteria were very similar to modern bacteria. If the modern bacteria were the result of 250
million years of evolution, the DNA should be very different from the “Lazarus”
bacteria based on known mutation rates.
Because DNA normally breaks down quickly even in ideal circumstances,
they were at a loss to explain DNA intact after a supposed 250 million
years!
11) The Recession of the Moon. Currently the moon is moving outward from the
earth because of the gravitational tidal force between the earth and moon. The present rate is 3.82 cm/yr but would have
been much greater in the past (the relationship is highly non-linear –
gravitational attraction is governed by an inverse square law – if you cut the
distance in half the attraction is 4 times as great; if you make the distance
1/3, the attraction is 9 times as much!)
If we extrapolate backward, gravity theory shows the moon in direct
contact with the earth about 1.55 billion years ago. The Roche limit shows that the moon would fragment
into Saturn-like rings long before this time as the earth’s gravity force would
overcome the moon’s own cohesive force.
However,
evolutionists say that life originated on the earth 3.5 billion years ago. There are many ways in which the moon’s
precise distance, inclination, orbit elongation, mass, etc. make life possible
here on earth that would be drastically changed if the moon has been receding
for millions or billions of years. But,
if the earth is only about 6,000 years old, the moon would have only been about
755 feet closer. Clearly this is no
problem for the young-earth creation position.
(My
friend), I believe that it is much easier to see design and special creation in
the universe as well as the human body than it is to see random chance and
purposelessness. Every single paragraph
of a 2000 page Biology textbook screams “purpose, design, function” for
everything it describes. There is no
purposelessness or randomness to all this intricacy that boggles the human
mind. What is amazing is that the Lord
has given us the capacity to “search out His ways” through the disciplines of
science which confirm His Word! As the
Psalmist said to the Lord, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and
wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well”
(Ps.139:14).
This same
God is who spoke everything into existence out of nothing (Heb.11:3 –this is
the same thing that Big-bang cosmologists believe only without an Intelligent
Designer), inerrantly communicated His will in written form, sent His Son to
take on human flesh to die for the sins of rebellious creatures, and is able to
receive a repentant sinner into the presence of His resurrected Son for
eternity (Rom.10:9-10). Apart from this
God, nothing makes sense and surely has no meaning.
Thanks
much for your question. I appreciate and
enjoy your inquisitiveness!
Blessings,
Mark
