While science may propose that the earth is millions, or even billions, of years old, God's Word flatly contradicts this assertion and leaves very little wiggle room (if any) for those who wish to hold to such a view. There are far more and simpler explanations for what science supposedly "proves" that bring science into harmony with God's Word than there are logical and appropriate ways of reinterpreting God's Word in an attempt to bring it into harmony with science.

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The following is a chapter from an extensive PDF e-book (4.64MB) which exposes the fallacious 'evidence' for evolution and an old universe which can be downloaded for free here: http://www.evolution-facts.org/Downloads/Evolution%20CruncherP.pdf

THE AGE

OF THE EARTH

First we shall consider EVIDENCE FROM THE

STARS that the universe itself is quite young:

1 - STAR CLUSTERS—There are many star clusters in

the universe. Each one is a circular ball composed of bil-lions

upon billions of stars, each with its own orbit. Sci-ence

tells us that some of these clusters—with their

stars—are moving so rapidly, together, in a certain di-rection

that it should be impossible for them to remain

together if the universe were very old.

2 - LARGE STARS—Some stars are so enormous in

diameter that it is thought that they could not have ex-isted

for even a few million years, otherwise their ini-tial

larger mass would have been impossibly large.

These massive stars radiate energy very rapidly—some as

much as 100,000 to 1 million times more rapidly than our

own sun. On the hydrogen basis of stellar energy, they

could not have contained enough hydrogen to radiate at

such fast rates for long ages, because their initial mass

would have had to be far too gigantic.

the very bright O and B class stars, the Wolf-Rayfert stars,

and the P Cygni stars. Radiation levels of 100,000 to 1

million times as much as our own sun are emitted by these

stars! Yet, by the standard solar energy theory, they do not

contain enough hydrogen to perpetuate atomic fusion

longer than approximately 50,000 to 300,000 years.

binaries: two stars circling one another. But many of these

binary systems point us to a young age for the universe,

because they consist of theoretically "young" and "old"

stars circling one another.

5 - HYDROGEN IN UNIVERSE—According to one

theory of solar energy, hydrogen is constantly being con-verted

into helium as stars shine. But hydrogen cannot be

made by converting other elements into it. Fred Hoyle, a

leading astronomer, maintains that, if the universe were

as old as Big Bang theorists contend, there should be

little hydrogen in it. It would all have been transformed

into helium by now. Yet stellar spectra reveal an abun-dance

of hydrogen in the stars, therefore the universe must

be youthful.

6 - SOLAR COLLAPSE—Research studies indicate that

our sun is gradually shrinking at a steady rate of seconds of

arc per century. At its rate of shrinkage, as little as

50,000 years ago the sun would have been so large

that our oceans would boil. But in far less a time than

50,000 years, life here would have ceased to exist. Re-cent

studies have disclosed that neither the size of the sun,

nor our distance from it, could be much greater or smaller—

in order for life to be sustained on our planet.

"By analyzing data from Greenwich Observatory in

the period 1836-1953, John A. Eddy [Harvard-Smith-sonian

Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Ob-servatory

in Boulder] and Aram A. Boornazian [math-ematician

with S. Ross and Co. in Boston] have found

evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1%

per century during that time, corresponding to a shrink-age

rate of about 5 feet per hour. And digging deep into

historical records, Eddy has found 400-year-old eclipse

observations that are consistent with such a shrinkage."—

Extrapolating back, 100,000 years ago, the sun would

have been about twice its present size, making life unten-able.

that the sun is emitting hardly any neutrinos. This evi-dence

points directly to a very youthful sun. These neu-trinos

ought to be radiating outward from the sun in very

large amounts, but this is not occurring. This fact, coupled

with the discovery that the sun is shrinking in size, point

to a recently created sun.

assumed to have the same age as our world and solar sys-tem.

But, as *Fred Whipple has acknowledged, astrono-mers

have no idea where or how comets originated. Yet

we know that they are continually disintegrating. This

is because they are composed of bits of rocky debris

held together by frozen gases and water. Each time a

comet circles the sun, some of the ice is evaporated and

some of the gas is boiled away by the sun's heat. Addi-tional

material is lost through gravitational forces, tail

formation, meteor stream production, and radiative forces.

