How Old is the Earth?
by Mitch Cervinka


CHAPTER THREE
Common Arguments for an Old Earth

Arguments for an old earth are typically based on the uniformitarian assumption that the past processes that shaped our planet proceeded at the same rate as observed today.  Geological processes such as erosion, sedimentation and cave formations typically proceed at a slow rate.  Notable exceptions are floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but these are usually localized.  Uniformitarianism is the dogmatic denial that global, earth-changing catastrophes have occurred in the past.

Since advocates of an old earth begin with uniformitarian assumptions, it is no surprise that they arrive at exaggerated ages for rocks, canyons, caves and other features of the earth.  But uniformitarianism is an unproven assumption—merely an opinion—and not an established scientific fact. As we shall see, Biblical catastrophism provides a much better explanatory framework for evidence we find in nature.
 

Rock layers and fossils.

One of the earliest arguments given for an old earth is the claim that it must have taken hundreds of thousands of years (or longer) to lay down the various rock layers.  This argument is based on the assumption that successive rock layers were laid down by successive periods of submersion and uplift, separated in time by thousands of years. Since there are some places where tens of thousands of rock layers are found stacked one atop the other, it is claimed that it must have taken millions of years to lay down the entire rock formation.

Scientific evidence demonstrates that this argument is not sound.  Scientists have observed numerous cases where hundreds or thousands of layers can be formed in a single geologic event.  For example, when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, it caused a mudflow that blocked the North Fork of the Toutle River. When the river finally overflowed the blockage, it carved a 100-foot deep canyon through the mudflow, revealing layered sediment.  One such deposit was 25 feet thick, comprised of thousands of layers of sediment, and this deposit formed in just 3 hours! The canyon itself was formed in a day's time.[1]

If the earth's rock layers had been formed by cyclic processes of uplift and submersion, we would expect to find that the layers deposited by submersion would then become permeated with gullies, canyons and tree roots during the periods of uplift when they were exposed to weathering and vegetation.  These sculpted features should be retained in the rock layers, as new sediment is laid down on top of the formerly exposed rock.  Instead, we typically find layer upon layer of parallel, unbroken rock with none of the erosional features one would expect to see with rock that had been exposed for a prolonged period of time.

The presence of "ephemeral markings", such as ripple marks, raindrop marks and animal tracks at rock layer boundaries argues for rapid burial, since exposure to weather would quickly erode these features.[2]  These considerations argue against the cyclical uplift-submersion theory and support the idea that the rock layers were deposited in a single, major flood event.

Fossils themselves display evidence of rapid deposition over a relatively short period of time.  If it had taken thousands of years to bury the organism or its skeleton, then most of the skeleton would have deteriorated before it could become fossilized.  Yet most fossils are complete and well-defined, as if the organism was fully buried in a short period of time.

An especially illuminating example of this is "polystrate trees"—fossilized trees extending through several layers of rock—which have been found in the United States, Canada, Germany, England and France.[3]  This should not be possible if any significant amount of time had passed between the deposition of the rock layers—the trees would have decomposed in a matter of months or years.

Scientists even find soft tissue, such as blood vessels, blood cells, proteins, cartilage and DNA, in the fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures that allegedly became extinct millions of years ago.[4]   Such tissues disintegrate quickly over time, proving that the fossils are not nearly as old as is commonly believed.

We need to ask whether such evidence is best explained by the old-earth view, or the biblical young-earth view.  If the Bible is correct in describing a worldwide flood in the days of Noah, then we would expect to find millions of dead things, buried in rock laid down by water, all over the earth—which is what we do find.  Likewise, we would not be surprised to find trees that extend across multiple layers of rock, or soft tissues that have not fully decomposed in the 4300 years since the flood.  These are all consistent with a recent, worldwide flood.

On the other hand, if the rock layers were deposited slowly over thousands or millions of years, we would not expect to find many well-defined fossils—much less animal tracks and ripple marks—preserved in the rock, and we would not expect to find trees extending across multiple strata.  If rock layers are the product of multiple cycles of sedimentation and uplift, we would not expect to find flat, parallel, uneroded rock layers, stacked like pancakes.  If fossils are more than a few thousand years old, we would not expect to find any remnants of soft tissue with the fossils.  Yet, we find evidence of all these things.

Thus, when we bring the evidence to each of the two views, and ask "Which view best explains the evidence?" we find that the Biblical view readily explains the observed evidence, whereas the old-earth view cannot give an adequate explanation for the evidence.
 

Index Fossils and the Geologic Column.

One of the key ideas in the old-earth view is that different plants and animals lived at different times in earth history[5] , and that this is recorded in the fossil record.  Thus, scientists believe they can date a rock layer by the specific types of fossils they find in the layer.

At the bottom of the geologic column is "pre-Cambrian" rock, which is devoid of fossils.  Directly above this is "Cambrian" rock, which contains numerous types of fossils of small aquatic organisms. Subsequent layers supposedly record the evolution of life, from simpler forms to more complex forms. Names and dates are assigned to layers, based on the type of organisms fossilized in them.  In most cases, there is no independent way to date the fossils[6], and so the layer is assigned a date based strictly on evolutionary assumptions and the types of fossils found in the rock.

This approach often results in inverted layers, where older rock lies above younger rock. In such cases, scientists insist the dates are correct, and assume that seismic thrusting must be responsible for the strata being in the wrong sequence, even though, upon inspection, the alleged "thrust plane" often looks no different from a normal sedimentary bedding plane, and exhibits none of the telltale evidence of thrusting, such as grinding, brecciation or deformation.

