We have seen that the many arguments for the old earth view do not hold up on close inspection—the evidence supports an old-earth position only if you begin by assuming millions of years.  In fact, when we carefully examine the evidence cited for the old-earth view, we often discover discrepancies that discredit the old-earth view and support the biblical young earth view instead—such as polystrate trees, inverted rock sequences, absence of erosional features in the rock layers, excess helium in zircon crystals, excess Carbon-14 in coal and diamond samples and fully formed stars and galaxies in the HUDF image.

There is plenty of additional physical evidence that is better explained by the young earth view than the old earth view.  Here is a brief sample …
 

Mutational Decay of the Human Genome.

Mutations have never been shown to increase the information in the DNA.  They are nearly always detrimental to the organism , which is not surprising, since they introduce errors into the genetic machinery—a very specific and complex set of instructions that describes how to produce a replica of the organism.

Some mutations are lethal or result in debilitating defects, causing the organism or its immediate descendants to die off and prevent the mutational defects from being broadly propagated. Most mutations, however, produce a minor dysfunction that may not be immediately evident, and do not handicap an organism sufficiently to put it at immediate risk.  These mutational defects are passed to subsequent generations, spreading throughout the population and accumulating with defects from other mutations.  Natural selection does not and cannot protect against this "slow poisoning" of the gene pool. If the human race had been around for more than a few thousand years, the mutational load on the gene pool would have destroyed the race.[1]
 

Folding of Rock Layers.

When solid rock is subjected to shear forces, it fractures and crumbles.  Yet, it is not uncommon to find rock that has been folded like taffy, exhibiting continuous, unbroken layers. This indicates that folding occurred while all the layers were still soft, and that a significant amount of time could not have elapsed between deposition of the various layers.[2]
 

Ocean Salinity.

Rivers are constantly carrying salt into the sea and evaporation removes pure water, leaving the salt behind.  Thus, over time, the salinity of the ocean increases.  Based on the current concentration of salt in the ocean, and the rate at which rivers are bringing new salt into the ocean, a maximum age[3] of the oceans would be about 60 million years—far less than the alleged age of many marine fossils.[4]
 

Earth's Rotational Rate.

Due to tidal forces, earth's day increases in length by 0.002 seconds every 100 years.  If the earth were truly billions of years old, it should now be in tidal lock with the sun.[5]
 

Earth's Magnetic Field.

Russell Humphries explains:

"The total energy stored in the earth’s magnetic field ('dipole' and 'non-dipole') is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years. Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then. This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes. The main result is that the field’s total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old."[6]

Atmospheric Helium.

Each year, the decay of radioactive elements, such as Uranium and Thorium, adds a significant amount of helium to the atmosphere, while a certain amount of helium also leaves the atmosphere by means of thermal escape or solar wind (once it has migrated through the lower atmosphere into the exosphere).  Analysis of the influx and outflux processes indicate that there should be a significant increase in helium with time, yet the helium content of the atmosphere suggests that this has been going on for only thousands, not millions or billions of years.[8]
 

Lunar Recession.

Don Batten explains:

"Tidal friction causes the moon to recede from the earth at 4 cm per year. It would have been greater in the past when the moon and earth were closer together. The moon and earth would have been in catastrophic proximity (Roche limit) at less than a quarter of their supposed age."[9]

Energy output of the Sun.

Don Batten explains:

"According to stellar evolution theory, as the sun’s core transforms from hydrogen to helium by means of nuclear fusion, the mean molecular weight increases, which would compress the sun’s core increasing fusion rate. The upshot is that over several billion years, the sun ought to have brightened 40% since its formation and 25% since the appearance of life on earth. For the latter, this translates into a 16–18 ºC temperature increase on the earth. The current average temperature is 15 ºC, so the earth ought to have had a -2 ºC or so temperature when life appeared."[10]

Decay of Comets.

Comets orbit the sun in highly eccentric orbits.  Each time a comet passes near the sun, it loses a significant part of its mass to thermal heating and solar wind, producing two tails—a bright tail of ionized gases, and a darker tail of dust particles—both pointing away from the sun, but along slightly different trajectories.

It is estimated that comets cannot orbit for more than about 100,000 years[11]  without depleting all their mass, so why do comets still exist if the solar system is supposedly 4.5 billion years old?

Astronomers have postulated the existence of a reservoir of icy masses, which they have named the "Oort Cloud", orbiting about 50,000 A.U. from the sun, to account for the long-period comets (having periods greater than 200 years).  However there is no direct observational evidence for its existence.  Moreover, recent studies have determined that, even if the Oort Cloud does exist, it would have less than 1/10th of the mass needed to account for observed long-term comets.[12]

Astronomers suggest that short-period comets (having periods up to 200 years) originate from the "Kuiper belt"—a disk of icy asteroids orbiting at between 40-50 A.U. from the sun.  However, the objects in the Kuiper belt have different characteristics from comets, and thus do not explain the existence of short-term comets.[13]

In contrast, comets are not a problem if the universe is only 6000 years old.
 

Blue Stars.

Blue stars are the hottest, most luminous and most massive type of star, and they consume their fuel much more quickly than yellow or red stars. For this reason, blue stars have a relatively short lifetime compared to other stars—at most, only a few million years. Yet, blue stars are very common in the arms of spiral galaxies, which secularists believe to be billions of years old.[14]

The secular interpretation is that stars are forming today. Yet, stars consist almost entirely of the two lightest gases, hydrogen and helium. If this gas could be compressed tightly enough, the combined gravity of the atoms would hold it all together and a star would form.  However, when the gas is diffused in space, the pressure of the gas exceeds the force of gravity, causing the gas to disperse long before it could become dense enough to form a star.  If the gas somehow started to be compressed, its pressure and angular momentum would increase dramatically, overcoming the forces tending to compress it. There is no known natural mechanism that could compress the gas to the required density.[15]

The Biblical interpretation—that God formed the stars on the 4th day of creation, approximately 6000 years ago—explains the existence of blue stars, whereas the secular interpretation violates known physical laws.
 