The most spectacular part of a comet is its tail, yet this

consists of material driven away from its head by solar

energy. All the tail material is lost in space as the comet

moves onward.

A number of comets have broken up and dissipated

within the period of human observation. Some of those

regularly seen in the nineteenth century have now van-ished.

Others have died spectacularly by plunging into the

sun.

that the effect of this dissolution process on short-term

comets would have totally dissipated them within

10,000 years.

There are numerous comets circling our sun, includ-ing

many short-term ones, with no source of new comets

known to exist.

that scientists have discovered that comets are primarily

composed of water, and that many small comets are con-tinually

striking the earth. Yet each strike adds more

water to our planet. Scientific evidence indicates that, if

the earth was billions of years old, our oceans would be

filled several times over with water.

solar system were billions of years old. Yet research stud-ies

by satellites in space have shown that those small par-

ticles are abundant and still orbiting the sun. Therefore our

solar system is quite young.

acting like a giant vacuum cleaner, sweeps up about

100,000 tons [82,301 mt] of micrometeoroids each day.

The actual process by which this occurs has been analyzed.

Each particle absorbs energy from the sun and then re-radiates

it in all directions. This causes a slowing down of

the particle in its orbit and causes it to fall into the sun. At

its present rate, our sun would have cleaned up most of

the particles in less than 10,000 years, and all of it within

50,000 years.

Yet there is an abundance of these small pieces of rock,

and there is no known source of replenishment. This is

because each solar system would lock in its own microme-teoroids

so they could not escape to another one, and the

gravity on each planet and moon would forbid any of its

gravel to fly out into space.

12 - COMPOSITION OF SATURN'S RINGS—*G.P.

Kuiper reported, in 1967, that the trillions of particles in

the rings circling the planet Saturn are primarily com-posed

of solid ammonia. Since solidified ammonia has

a much higher vapor pressure than even ice, reputable

scientists recognize that it could not survive long with-out

vaporizing off into space. This is a strong indicator

of a young age for Saturn's rings.

have disclosed that Jupiter and Uranus also have rings en-circling

them! (In addition, a 1989 Neptune flyby revealed

that it also has rings—four of them.) These discoveries

have only augmented the problem of the evolutionists, for

was launched on September 5, 1977. Aimed at the planet

Jupiter, it made its closest approach to that planet on March

5, 1979. Thousands of pictures and thousands of measure-ments

were taken of Jupiter and its moons.

These volcanoes spew plumes of ejecta from 60

to 160 miles [97 to 257 km] above Io's surface. This is

astounding.

Nothing on our planet can match this continuous

stream of material being shot out by Io's volcanoes at a

velocity of 2000 miles per hour [3218 km per hour]! The

usual evolutionary model portrays all the planets and

moons as being molten 5 billion years ago. During the

next billion years they are said to have had active volca-noes.

Then, 4 billion years ago, the volcanism stopped as

they cooled. Io is quite small, yet it has the most active

volcanoes we know of. Obviously, it is quite young and

its internal heat has not had time to cool.

16 - MOONS TOO DIFFERENT—If all four moons

of Jupiter's "Galilean moons" evolved, they should be

essentially alike in physical characteristics. The the-orized

millions of years they have existed should cause

them to have the same amount of volcanoes and impact

craters, but this is not so. In contrast, a recent creation

would explain Io's volcanoes and the variety of other sur-face

features.

The Age of the Earth 131.OWN MOON that it is quite young:

it, one of the reasons so much money was spent to send a

rocket to the moon was to see how thick the dust was on

its surface!

Evolutionists had long held to the fact (as we do) that

the earth and moon are about the same age. It is believed,

by many, that the earth and its moon are billions of years

old. If that were true, the moon would by now have

built up a 20-60 mile [32 to 97 km] layer of dust on it!

In *Isaac Asimov's first published essay (1958), he

wrote:

" . . I get a picture, therefore, of the first spaceship [to

the moon], picking out a nice level place for landing pur-poses,

coming slowly downward tail-first and sinking

majestically out of sight."—*Isaac Asimov, Asimov on

Science: A Thirty-Year Retrospective (1989), xvi-xvii.