Examples of inverted layers include:[7]
 
Name Location Out of place layers Description
Qilian Shan North / West China Ordovician over Pliocene 505 million - 5.1 million  Ordovician strata is over Pliocene gravel with a valley filled with Pleistocene gravel
Lewis Overthrust  Montana, USA  Precambrian over Cretaceous 644 million - 144 million  350 miles and 15-30 miles wide and goes from Glacier National Park to Alberta, Canada. However there is a fault line.
Franklin Mountains Near El Paso, Texas, at West Crazy Cat Canyon Ordovician over Cretaceous 450 million - 130 million  No physical evidence of an overthrust.
Glarus Overthrust Near Schwanden, Switzerland Permian - Jurassic - Eocene
supposed to be
Eocene - Jurassic - Permian
21 miles long. An overthrust is assumed because the fossils are out of place
Empire Mountains Southern Arizona, USA Permian over Cretaceous
286 million - 144 million
Contact is like gear meshing. Sliding would grind off lower formation's projections.
Mythen Peak  The Alps Cretaceous over Eocene
200 million - 60 million
Older rock allegedly pushed all the way from Africa
Heart Mountain  Wyoming, USA Paleozoic - Jurassic - Tertiary - Paleozoic supposed to be Tertiary - Jurassic - Paleozoic  Fossils in the wrong order "big time"
Matterhorn The Alps Eocene - Triassic - Jurassic - Cretaceous; supposed to be Triassic - Jurassic - Cretaceous - Eocene Alleged to have been thrust 60 miles

We should be aware that a complete "geological column" occurs nowhere in nature.  The geological column found in textbooks has been pieced together from samples from diverse places around the world, and is based on evolutionary assumptions.  Even the most complete examples (e.g. the Grand Canyon) have many missing layers.  In theory, a complete geological column would be about 100 miles thick, but sedimentary rock worldwide is, on average, about 1 mile thick.

Scientists sometimes claim to have found a complete geological column, but what they mean by this is that they have found places where there are layers they can assign to all ten of the basic geologic eras.  What they often fail to say is that the eras are comprised of numerous periods and epochs, and that they find only a small fraction of the periods and epochs represented.[8]

The existence of "living fossils"—animals that exist today, virtually unchanged from fossilized animals that supposedly lived millions of years ago—calls into question the dates assigned to the fossils, and the assumptions on which they are based.  It also calls into question the validity of index fossils as a method to establish the age of a rock layer.

For example, crocodile fossils have been dated as 230 million years old, but are not significantly different from crocodiles living today.  The horseshoe crab supposedly lived 300 million years ago, but is identical to specimens living today.  The Nautilus is claimed to have lived 500 million years ago, but has not changed since that time. Crinoids are common in ancient rock (up to 150 million years old), but are identical to the modern sea lilies. Numerous other examples can be given.[9]

Two living fossils of special note include the Coelacanth and the Wollemi Pine.  The Coelacanth is a fish that was thought to have become extinct about 65 million years ago until a live specimen was caught in 1938 off the east coast of South Africa.[10]   Likewise, the Wollemi Pine was thought to have become extinct with the dinosaurs until a living specimen was found in Australia in 1994[11].  Discoveries such as these discredit the confident claims of scientists concerning when various plants and animals became extinct, and the ages they assign to rocks based on the fossils found in them.  If scientists could be this wrong about the extinction of the Coelacanth and the Wollemi Pine, then perhaps they are mistaken about when dinosaurs lived as well.[12]

The biblical Flood suggests other ways to explain the sequence of fossils found in the strata.  The bottommost "pre-Cambrian" rock is simply pre-flood rock—devoid of fossils.  Bottom-dwelling sea creatures would likely be the first to be buried by flood sediment.  Larger land-dwelling creatures would have fled to higher elevations, or may have floated in the flood waters for a period of time, and would have been buried later.

Also, tidal movements of the flood waters would have produced a certain amount of sifting, filtering and layering of the sediment.  It is likely that, prior to the flood, populations of various plant and animal kinds were not uniformly distributed over the earth's surface, so it is very likely that certain kinds would be deposited in one region, and different kinds in another location.[13]

Again, we must ask which view provides the best explanation for observed evidence.  The old-earth view suffers from numerous discrepancies and contradictions—inverted layer sequences, incomplete sequences, missing transitional fossils and organisms that have remained unchanged through much of geologic history.

The biblical young-earth view, on the other hand, can explain the observed sorting of the fossils based on rapid sedimentation during the flood of Noah's time.  The sequence of fossils found in the rock layers reflects the dynamics of rapid sedimentation during the worldwide flood, with bottom-dwelling marine creatures being buried first, and mobile land creatures being buried last. Transitional fossils would not be expected under this interpretation, which agrees with observed evidence.  Moreover, inverted layer sequences would not be surprising, since the sorting mechanisms operating during the flood would provide a general ordering, not an absolute one.
 

Ice Ages and Ice Core Dating.

Various regions on earth exhibit evidence of contintental glaciation, and scientists quite reasonably conclude that major areas of the earth were covered with ice at some time in the past.

The secular interpretation is that about thirty "ice ages" have occurred in earth's history, the first occurring about 4.6 billion years ago.[14]   However, the dates (and hence also the number of ages) assigned are based on old-earth, evolutionary assumptions, such as the assumed ages of the rocks scarred by glaciation.

Creationists believe that there was only one ice age, and that it occurred over a period of a few hundred years following the flood of Noah's day.  The post-flood oceans would have been warm, due in part to the warmth of the pre-flood oceans, as well as from hot water issuing from "the fountains of the deep". At the same time, increased volcanism (implied by the breaking open of "the fountains of the deep") would have released volcanic aerosols into the atmosphere, shading the earth from solar heating, resulting in cooler continents.  This combination would have produced increased snowfall, and cooler continental temperatures—resulting in the formation of continental glaciers.

A viable uniformitarian explanation for the formation of continental glaciers has been elusive.  Secularists claim that the ice ages lasted for thousands of years, and that the glaciers were gradually formed over this time.  However, reduced global temperatures would result in cooler oceans, resulting in reduced evaporation, drier air, and reduced snowfall, preventing the formation of substantial glaciers.

Moreover, uniformitarian models to explain the extended periods of cooling have been inadequate.  For example, in northern Canada, summers would need to be 10-12 degrees cooler than today, even with double the winter snowfall.[15]   The Milankovitch (Astronomical) theory accounts for solar radiation variations of only 0.17%—which is far less than that required to produce the significant climatic changes needed for an ice age to occur.[16]

A related line of evidence comes from ice cores obtained by drilling into the massive ice sheets covering much of Greenland and Antarctica.  Because the ice was laid down over time, seasonal fluctuations in various atmospheric parameters (e.g  dust, isotope levels) would produce corresponding patterns in the ice cores that would provide clues as to the age of the ice at any given depth—analogous to counting tree rings to determine the age of a tree.[17]

One of the problems with this approach is the assumption that the observed cycles are annual rather than sub-annual effects, such as would result from daily melting, the passage of a storm, warm and cold spells, volcanic ash deposition or the formation of drifts and dunes.

