Indicators of a young Earth, with rebuttals
Indicators 6 to 11, based on Earth observations
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This is a continuation of an earlier list of indicators
Six more indicators of a young earth included in this essay are:
Indicator 6: Mt. St. Helen's: Evolutionists say that it takes millions of years to form a
thick layer of sedimentary rock. But when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, a
few hundred feet of sediment was laid down in a few days. These layers are seen
stratified into many layers, just as sedimentary rock appears. This does not
prove that the earth is young. However, it does show that layers of rock can
form in days rather than millions of years.
Rebuttal: It is true that the ash from St. Helen's did form a deposit
within a few days that was a few hundred feet thick in places. But it was a
deposit of fine ash, of pumice. Any geologist can differentiate between layers
of pumice and actual sedimentary rock -- i.e. sandstone or limestone. Their
textures and colors are entirely different.
Indicator 7: Earth's magnetic field: The earth's
magnetic field is decaying at an exponential rate. It has decreased about 10%
over the past 150 years. If one extrapolates backwards in time for only 10,000 years, it would
have been impossibly high. The field would have:
"... been so powerful that
enzymes necessary for life processes and enzymes inside the functioning cell
could not have held together...If you go back as far as fifteen to
twenty-thousand years ago the energy of the earth's geo-magnetic field would
have approximated that of a magnetic star. As a result many of the atoms of the
earth could not have held together." 1
Thus,
we can safely conclude that the earth must be less than 10,000 years old.
Rebuttal: "In 1835 Carl Gouse of Germany for the first time in
history measured the earth's geo-magnetic field." 2 In 1967, Keith McDonald and Robert Gunst collected a series
of about two dozen measurements that scientists had made of the earth's magnetic
field since 1835. In 1971, Dr. Thomas Barnes of the University of Texas fitted these
data to an exponentially decaying function,
producing the above results. Barnes concluded that the earth's magnetic field
has been reduced by half every 1,400 years. There are a number of errors in Barnes'
conclusions. Perhaps the most serious two are:
The field does not decay at an exponential rate; it fluctuates
widely. Precise measurements of the magnetic field have only been taken
since 1845. The measurements that he used were taken over too short a period
of time to extrapolate backwards by 1,400 years. "...archaeomagnetic data show that the dipole field was
about 20% weaker than the present field 6,500 years ago and about 45%
stronger than the present field about 3000 years ago." 3
The earth's magnetic field is not in a constant direction; it
periodically reduces to zero and then reverses itself. That is,
mechanical compasses on earth would gradually become less sensitive.
Eventually, the North end of a compass needle would start to point
South. This has been detected in the form of
zebra-like magnetic stripes in the rocks of the floor of the Pacific
Ocean which alternately change polarity on each side of a spreading
fault. Hundreds of reversals have occurred over the past 180 million
years. Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University predicts that it could reach
zero about 1,500 to 2,000 years from now. 4
Indicator 8: Earth's rotational speed: The speed
with which the earth rotates on its axis is slowing. Each day, the time taken
for the earth to rotate on it axis is slowing down by about 1.5 milliseconds.
This may not seem like much. But it amounts to over six seconds per decade.
Astronomers must insert leap seconds many times each decade to compensate for
this slowing. If the earth's rate of deceleration has been constant throughout
the life of the earth, then its rotational speed would have been very high 4.5
billion years ago. A day would be have been only a few seconds long. This high
rotational speed would have long
ago flattened into the shape of a pancake. 5 That clearly did
not happen, so the age of the earth must be a very small fraction of 4.5 billion
years.
Rebuttal: In spite of the many web sites that show the error in this
reasoning, many creation science promoters still offer this argument. Their
basic belief is wrong: the time taken for the earth to rotate on its axis is
slowing down by only about 1.5 milliseconds per century -- not per day.
The Moon raises tides in the ocean. This generates friction between the sea
and the earth, diminishing the earth's speed of rotation. "This effect causes
a slowing of the Earth's rotational speed resulting in a lengthening of the day
by about 0.0015 to 0.0020 seconds per day per century." 6 The insertion of a leap second in most years is not directly related to this
deceleration. In fact, if the earth stopped decelerating and achieved a constant
speed, there would still be a need to insert leap seconds in most years. The
need for leap seconds is caused by our basic definition of time, which is
currently derived from atomic clocks. The second has been defined to match the
day as it was in the year 1900. Over a century has passed since that time.
During that century, each day has lengthened by about 1.8 milliseconds. So, over a
year, the difference between an atomic clock and the earth is about 365 x 0.18 =
657 milliseconds, or 0.66 seconds. Thus the need for the leap second in most
years. A century from now, the accumulated error will be over a second each
year, requiring two leap seconds in some years.
We attempted to dialog with 15 creation science
web sites which are in error on this matter. Even though we were able to prove
that they were in error, only one webmaster acknowledged that they were wrong.