In the 1950s, *R.A. Lyttleton, a highly respected astro-nomer,

said this:

"The lunar surface is exposed to direct sunlight, and

strong ultraviolet light and X-rays [from the sun] can

destroy the surface layers of exposed rock and reduce

them to dust at the rate of a few ten-thousandths of an

inch per year. But even this minute amount could, dur-ing

the age of the moon, be sufficient to form a layer

over it several miles deep."—*R.A. Lyttleton, quoted in

R. Wysong, Creation-Evolution Controversy, p. 175.

In 5 to 10 billion years, 3 or 4/10,000ths of an inch per

year would produce 20-60 miles [32-97 km] of dust. In

view of this, our men at NASA were afraid to send men to

the moon. Landing there, they would be buried in dust and

quickly suffocate! So NASA first sent an unmanned lander

to its surface, which made the surprising discovery that

there was hardly any dust on the moon! In spite of that

discovery, Neil Armstrong was decidedly worried about

this dust problem as his March 1970 flight in Apollo 11

neared. He feared his lunar lander would sink deeply into

it and he and Edwin Aldrin would perish. But because the

moon is young, they had no problem. There is not over 2

or 3 inches [5.08 or 7.62 cm] of dust on its surface! That

is the amount one would expect if the moon were about

6000-8000 years old.

*Dr. Lyttleton's facts were correct; solar radiation does

indeed turn the moon rocks into dust. With only a few

inches of dust, the moon cannot be older than a few thou-sand

years.

It is significant that studies on the moon have shown

that only 1/60th of the one- or two-inch dust layer on

the moon originated from outer space. This has been

corroborated by still more recent measurements of the in-flux

rate of dust on the moon, which also do not support

an old moon.

possibility of long ages for the moon's existence. The dirt

on the moon does not reveal the amount of soil mixing

that would be expected if the moon were very old.

19 - LUNAR ISOTOPES—Many wonder what value

there has been in collecting moon rocks. One of the most

surprising moon rock discoveries is seldom mentioned:

in the moon rocks! The importance of this should not

be underestimated. The moon cannot be older than sev-eral

thousand years.

by Apollo teams from the moon have been dated by the

various radiometric methods. A variety of very conflict-ing

dates have resulted from these tests. But the factor

of relatively high radioactivity of those rocks indicates

a young age for the moon.

21 - LUNAR GASES—Several inert gases have been

found on the surface of the moon. Scientists believe that

these gases came from the sun, in the form of "solar

wind." Mathematical calculation reveals that, at today's

intensity of solar wind, the amount of inert gases found

on the moon would be built up in 1000 to 10,000 years,

—and no longer. These calculations are based on Argon

36 and Krypton 84 concentrations. Even 20,000 years ago

would be far too lengthy a time. Therefore the moon could

not be older than about 6000-10,000 years.

of transient lunar activity (moon quakes, lava flows, gas

emissions, etc.) reveals that the moon is not a cold, dead

body. It is still adjusting to inner stresses and is not yet in

thermal equilibrium. Yet, all things considered, if the moon

were very old it should not show such thermal activ-ity.

23 - LUNAR RECESSION—Scientists have discovered

two interesting facts: (1) the moon is already far too close

to the earth, and (2) it is gradually moving farther away

from us. This is called recession of the moon. Due to tidal

friction, the moon is slowly spiraling outward away from

planet earth! Based on the rate at which the moon is reced-ing

from us, the earth and the moon cannot be very old.

This is an important point and can in no way be contro-verted.

The present rate of recession clearly indicates a

young age for the earth-moon system. If the moon were

older—even 20 to 30,000 years old,—it would at that

earlier time have been so close that it would have fallen

into the earth!

"The moon is slowly receding from Earth at about 4

cm [1½ in] per year, and the rate would have been greater

in the past. The moon could never have been closer than

18,400 km [11,500 miles], known as the Roche Limit,

because Earth's tidal forces would have shattered it."—

of either uranium or thorium produces helium. According

to evolutionary theory, these decay chains have been

going on for billions of years, and should therefore

have produced a much larger quantity of helium than

is found in our world. The amount of helium on our planet

is far too small, if our world has existed for long ages.