Another problem is that the deeper layers have been compressed by the weight of the layers above them, so that the deeper layers are paper thin and the variations are less pronounced.  This makes these layers very difficult to count, and scientists often must rely on estimates rather than observations. The amount of compression can be difficult to assess for the deeper layers, and scientists fall back on their old-earth assumptions—concluding, without supporting evidence, that these deepest layers could represent millions of years of ice deposition.

The creationist interpretation is that snowfall was much higher in the centuries immediately following the flood, and that it was producing much thicker annual layers than are common today.  Moreover, if the ice is not nearly as old as secularists believe it to be, it would not have compressed as much as they claim, and so the deepest layers could be much thicker (and fewer in number) than secular theory assumes.

The discovery, in 1988, of a squadron of eight World War II airplanes buried in 250 feet of ice near the east coast of Greenland proves that polar ice accumulates much more quickly than is often claimed. [18] The 250 feet of ice built up in just 46 years since the planes were forced to land in a winter storm in 1942. At this rate, the 3000-metre-long ice core brought up by the joint European Greenland Ice-core Project (GRIP) in Greenland in 1990–1992 represents about 2,000 years of accumulation, and could easily have formed subsequently to the global flood (which occurred about 4,500 years ago). This is experimental evidence that the polar ice is not nearly as old as scientists often claim, and that it fits nicely within the Biblical chronology.

We need to remember that old-earth conclusions are typically based on old-earth assumptions, and not on evidence alone.  The evidence can be explained by Biblical young-earth assumptions.  The Biblical model is superior because it can explain how an ice age could occur, whereas current old-earth models cannot. The discovery of WW2-era airplanes buried deep in the Greenland ice demonstrates that the ice pack is only a few thousand years old.
 

Continental Drift.

Since as early as 1596, it has been observed that the shorelines of the continents on either side of the Atlantic fit together like puzzle pieces, suggesting that they had once been a single contintent[19]. In 1858, Antonio Snider-Pelligrini published his book Creation and Its Mysteries Unveiled, in which he cited Biblical and geographical evidence in support of the idea that the Noahic flood had caused the original supercontinent to break apart into tectonic plates, forming the continents[20].

The suggestion of continental movement was largely rejected until 1912, when the German meteorologist Alfred Lothar Wegener advanced a secularist theory of continental drift.  More recent evidence, such as the discovery of mid-ocean ridges that run roughly parallel to the continental shorelines, and analogous rock formations on either side of the oceans has removed all doubt and today, continental drift (or "plate tectonics") is well accepted by the scientific community.

Scientists have measured the rate of continental movement at approximately ½" to 6" per year.[21]  At this rate, it would have taken from 30-360 million years for South America and Africa to reach their current locations.  Some scientists claim, based on this analysis, that the earth must be millions of years old.  The fallacy with this calculation is the assumption that the continents have been moving in the past at approximately the same rate as today.

This assumption is suspect for several reasons.  First, the continents today are in relative equilibrium compared to the past.  For example, North America experiences eastward forces from the Pacific that tend to cancel westward forces from the Atlantic. The westward Atlantic forces could have been significantly greater in the past when the contintents were closer together.

Second, rifting has been observed to occur much more rapidly than is observed today along the mid-ocean ridges.  For example, in 2005, a 35-mile-long rift broke open in the Ethiopian desert, widening by 20 feet in just a matter of days.[22]  This demonstrates that rifting should not be assumed to be a process of constant rate, and that the rate can be thousands of times greater than formerly assumed.

Third, it is generally believed that the original Pangean continent was stable for a long period of time before it began to break apart into the various continents.  This implies that the forces underlying tectonic plate movement can change significantly over time.

Secular dating of continental movement is based on uniformitarian assumptions, without any corroborating evidence to prove that these assumptions are correct.  In order for South America and Africa to have separated and moved to their present location since the time of the flood, they would have had to travel approximately 3200 miles in the past 4350 years, which averages about ¾ mile (or just over 1 km) per year—about 10 feet per day.

An intriguing theory of rapid continental movement was advanced in 1986 by creationist Dr. John Baumgardner, who developed the acclaimed Terra software application that models the earth's mantle using a 3-D spherical shell finite-element algorithm.[23]

His theory, called "Catastropic Plate Tectonics", is based on a hypothetical process called "runaway plate subduction", whereby the seafloor fractured along continental boundaries, and began sinking into the lighter mantle material.  As it sank, it generated considerable heat, locally reducing the viscosity of the mantle, which accelerated the subduction process.  As the edge of the seafloor sank into the mantle, it began pulling the seafloor, causing it to move like a conveyer belt, fracturing the Pangean super-continent, and pulling the pieces toward their present locations.  At the same time, lighter mantle material welled up along the fractures, replacing the original ocean floor.

Dr. Baumgardner's theory[24] explains how the continents moved rapidly to their current locations, while sending tremendous amounts of superheated steam and liquid water into the atmosphere over a period of weeks, which would account for the intense, global rainfall that characterized the first 40 days of the flood.  It also explains how the new, lighter seafloor would have risen significantly higher than the pre-flood seafloor, allowing the earth to become covered with water.  Over time, the new seafloor would have cooled and become more dense, thereby increasing the depth of the oceans, allowing the floodwater to drain from the continents.

Other observed evidence, such as alternating magnetic field patterns along mid-ocean ridges and major mountain ranges along plate boundaries, are also explained by this theory.  The feasibility of the theory has been tested and confirmed by the Terra software developed by Dr. Baumgardner.

At this time, Catastropic Plate Tectonics is a theory that explains how the flood might have occurred.  Like any theory, it may be revised or superseded over time as new evidence comes to light.  Even so, its comprehensive explanatory power and demonstrated feasibility far surpass that of current alternative theories of continental origins—whether old-earth or creationist.
 

Other arguments from geology.

Another common old-earth argument is that deep canyons, such as the Grand Canyon, would take millions of years to form, based on current erosional rates.  Again, the problem is in the assumptions.  Once the Biblical flood had covered the entire earth, the seafloor began to subside, and the flood water began to drain off the continents. This would have caused a tremendous amount of erosion, as great sheets of water would flow across the landscape. The drainage of the flood water could produce, in a matter of weeks, what would require thousands or millions of years to do at present-day rates.