Supernovas.

Russell Humphries explains:

"According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas."[16]

Spiral Galaxies.

Russell Humphries explains:

"The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape. Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this 'the winding-up dilemma,' which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same 'winding-up' dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a complex theory called 'density waves.' The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope’s discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the 'Whirlpool' galaxy, M51."[17]

Conclusion.

Is the earth old or young?

When we consider earthbound evidence, such as ocean salinity, magnetic field decay, folded rock layers, rotational rate, atmospheric helium or the mutational decay of the human genome, we see ample evidence that the earth is much younger than secular interpretations suggest.  Evidence from beyond our atmosphere—such as lunar recession, the increasing brightness of the sun, the abundance of blue stars, spiral galaxies and comets, and the scarcity of supernova remnants—also implies a young universe. Add to this the evidence considered in the previous chapter—excess helium and Carbon 14 in ancient rock, soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, and fully formed galaxies in the HUDF image.

In the previous chapter we also found that old-earth arguments are based on faulty assumptions that do not stand the test of experimental evidence. Radiometric dating is not as reliable as we are led to believe. Rock layers are found in the wrong sequence, often with no evidence of seismic slippage along the layer boundaries. Polystrate fossils, ephemeral markings and the absence of erosional features discredit old-earth interpretations of the evidence. The Big Bang theory is replete with problems, including a light travel time problem (the Horizon problem) and a host of other problems, such as the absence of magnetic monopoles, antimatter and population III stars. The hypothetical "inflation phase" of the Big Bang, which attempts to answer some of these problems, raises even more serious problems regarding what could have caused such an inflationary period, and what could have slowed it down, resulting in a perfectly balanced expansion rate (the Flatness problem).

We again pose the question: "Which interpretation best explains the evidence?" and we submit that the Biblical interpretation—a recent creation, followed by a worldwide flood—is the only one that fits the evidence and makes sense of the world as we find it.

Footnotes.

[1] Royal Truman, "From ape to man via genetic meltdown: a theory in crisis", http://creation.com/from-ape-to-man-via-genetic-meltdown-a-theory-in-crisis (visited 2 March 2011).

[2] Andrew Snelling, "Rock Layers Folded, Not Fractured", 15 March 2009, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v4/n2/folded-not-fractured (visited 2 March 2011).

[3] This estimate is a "maximum age" because of two assumptions: 1) the primal ocean contained no salt, and 2) the rate of inflow of salt has remained unchanged over time.  It is possible that the primal ocean contained some salt.  The continual washing of the continents by rainfall has reduced the amount of surface salt so that the rate of influx of salt would have been higher in the past than today.  When these considerations are taken into account, the estimated age of the oceans would be reduced significantly.

[4] Jonathan Sarfati, "Salty Seas: Evidence for a Young Earth", http://creation.com/salty-seas-evidence-for-a-young-earth (visited 2 March 2011).

[5] CreationWiki, "Young Earth Evidence", "Earth's Rotation", 4 June 2010, http://creationwiki.org/Young_earth_evidence#Earth.27s_Rotation (visited 2 March 2011).

[6] Russell Humphries, "Evidence for a Young World", evidence #6, June 2005,
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp (visited 2 March 2011).

[7] Russell Humphries, "Beyond Neptune: Voyager II Supports Creation", http://www.icr.org/article/beyond-neptune-voyager-ii-supports-creation/ (visited 2 March 2011).

[8] Larry Vardiman, "The Age of Earth's Atmosphere Estimate by its Helium Content", August 1986, http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/The-Age-of-Earths-Atmosphere-by-its-Helium-Content.pdf(visited 2 March 2011).

[9] Don Batten, "Age of the Earth: 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe," 4 June 2009, http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth (visited 2 March 2011).  Also see David Wright, "Lunar recession: does it support a young universe?", 7 August  2006, http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/2006/0811.asp (visited 2 March 2011).

[10] Batten: #89 "The Faint Young Sun Paradox".  Also see Danny Faulkner, "The young faint Sun paradox and the age of the solar system", August 2001, http://creation.com/the-young-faint-sun-paradox-and-the-age-of-the-solar-system (visited 2 March 2011).

[11] Jason Lisle, "The Age of the Universe, Part 2", 20 March 2008, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tba/age-of-the-universe-2 (visited 2 March 2011).

[12] Danny Faulkner, "More problems for the Oort comet cloud", August 2001, http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i2/oort.asp (2 March 2011).

[13] Ron Samec, "The Heavens Declare … A Young Solar System", 27 Nov 2007, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n1/heavens-declare-young-solar-system (visited 2 March 2011).

[14] Lisle, Jason "Stars are Young" in "The Stars of Heaven Confirm Biblical Creation", 18 Sep 2007,
 http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/stars-of-heaven-confirm (visited 2 March 2011).

[15] Lisle, Jason "Stars Were of Supernatural Origin" in "The Stars of Heaven Confirm Biblical Creation"18 Sep 2007,
 http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/stars-of-heaven-confirm (visited 2 March 2011).

[16] Russell Humphries, "Evidence for a Young World", evidence #2, June 2005, http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp (visited 2 March 2011).

[17] Ibid, evidence #1.