Doubt Busters

John Morris, in his book, The Young Earth, explains the current woeful state of long-earth theorists’ inability to explain the scientific data on behalf of an old universe. Here are some of the highlights of the book:

1. Archaeologists have assumed that our earliest civilizations were crude, but artifacts say otherwise. The earlier civilizations had written forms that were more complex than ours, mathematics, and other high-intelligence proofs. This is what we should expect if biblical history were true – that God had created men intelligent from the get-go.

2. “Given the total number of people on earth today, now over 6 billion, and the present rate of population growth of about 2 percent per year, it would take only about 1,100 years to reach the present population from an original pair. This is of the same order of magnitude as the time since Noah’s flood – at least it is within the right ballpark” (p.73). But if man has been around for a million years as the evolutionists teach, our population would be ten with 8,600 zeros following it. Where are all the people?

3. We have unearthed trillions of fossils (95% of all fossils are marine invertebrates, mostly shellfish; but only 0.0125% are land mammals, such as the dinosaurs, and many consist of one bone). This number is right for 6 billion people living in the past several thousand years, but not a million years. Many civilizations bury their dead. Where are all the burial plots for all the people who have died in the past million years?

4. There are problems with the sun’s age. Every 11 years the sun’s magnetic field reverses itself, with great loss of energy. Scientists can’t account for the sun’s energy lasting for billions of years. Our sun is a young sun!

5. Measurement of the amount of helium in the atmosphere gives us an idea of the age of the atmosphere. Helium comes out of the ground, and some escapes into space, at measurable rates. Scientists cannot account for the small amount of helium in the atmosphere compared with the age they have given of the earth. If the earth were older, vastly more quantities of helium would be evident.

6. By measuring the amount of salt in the ocean, and its rate of input and output from the ocean, we can measure the age of the ocean. Once again, if the earth has been around for four billion years, and rate has been similar to what it has been in recent history, the oceans are simply not salty enough to prove an old earth.

7. According to the rate of erosion of the continents, and the amount of sediment already in the ocean, all the sediment in the ocean would accumulate over a span of no more than 15 million years. Our earth is young!

This is a summary of several findings from the book. Of course, we can’t actually date the age of the earth from any rocks with any accuracy – all the possible dating methods are not in agreement for any one rock. Archaeologists regularly send rocks out to be tested for age, but they give the ages only in a way that keeps the grant money coming – they no longer really trust the data.

For this reason and others, many scientists are moving away from the old-earth model.

What Do You Think?

a. If you believe in a 4.6-billion-year-old earth, how do you make the above facts fit? Do you try to?

b. The above confirmed facts prove that evolution did not have enough time to occur due to the young age of the earth. Do these facts bolster the Bible’s account of creation? Why or why not?

Morris, John, The Young Earth. (Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2007.)

I’ve watched numerous court scenes on television as the prosecutor presents his case against the accused and the defendant’s attorney defends her client with her presentation of the facts. When neither side has more than circumstantial evidence, it is hard to prove a case. The few leads they’ve received can sometimes present a compelling case for either side.

The evolutionist points to similar features of man and monkey as indications that they share a common ancestor. Six-day creationists see the same features as merely shared design traits. Both sides of the debate have no problem with the data. The actual data is neutral.

Fossils are physical records of the past. For the creationist who believes that God did not use macro evolution to create, the lack of transitions in the fossil record from one species into another tell a plain tale: God created each kind individually.

I dislike the many misleading claims that are still appearing in our textbooks as proofs for evolution. I saw the poster depicting man’s evolving ascent from a so-called common ancestor of the crouching apes. However, they are only an artist’s rendering of the ideal of evolution. Few of those skeletons are in any museum. All the rest of the creatures either have no physical basis, or are composed of a single bone or two. Based on current findings, I can hold up the same poster and declare that it depicts the ideal that God created these forms as independent groups that did not evolve into one another.

I saw the picture of the growth from birth to full maturity of human, bird, reptile, mammal, etc., all sharing a similar appearance in the womb. The idea is that all forms of life trace their evolutionary route during the stages of their birth. However, someone showed me the real appearance of the early births – which were unlike the drawings that portrayed evolution in an idealized light.

I saw the pictures of a white moth on a light tree and a dark moth on a dark tree, shot in London. London was getting dirty because of smog. Evolutionists hailed the appearance of the black moth as a sign of the white moth evolving into black to merge in with the darkened trees to escape the birds picking them off the bark. Then a scientist admitted to gluing a dead black moth to a black tree and shooting the picture. The fabricated shot was to show what it would be like if evolution were true.

I saw the picture of the geologic column showing the layers of the earth and their approximate ages. Did you know that the geologic column depicts an ideal of evolution that is not found anywhere on earth?

If the evidence for macro evolution is indisputable, why isn’t that evidence in the textbooks instead of the above fabricated foundations?

If life evolved purely by chance, then God had nothing to do with us and we are no different than the animals. (Some Christians believe that God could have created us through the process of evolution. But I can’t accept that view.)

If God created all things miraculously, apart from evolution, and made man as a special creation, then man has significance because of his tie-in with the Creator. Through the Word of God, truth becomes objective, an outside frame of reference we could all agree upon. We would acknowledge that God is a God of order and we should be able to investigate the underlying natural laws that undergird his creation. This many God-believing scientists have done.

Humanists have decided that since there is no God, then truth is subjective. We each determine our own truth. Applied to law, judges will legislate from the bench, creating laws based on the present will of the people (such as in Roe vs. Wade) rather than based on the higher value of human life given us by the Creator on the basis that we were made in his image. In school, students have been taught “values clarification” to determine their own reality. “You have your truth and I have my truth,” is the result. Since there is no objective standard for truth, as they say, Christianity is merely one viable idea among many.

The question of origins is important. The beauty of God’s creation should make us want to know more about the Creator. This idea is not foreign to us. A gorgeous work of art helps us appreciate the artist. Beautiful music moves us to admire the composer and musician. Majestic architecture should make us appreciate the builder and architectural firm.

Creation and origins, properly understood, will give us a deeper understanding of God and greater value of human life.

What Do You Think?

a. Have you ever wondered if you had a famous ancestor in your family tree? Have you ever wondered whether your gift was handed down through your ancestors?

b. Should one’s origin, whether from amoeba or God, make a difference in one’s outlook in life?

c. Have you ever prized a drawing more dearly because a close friend or child drew it for you? Why should the drawing’s origin make a difference in the perceived value?