The Mount St. Helens eruption provides evidence of this, for the "Little Grand Canyon"—a canyon about 100 feet deep and slightly wider—was formed in just a day when a mudslide blocked the north fork of the Toutle River, and the river eventually forced its way over and through the sediment.[25]

In fact, the Grand Canyon in Arizona shows characteristic features of rapid erosion, such as nearly vertical cliffs and towering rock formations.  The perpendicular side canyons give evidence that the entire canyon had once been engulfed with water—after the main channel of the canyon had been cut by the escaping flood water, the side canyons would have formed by water from the sides flowing into the deeper main channel. Similar branching has been observed along seacoasts, where the tides cause the shoreline to become engulfed by water, and then branched gully systems are formed along the shore as the tide goes out.[26]

Cave formations are also cited as evidence of an old earth, since stalactites and stalagmites typically grow at a very slow rate.  However, cave formations have been observed to grow at much faster rates.  Various factors, such as mineral concentration, drip rates, temperature, humidity, and bacterial activity, can affect the rate of mineral deposition.

Stalactites in Sequoyah Caverns in northern Alabama have been measured growing about 1 inch per year[27].  The October 1953 edition of National Geographic displayed a photograph taken in Carlsbad Caverns of a bat that had fallen on a stalagmite and became cemented in the rock before it had time to decompose.  In 1968, a 5 foot long stalactite was observed beneath the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. that had formed in the 45 years since the memorial was built in 1923. Clearly, it does not take thousands or millions of years to generate significant cave formations.

Earth's coal and oil deposits are believed to have formed from buried biological material, and this process is generally believed to have taken millions of years. However, it has been shown that coal, crude oil and natural gas can be formed in much shorter time frames.[28] Moreover, crude oil contains porphyrins—organic compounds that decompose rapidly when subjected to oxygen and heat.  The presence of porphyrins in crude oil implies that the organic matter was buried quickly—isolating it from an oxidizing environment—which supports the biblical flood account[29].

Young-earth creationists believe that most of the world's coal was formed from organic matter buried by the global flood. Proponents of an old earth sometimes counter that there would not have been enough worldwide vegetation to have formed all the world's coal in a single global flood. However, this argument assumes that pre-flood conditions were comparable to conditions today.

It is reasonable that the pre-flood world was more nearly a paradise in which plants, animals and people could thrive, than was the world devastated by the flood, which produced deserts and high mountains where plants do not grow well.  This is borne out by geological evidence which shows that the ancient world was rich with lush tropical vegetation—far more so than we see today.  We should remember that much of the flood water originated from "the fountains of the deep" that opened up and spewed subterranean water onto the earth.  This would imply a much larger landmass for the original earth, and thus a larger region where plants could grow.  The world's coal deposits are formed largely from fossilized lycopod trees having hollow stems and roots which were well-designed to float in water rather than growing in soil.  This suggests that the pre-flood world had vast mats of floating forests covering significant areas of the ocean, and that these forests account for much of today's coal deposits.[30]

The flood had a devastating effect on genetics, as evidenced by the fact that men began to experience shorter life spans following the flood than prior to it.  Noah, for example, lived to be 950 (Genesis 9:29), but succeeding generations lived successively shorter lives (Gen 11:10-32) until the average life span leveled off at about 70-80 years (Psalm 90:10).  The factors that produced detrimental life-shortening mutations in the human genome may also have had detrimental effects on the ability of plants to thrive and grow. We thus see that there are many reasons to believe that the pre-flood world was quite different from today's world, and that it produced abundant vegetation, sufficient to account for today's oil and coal reserves.

Petrified wood can form rapidly under the right conditions.[31] Opals, once thought to take millions of years to form, have been created synthetically in only weeks.[32]

Long ages are based on uniformitarian assumptions—supposing that the processes that formed canyons and cave formations, and created coal, oil, petrified wood and opals, proceeded in the past at the same rate that they do in the present.  Yet, even in the present, we sometimes observe these processes occurring at a much faster rate—canyons being formed in hours, cave formations being formed in decades, and coal, oil, petrified wood and opals created in just weeks—collapsing the time scale by a factor of thousands or millions.

Some of the evidence provides positive support for the biblical young-earth view and refutes the uniformitarian old-earth view.  In particular, the topography of the Grand Canyon—with its steep walls, towering rock formations, and perpendicular side canyons—argues for its being formed rapidly by receding water that originally covered the entire canyon.  The presence of porphyrins in crude oil testifies of rapid, widespread burial of biomass—consistent with a global flood.
 

Tree Rings.

When a tree is cut down, the cross-section of the trunk displays concentric rings, representing periods of growth and dormancy.  These rings often represent annual cycles of summer growth, separated by periods of winter dormancy.  Under this interpretation, some of the Bristlecone Pines of eastern California predate the flood by about 400 years. However, it is not uncommon for trees to exhibit multiple growth rings in a year (representing periods of rain and drought), indistinguishable from annual rings[33], so one should not assume that a tree's age can be exactly determined by counting its rings.

Scientists sometimes attempt to extend the useful range of tree-ring dating by matching the ring patterns of living trees with those of nearby dead wood, and claim to be able to go much further back in history using this technique.  However, ring patterns are not unique, and even living trees growing nearby one another can exhibit different ring structure, which shows that tree-ring matching is not as reliable as one might suppose.  Published tree-ring chronologies have sometimes been retracted or revised when they were found to conflict with other published chronologies[34].
 

Radiometric Dating.

Since 1896, when Henri Becquerel first discovered that invisible rays were emitted by uranium bearing minerals, much has been learned about the process called "radioactive decay".

The chemical properties of an atom are determined by the number of protons (positively charged particles) in its nucleus. This is called its atomic number, and identifies it as a specific element on the periodic table.

The nucleus may also contain neutrons (electrically neutral particles, which can be thought of as a proton bound to an electron). The total number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus determines the atomic weight of the atom.  Two atoms that have the same atomic number, but different atomic weights (due to having a different number of neutrons) are said to represent different isotopes of the same element.

Some of the heavier isotopes of certain elements are unstable, and the nucleus of such an atom will at times decay, emitting alpha particles (fast-moving Helium nuclei) or beta particles (fast-moving electrons)[35].  The loss of protons or electrons from the nucleus results in a change in its atomic number, causing it to change from one element to another.  Emitting an alpha particle reduces the atomic number by two.  Emitting a beta particle converts a neutron to a proton, increasing the atomic number by one.