And they decided to retain the error because their essay was part of their
archive, so accuracy did not matter.
Indicator 9: Population growth rates: If you start
with a single couple who have three children, then after 52 generations (or
1,820 years if we assume 35 years per human generation) the resultant population
would be 4.3 billion people. A visitor to this site quoted a creation scientists
as saying:
"Reasonable figures show man's antiquity to be in terms of
thousands of years; the same figures spread over a conservative estimate
of evolutionary history (one million years) would infer a contemporary
population on earth 104,900 times greater than could fit in the entire universe."
Rebuttal: If this argument were true, then it would eliminate the
possibility of Genesis being correct. If we started with Noah and his wife in
2313 BCE, 35 years before the flood, then by the late 3rd
century BCE, the worlds population would have been 4.3 billion. By the time of
the birth of Jesus, it would have reached 42 billion. These figures are
obviously wrong, even if the Bible were true. The fatal flaw in this argument is
that the population levels work on an entirely different system. Populations
tend to increase rapidly out of control rapidly until limited by food supply,
wars, natural disasters, disease, etc. That cuts them down a much smaller number, from
which they start to increase once more. The concept of the human race starting
from a single couple and steadily increasing in numbers according to an
exponential equation -- like compound interest -- is without merit.
Indicator 10: Topsoil depth: Scientists have
calculated that it takes up from 300 to 1,000 years to accumulate one inch of
topsoil. The average depth of topsoil on the earth is about eight inches. Thus,
the earth is quite young.
Rebuttal: If this argument were true, then those areas of the
earth where the topsoil level increases quickly -- at the rate of one inch per
300 years -- must be only 2,400 years old. Those parts of the earth would have
had to be created circa 400 BCE, following the Babylonian captivity. Meanwhile,
parts of the Ukraine have over 50 feet of topsoil. This indicates that the
Ukraine is at least 15,000 years old -- much older than most new Earth creation scientists
are willing to accept for the age of the Earth.
In reality, topsoil generation is not a process of gradual accumulation at a
constant rate. It is a dynamic process. Top soil is built up at a given location
by degrading plant material and by minerals leached from the underlying rock. It
is washed away through erosion. It is also built up through the collection of
sediment that may come from great distances. Even if it were left to gradually
accumulate undisturbed -- without any active erosion or deposition processes --
there are still mechanisms that cause the soil depth to reach an equilibrium
value and stop growing. 7
Indicator 11: Erosion of the continents: The
processes of erosion are tearing down the continents and sweeping them into the
oceans in the form of sediment. The total weight of all of the continents above
sea level is about 383 million billion tons. But erosion occurs at the rate of
about 27.5 billion tons each year. Erosion would thus completely flatten the
continents in less than 14 million years. No matter how high mountains were on
the early earth, they would be long gone by now through the process of erosion.
Thus, the earth cannot be billions of years old.
Rebuttal: The fallacy here is that there are additional processes that
act to counteract the effects of erosion. There are immense forces from the
earth's colliding tectonic plates which are pushing up mountains. There are
increases in land mass due to lava from volcanoes, and the addition of rising
masses of molten rock from the earth's mantle. The result is that there are many
processes involved in mountains: wind and water erosion tear down mountains;
other processes build them up. In the U.S. for example, Wisconsin contains a
large area of once-tall mountains that "are now worn down so low as to
constitute a rather simple plain..." 8 Here, erosion has
been the main process in the past many millions of years. The Rocky Mountains
are newer and were caused by subducting tectonic plates. This process continues
to build up the Rockies today, overwhelming the forces of erosion. 9
Related essays on this web site:
Indicators that evolution never happened (with rebuttals)
Indicators of an old earth (with rebuttals)
Attempts to dialog with creation science
webmasters
References used:
The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above
essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.
- "Earth: Geodetic and Geophysical Data" at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/
- "Evangelism: The time is now," at: http://www.layevangelism.com/
- "Evidence for a young earth," at: http://genesis.amen.net/
- "Report: Earth's magnetic field fading. Slight chance of flipping
magnetic poles," CNN News, 2003-DEC-12, at: http://edition.cnn.com/
- "Evidence for a young earth," at: http://genesis.amen.net/
- "Earth Rotation," at: http://www.colorado.edu/
- Dave Matson, "Specific Creationist Arguments," at: http://www.infidels.org/
- "The Geographical Provinces of Wisconsin," at: http://www.wisconline.com/wisconsin/geoprovinces/
- "The Rocky Mountain System," at: http://www.aqd.nps.gov/grd/usgsnps/province/rockymtn.html
Copyright © 1996 to 2012 by Ontario Consultants on
Religious Tolerance
Last updated: 2012-SEP-23
Author: B.A. Robinson
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