Fielding Age-of-the-Earth Questions Evangelistically - By Mark Thompson

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