Often, the new isotope is also unstable, leading to yet further decay.  Given sufficient time, this process continues until a stable isotope is produced.  The original unstable isotope is called the "parent", and the final, stable isotope is called the "daughter".

The behavior of radioactive decay is not linear but exponential.  The decay rate is typically given as a "half-life", which is measured in minutes, days or years. Radon-222, for example, has a half-life of 3.8 days.  This means that half the sample is gone after the first 3.8 days, half of what remains is gone after the second 3.8 days, and so on.  At any point in time, the amount of the remaining radon-222 is half of what it was 3.8 days earlier.

The average decay rate for various unstable isotopes has been measured, and the sequence of decay products has been determined. Many scientists believe that this provides a method to determine the age of rocks that contain radioactive minerals: Simply compare the relative concentrations of the parent and daughter isotopes and calculate how long it would have taken to achieve this ratio, based on known decay rates.

But there are several unverified assumptions in this approach:

  1. The decay rate has remained constant over time.
  2. There was no daughter material present when the rock was originally formed.
  3. No other mechanism has altered the relative concentration of parent and daughter.
If the assumptions are valid, then the results are reasonable.  However, if any of the assumptions is in error, then the results are probably not accurate.

Have the various radioactive dating methods been verified?  One method that has been tested and found to be reasonably accurate is Carbon-14 dating.  Carbon-14 has a half-life of only 5730 years, which means that C-14 can be used for dating carbonaceous artifacts that are merely hundreds or thousands of years old—recent enough to be verified by independent historical evidence.  However, it cannot be used to date samples older than about 60,000 years, because there is too little of the C-14 remaining in the sample for reliable measurement.

Dates of millions of years are obtained using methods based on isotopes having much longer half-lives—on the order of millions or billions of years.  For example, Potassium-Argon dating is based on the decay of postassium-40, which has a half-life of 1.25 billion years, and eventually decays into argon-40.

Potassium-Argon dating is often used to date volcanic rock.  It is assumed that the date will be quite accurate, since the daughter product, argon-40, is an inert gas and any existing argon would have bubbled out of the lava before the rock solidified. It therefore comes as a surprise to many that, when lava of known recent age (i.e. within the span of recorded history) is dated using the Potassium-Argon method, it often gives wildly false results—often on the order of millions of years—for rock that is known to be only hundreds of years, or perhaps only decades, old.[36]
 

Location Year of eruption Estimated age
based on K-Ar dating
Mt. St. Helens  1986  300,000-400,000 years
Kilauea Iki, Hawaii  1959  1.7-15.3 million years
Mt. Stromboli, Italy  1963  400,000-4.4 million years
Mt. Etna, Sicily  1964  600,000-800,000 years
Hualalai, Hawaii  1800-1801 6.3-39.3 million years
Mt. Erebus, Antarctica  1984  610,000-670,000 years
Mt. Lassen, California  1915  80,000-130,000 years
Sunset Crater, Arizona  1064-1065  180,000-360,000 years

The failure of radioisotope dating is evidenced also by the presence of measurable amounts of helium found in zircon crystals.  Zircon sometimes contains trace amounts of uranium or thorium, which release alpha particles (fast-moving helium nuclei) as they decay. Before they can escape the zircon, these particles typically slow down, acquire electrons, and turn into normal helium atoms embedded in the zircon.  However, helium is a very small, light atom, and is chemically inert—not combining with other atoms.  It is therefore able to migrate out of even the hardest rock in a matter of thousands of years.  It is significant that zircons containing 1.5 billion years[37] of decay products have been dated as being between 4000 and 8000 years old, based on their helium content and measured diffusion rates.[38][39]

Another compelling evidence that radioisotope dating is unreliable is that Carbon-14 has been found in samples of ancient coal and diamond, presumed to be millions of years old.  Ten coal samples, having presumed ages ranging from 40-320 million years, were carefully and repeatedly dated using C-14 as being 48,000-50,000 years old[40].  Diamond samples, presumed to be 1-2 billion years old, were dated using C-14 as being only 55,000 years old[41].  The presence of measurable amounts of C-14 in these samples demonstrates that the coal and diamond (and the rock layers in which they are found) cannot be nearly as old as old-earthers claim, and that the presuppositions of the old-earth view are simply false.

One of the ways scientists try to correct for errors in their radiometric dating assumptions is called "isochron dating".[42]  Isochron methods involve analyzing multiple samples from the same rock unit to obtain parent-daughter ratios and graphing the results from each analysis to determine the age of the rock.  Mineral Isochron dating uses samples of different minerals within a single rock. Whole-rock Isochron dating does not separate the minerals, but obtains samples from different rocks in a single rock formation.

Isochron methods are claimed to provide the following benefits:

  1. Eliminates dependency on knowing the original concentration of the daughter isotope.
  2. Eliminates errors caused by open system behavior (migration of parent or daughter atoms into or out of the rock).
  3. Increases accuracy by averaging the results of multiple measurements.
Although isochron methods are often thought to be infallible, a team of trained geologists tested them by obtaining samples from ten different locations and had each of them tested by several laboratories, using a variety of parent-daughter analyses.  They found that an isochron method using one parent-daughter analysis often did not agree with an isochron method using another analysis type.  Moreover, the isochron methods often gave much different results from single-sample analyses—as much as 500 million years different.[43]

Isochron methods cannot eliminate errors caused by a change in the decay rate over time.  This assumption had not been seriously questioned until recently, when scientists found evidence that the rate of radioactive decay is not constant over time.

Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratories discovered a slight seasonal variation in the decay rates of various isotopes which appears to be correlated to the nearness of the earth to the sun[44].  More recently, researchers at Stanford and Purdue have linked changes in decay rates to solar flare activity[45].  Some have conjectured that the density of neutrinos received from the sun may affect the rate of radioactive decay.

Studies of fission tracks and radiohalos[46] in granites and excessive helium in radioactive minerals[47] give evidence that very rapid nuclear decay has occurred in the past[48].  This would result in radiometric dating methods reporting ages much older than the actual age of the samples.  Scientists have also proposed theories to explain how accelerated nuclear decay might have occurred.[49]

Again, we ask "Which view best explains the evidence?"  The old-earth view relies heavily on radiometric dating for its claim that the earth is about 4½ billion years old.  Yet, when radiometric techniques are tested for accuracy, they fail the test.  When other dating methods are applied to samples that radiometric methods date as being millions or billions of years old, we find huge discrepancies, and evidence that the samples are only thousands of years old.

Moreover, recent research has disproven a key assumption of the radiometric methods—namely, the invariance of nuclear decay rates.  Studies of fission tracks, radiohalos and helium diffusion indicates that there have been periods of earth history when the decay rates were much higher than observed today.  The evidence is consistent with a biblical time scale, but inconsistent with the exaggerated ages assigned by the old-earth theory.
 

Distant Starlight and the Big Bang theory.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, physicists believed that the universe was filled with a "luminiferous ether"—a hypothetical medium through which light waves travel.  Physicists reasoned that sound waves require a medium such as air, water or wood, and ocean waves require the medium of water—surely light requires a medium as well.

In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed an experiment to measure how fast the earth was traveling through the ether.  They made careful measurements of the speed of light in different directions, and at different times during the earth's orbit around the sun.  They found that there seemed to be no detectable difference in the speed of light, regardless of the orientation of their apparatus, or the direction that the earth was traveling through space.  This led to the unexpected conclusion that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, regardless of the motion of the observer.

This discovery had many significant implications.  For example, it led to Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity, with their surprising conclusions that measurements of mass, length and even time itself are dependent on the motion and inertial frame of the observer.

Another implication of this discovery is that, because we can see the light from very distant stars, the universe must be extremely old.  These distances are so large, in fact, that astronomers needed a new unit of distance to describe these huge distances.  A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year.  Thus, if we can see light from objects that are more than 6000 light-years distant, it would stand to reason that the light left those objects more than 6000 years ago.  This is the crux of the distant starlight argument.

Data obtained from the Hubble space telescope between September 2003 and January 2004 has been used to construct an image of space called the "Hubble Ultra Deep Field"[50] or HUDF. The HUDF is believed to show galaxies up to 13 billion light years distant, and conditions in the universe as they existed 13 billion years ago.  If this interpretation of the evidence is correct, then the universe would appear to be at least 13 billion years old.

This interpretation is part of a larger theory, called the "Big Bang", which alleges that the universe burst into existence from a singularity about 13.7 billion years ago, and that the stars and galaxies we now see evolved into existence over time.  Yet, the HUDF shows fully-formed galaxies at the edge of the universe, with no evidence whatever of the stellar and galactic "evolution" required by the Big Bang theory.

One of the evidences cited in support of the Big Bang is that the spectra of distant galaxies are typically shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, and their distance from us is roughly proportional to the magnitude of the shift.  This relationship was proposed by Edwin Hubble in 1929, and is known as "Hubble's Law".  According to Hubble's Law, the more distant the galaxy, the greater its red shift.

Red shift is typically interpreted in one of two ways:  either 1) as the Doppler Effect applied to light waves (in which case the magnitude of a galaxy's red shift is related to the speed at which it is receding), or 2) as stretching the fabric of space, which would cause the wavelength of the light to be stretched as well.[51]   Either way, the fact that light is predominantly shifted toward the red end of the spectrum suggests that the universe has expanded in the past, and is perhaps still expanding in the present.

Another observation cited in support of the Big Bang is the "cosmic microwave background radiation" or CMBR—a weak, but nearly uniform "glow" of microwave radiation coming from every direction in space.  Proponents of the Big Bang assert that this is the afterglow of the original "big bang" when the universe burst into existence.

The CMBR, however, is as much an enemy of the Big Bang as an ally.[52]  The so-called "Horizon Problem" says that the CMBR is much too uniform.  The Big Bang supposedly expanded too quickly for mixing to occur.  To overcome this problem (along with a few other problems), supporters of the theory suggest that an "inflationary period" occurred early in the Big Bang, in which the expansion was briefly increased by some 30 orders of magnitude!  No one seems to know what might have started this inflation, or what could have stopped it.  It is simply a monumental "fudge factor" introduced into the theory to make it fit facts that would otherwise refute it.

There are other theories that can account for the CMBR.  Sir Arthur Eddington, in 1926—without any Big Bang assumptions—predicted a CMBR of about 3°K. George Gamow predicted the Big Bang would produce a CMBR of 5°K, which he later (in 1961) revised upward to 50°K. When the CMBR was finally detected and measured (in 1964), the actual value turned out to be 2.7°K—considerably closer to Eddington's prediction than to Gamow's.[53]

The Big Bang theory is riddled with other problems as well.  It should have produced equal quantities of matter and antimatter, but only trace quantities of antimatter have been found.  It should have produced stable magnetic monopoles, but none have been found. There ought to be many "population III stars" in the universe, but none have been observed.  In fact, the very formation of stars and galaxies is admitted by Big Bang scientists to be a mystery they cannot explain.[54]

The "Flatness Problem" says that the rate of expansion is perfectly balanced to an amazing precision—had it been any slower, the universe would have collapsed into a giant black hole.  Had it been any faster, the original hydrogen gas would have dispersed into the reaches of empty space without having opportunity to form stars or galaxies. Over time, any error in the expansion rate would be magnified by orders of magnitude.  The fact that the expansion rate is in such perfect balance today argues that it must have been much more perfectly balanced in the past—to an astonishingly precise degree.

In May 2004, a group of 30 (non-creationist) scientists published an open letter in New Scientist magazine, critiquing the Big Bang theory, and protesting the academy's suppression of alternative theories.[55]  The open letter can be viewed on the internet[56], and has now been signed by over 200 scientists and engineers.

The chief fallacy with the Distant Starlight argument is that it relies on Newtonian assumptions about the nature of time.  In our everyday earthly experience, these Newtonian assumptions seem quite reasonable—time appears to move along at a constant, invariant rate no matter where you are located or how fast you happen to be moving.

However, Einstein discovered that this Newtonian constancy does not hold when velocities approach the speed of light, or in the presence of massive objects.  In such cases, two observers moving at different speeds, or located at different locations within the gravitational potential well of a massive body would come up with different measurements of length, mass and time.

These predictions have been confirmed experimentally.  For example, the precise clocks in GPS satellites orbiting the earth must periodically be corrected because they are located in a region of higher gravitational potential, and therefore run faster, than clocks at the earth's surface.

In the vastness of space, we find objects with high velocity and enormous mass—the very things that distort measurements of time and distance.  Relativity theory says that, under the right conditions, 13 billion years of time in the remote regions of space could occur simultaneously as 6000 years, or even 4 days, of time passed on earth.

While the Bible does not give us all the specifics of how God created the universe, it does say that He created the sun, moon and stars on day 4, and that He completed his work of creation on day 6.  In addition, the Bible in many places[57] teaches that God "stretched out" the heavens—which is consistent with observed red shift.

When God stretched out the universe, light traveling through the universe would have been stretched out as well, and if the stretching was not uniform (as the various degrees of red shift suggest), then the passage of time would have been greater in some regions than in others, as a result of the differing degrees of stretching.

Creation scientists have proposed several different theories that could explain how we can see the light from distant stars in a biblical time frame.  These theories generally appeal to time dilation[58] or other aspects of relativity theory[59] to solve the distant starlight problem. Moreover, some of these creationist cosmologies explain a mystery that has baffled secular astronomers—the unexpected slowing of spacecraft leaving the solar system.[60]

The Bible describes creation as a series of miracles performed by God over a period of six earth-days.  While there are ways to reconcile various aspects of creation with physical laws as they operate today, we should never suppose that God is bound by these laws—especially when He is performing a miracle.  He is the sovereign God who established and enforces the laws of nature, and He has the sovereign right to suspend these laws whenever He pleases, in whatever way suits His holy purpose.

When we compare the two views in light of the evidence, we find numerous problems with the old-universe view—especially as it is embodied in the Big Bang theory.  The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, for example, shows fully formed galaxies in the earliest stages of the universe.  The Big Bang theory cannot explain the formation of stars and galaxies, nor the absence of antimatter and magnetic monopoles, and the Horizon Problem[61] says that there was not enough time for light to travel throughout the universe to produce such a uniformly distributed CMBR.

To overcome some of these problems, scientists have proposed an inflationary phase to the Big Bang.  However, this raises as many problems as it solves, such as how the inflation began, and how it ended. It also leaves the Flatness Problem unanswered—how could the subsequent expansion rate be so precisely tuned that the universe neither collapsed into a black hole, nor flew apart before stars or galaxies could be formed?

The Biblical account, on the other hand, affirms that creation was a miraculous work of God.  Relativistic time dilation could account for any discrepancy between the amount of time that passed on earth versus a much longer time that may have passed in the far reaches of space.  The Bible says that God "stretched out" the heavens, which agrees with the observed red shift of galactic spectra, and could also account for time dilation effects.


Footnotes.

[1]  Ken Ham, "I Got Excited at Mount St Helens", Creation 15(3):14–19, June 1993, www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i3/mtsthelens.asp (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[2] Morris, J. 2008. Surface Features Require Rapid Deposition. Act & Facts. 37 (12): 13, www.icr.org/article/surface-features-require-rapid-deposition/ (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[3] "Polystrate fossil", CreationWiki, 26 June 2010, creationwiki.org/Polystrate (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[4] Numerous reports of soft tissue found in ancient fossils—including dinosaur and pterodactyl fossils—have been published in recent years.  See, for example, Brian Thomas, "Dinosaur Soft Tissues: They're Real!", 11 Aug 2009, www.icr.org/article/dinosaur-soft-tissues-theyre-real/, Brian Thomas, "Archaeopteryx Fossil Shows 'Striking' Tissue Preservation", 19 May 2010, www.icr.org/article/archaeopteryx-fossil-shows-striking/  (visited 10 Jul 2014) and Brian Thomas, "'80 Million-Year-Old' Mosasaur Fossil Has Soft Retina and Blood Residue", 20 Aug 2010, www.icr.org/article/a-80-million-year-old-mosasaur-fossil/ (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[5] This is normally based on the theory of biological evolution, which asserts that plants and animals developed over time from simpler predecessors.  Some Christians who have come to acknowledge the fallacies of evolutionary theory argue instead for "progressive creationism"—teaching that God created new plants and animals at different times throughout earth history.  This teaching is not found in the Bible—it is simply another attempt to accommodate the Bible to secular interpretations of the evidence.  To suggest that death and decay existed prior to the Fall of Adam denies God's verdict that all was "very good" at the end of the sixth day (Genesis 1:31).

[6] In order to use radiometric dating, for example, the rock must contain a radioisotope.  In most cases, it does not.  Carbon-14 is useful only for fossils that are a few thousand years old.  Other radioisotopes could, at best, indicate when the radioactive mineral was formed—and not when the rock was deposited by sedimentation, nor when the fossil was formed.

[7] "Geological column", CreationWiki, 18 July 2010, href="http://www.creationwiki.org/Geologic_column (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[8] "Geological column: Claims of Existence", CreationWiki, 18 July 2010, http://www.creationwiki.org/Geologic_column (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[9] "Living fossil", CreationWiki, 26 June 2010, http://www.creationwiki.org/Living_fossils (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[10] "Coelacanth", CreationWiki, 9 June 2010, http://www.creationwiki.org/Coelacanth (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[11] "Wollemi pine", CreationWiki, 14 Dec 2009, http://www.creationwiki.org/Wollemi_pine (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[12] Dragon legends are common throughout many cultures of the world, often written as historical accounts of creatures that lived at the same time as humans.  Like the Coelacanth and the Wollemi Pine, it is possible that dinosaurs were living much more recently than secular scientists claim.  See "Dragon", CreationWiki, 22 Jan 2011, http://www.creationwiki.org/Dragon (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[13] Andrew Snelling, "Chapter 31: Doesn’t the Order of Fossils in the Rock Record Favor Long Ages?", The New Answers Book 2, 9 Sep 2010, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab2/do-rock-record-fossils-favor-long-ages (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[14] CreationWiki, "Ice Age", 9 Jan 2011, http://www.creationwiki.org/Ice_age, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[15] Michael Oard, M.S., "The Ice Age and the Genesis Flood", http://www.icr.org/article/ice-age-genesis-flood/, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[16] Ibid.

[17] For information in this and the following paragraphs, see Michael Oard, M.S., "Do Greenland ice cores show over one hundred thousand years of annual layers?", Dec 2001, http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i3/greenland.asp, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[18] See "The Lost Squadron", http://creation.com/the-lost-squadron, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[19] In his Thesaurus Geographicus, dated 1596, the Dutch mapmaker Abraham Ortelius asserted that the Americas were torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and floods, and that this would be evident to anyone who carefully studies the coastlines of the continents. CreationWiki, "Continental Drift", 6 Nov 2010, http://www.creationwiki.org/Continental_drift, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[20] Ibid.

[21] Andrew A. Snelling, "Can Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Explain Flood Geology?", November 8, 2007, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/catastrophic-plate-tectonics, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[22] Jonathan Sherwood, "African Desert Rift Confirmed as New Ocean in the Making", 02 Nov 2009, rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3486, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[23] Chandler Burr, "The Geophysics of God: A scientist embraces plate tectonics—and Noah's flood", www.globalflood.org/papers/geophysicsofgod.html, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[24] John R. Baumgardner, Ph.D., "Catastrophic Plate Tectonics:  The Physics Behind the Genesis Flood", August 2003, globalflood.org/papers/2003ICCcpt.html, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[25] Ken Ham, "I got excited at Mount St Helens!", Creation 15(3):14–19, www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i3/mtsthelens.asp, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[26], Peter Sheele, "A receding Flood scenario for the origin of the Grand Canyon", Journal of Creation, December 2010, http://creation.com/grand-canyon-origin-flood (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[27] Examples in this paragraph are from: Stephen Meyers and Robert Doolan, "Rapid Stalactites", Sep 1987, http://creation.com/rapid-stalactites, (visited 10 Jul 2014).

[28] Andrew Snelling, "How Fast Can Oil Form?", Mar 1990, creation.com/how-fast-can-oil-form, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[29] Andrew Snelling, "The Origin of Oil", 27 Dec 2006, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n1/origin-of-oil, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[30] Andrew Snelling, "How Did We Get All This Coal?", Feb 2013, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v8/n2/how-did-we-get-coal, (visited 9 Oct 2013).

[31] Andrew Snelling, "'Instant' Petrified Wood", Sep 1995, creation.com/instant-petrified-wood, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[32] Andrew Snelling, "Creating Opals", Dec 1994, creation.com/creating-opals, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[33] For the claims presented in this section, see Don Batten, Ph.D., "Tree ring dating (dendrochronology)", creation.com/tree-ring-dating-dendrochronology, (Visited 14 Mar 2011).

[34] Ibid.

[35] Fission is another type of radioactive decay where an unstable nucleus breaks into two nuclei of smaller atomic number, releasing neutrons and photons (as gamma rays) in the process.

[36] See Andrew Snelling, "Excess Argon: The Archilles' Heel of Potassium-Argon and Argon-Argon Dating of Volcanic Rocks", http://www.icr.org/article/excess-argon-archilles-heel-potassium-argon-dating, (visited 30 Mar 2016).

[37] i.e. based on currently observed decay rates.

[38] Russell Humphreys, "Evidence for a Young World", June 2005, www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[39] Don DeYoung, "Raising the Bar on Creation Research", 2 May 2006, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n1/creation-research, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[40] Andrew Snelling, "Radiocarbon in Diamonds Confirmed", 7 Nov 2007, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/radiocarbon-in-diamonds, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[41] Ibid.

[42] Material on isochron dating methods from: Don DeYoung, Thousands… Not Billions, (Green Forest, AR, Master Books, Inc., 2005), pp. 35-39.

[43] Mike Riddle, "Does Radiometric Dating Prove the Earth is Old?", 4 Oct 2007, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-radiometric-dating-prove, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[44] Justin Mullins, "Solar ghosts may haunt Earth's radioactive atoms", 30 June 2009, www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227141.400-solar-ghosts-may-haunt-earths-radioactive-atoms.html, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[45] Dan Stober, "The Strange Case of Solar Flares and Radioactive Elements", 23 Aug 2010, news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[46] Andrew Snelling, "Radiohalos in Granites: Evidence for Accelerated Nuclear Decay", www.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Radiohalos-in-Granites.pdf, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[47] Russell Humphreys, et. al., "Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay", http://www.icr.org/article/helium-diffusion-nuclear-decay/, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[48] Andrew Snelling, "Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth", 31 Oct 2007, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/radioisotopes-earth, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[49] Eugene Chaffin, "Accelerated Decay: Theoretical Models", 2003, static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Accelerated-Decay-Theoretical-Models.pdf, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[50] See "Hubble Ultra Deep Field", 26 Jan 2011, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[51] It should be noted that other explanations have been proposed for red shift.  Secular astronomer Halton Arp has challenged Hubble's Law, citing numerous cases where an object of large red shift is apparently connected (by a filament of glowing gas) to an object having small red shift.  See Michael Oard, "Doppler Toppler?", Dec 2000, www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i3/doppler.asp, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[52] Material in this and following paragraphs is from: Alex Williams and John Hartnett, Dismantling the Big Bang (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2005), pp. 121-130.

[53] Ibid, p. 127.

[54] Ibid, pp. 128-132.

[55] John Hartnett, "Cosmology in crisis—a conference report", 2006, creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_1/j20_1_11-12.pdf, (visited 9 Feb 2011).

[56] See the "Open Letter on Cosmology", published in New Scientist magazine on 22 May 2004, and posted on the Alternative Cosmology Group website: http://www.cosmology.info, (visited 2 July 2014).

[57] Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 51:13; Jeremiah 10:12; etc.

[58] See, for example, D. Russell Humphreys, Starlight and Time (Master Books, 1994), summarized at 1 May 2010, creationwiki.org/White_hole_cosmology (visited 2 March 2011), and Moshe Carmeli's Cosmological Relativity model, 1 May 2010 www.creationwiki.org/Cosmological_relativity (visited 2 March 2011).

[59] See Jason Lisle's "Anisotropic Synchrony Convention" model, 22 Sept 2011, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v3/n1/anisotropic-synchrony-convention (visited 2 March 2011).

[60] D. Russell Humphreys, "Creation Cosmologies Explain Spacecraft Mystery", 2007, www.icr.org/article/3472/ (visited 2 March 2011) and Moshe Carmeli, John Hartnett and Firmin Oliveira, "On the anomalous acceleration of Pioneer spacecraft", 6 Feb 2008, arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0504/0504107v2.pdf (visited 2 March 2011).

[61] It should be noted that the Horizon Problem is a Light Travel Time problem, similar to the Distant Starlight problem.  Big Bang advocates are therefore being inconsistent to use distant starlight as an argument against young earth creationism, when they have a light travel problem of their own.
 
 


Home | The Gospel | Search | Comments?
Articles | Books | Conferences | Hymns | Library | Links
21st Century Puritan Web Site- 1997-2012 Mitch Cervinka