"There ought to be about a thousand times as much

helium in the atmosphere as there is."—*"What Hap-pened

to the Earth's Helium?" New Scientist, 24, De-cember

3, 1964.

To fit the evolutionary pattern, our atmosphere would

now have to contain much more than our present 1.4 parts

per million of helium. Some evolutionists have suggested

that the helium is escaping out into space, but no evi-dence

has ever been found to substantiate this. Research

has shown that, although hydrogen can escape from the

earth, helium is not able to reach "escape velocity." In

order to do so, the temperature of the planet would have to

be too high to support the life that evolutionists say has

been here for over a billion years.

To make matters worse, not only are we not losing

helium to outer space—we are getting more of it from

there! *Cook has shown that helium, spewed out by the

sun's corona, is probably entering our atmosphere (Melvin

A. Cook, "Where is the Earth's Radiogenic Helium?"

Nature 179, January 26, 1957).

Atmospheric helium is produced from three sources:

(1) radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. (2) Cosmic

helium flowing into our atmosphere from space, but espe-cially

the sun's corona. (3) Nuclear reactions in the earth's

crust, caused by cosmic ray bombardment.

this, a worldwide catastrophic event in the past such as the

Flood could, for a short time, have unleashed much larger

amounts of helium into the atmosphere. Such an event

could significantly reduce the total atmospheric age. He-lium

content is a good measure, since there is no known

way it can escape from the atmosphere into outer space.

Also see Larry Vardiman, The Age of the Earth's At-mosphere:

A Study of the Helium Flux through the Atmo-sphere

(1990), in which he argues that, on the basis of

atmospheric helium content, the earth cannot be over

10,000 years old.

that is used by evolutionary scientists in an attempt to prove

that life has existed on our planet for millions of years!

Robert Whitelaw, a nuclear and engineering expert at

Virginia Polytechnic Institute, found that the production

rate is not equal to the disintegration rate. In fact, his cal-culations

reveal a recent turning on of the C-14 clock,—

otherwise the two factors would be balanced. Whitelaw's

research indicates that the clock was turned on approxi-mately

8000 years ago. (See chapter 6, Inaccurate Dating

Methods, for more on radiocarbon dating.)

into the atmosphere and landing on our planet. They

are then known as meteorites. But small amounts of me-teor

dust (called micrometeors and too small to see) also

enter our atmosphere and gradually settle to earth. The

composition of these materials is iron, nickel, and silicate

compounds.

known that, because of meteorites and meteorite dust, the

earth increases in weight by about 25 tons [22.7 mt] each

day.

We have here another evidence of a young earth; for

easy to locate, especially since we now have such excel-lent

aerial and satellite mapping systems. For example,

the meteor crater near Winslow, Arizona, is ¾ mile [1.2

km] in diameter and 600 feet [1,829 dm] deep. Efforts

have been made to locate meteor craters in the rock

strata, but without success. They always lie close to or

on the surface. This and erosional evidence indicate that

all the meteor craters which have struck the earth are

all only a few thousand years old. No larger meteors

struck the earth prior to that time, for no meteor craters are

found anywhere in the lower rocks.

continually plunging into earth's atmosphere, and some

reach the surface and are then called meteorites. Suppos-edly

this has happened for millions of years—yet all the

meteorites discovered are always right next to the earth's

surface! There are no exceptions! No meteorites are ever

found in the deeper ("older") sedimentary strata. If the

earth were very ancient, many should be found farther

down. This is an evidence of a young earth. It is also an

indication that the sedimentary strata was rather quickly

laid down not too long in the past.

"No meteorites have ever been found in the geologic

column."—*Fred Whipple, "Comets," in The New As-tronomy,

p. 207.

"For many years, I have searched for meteorites or

meteoric material in sedimentary rocks [the geological

strata] . . I have interviewed the late Dr. G.P. Merrill, of

the U.S. National Museum, and Dr. G.T. Prior, of the

British Natural History Museum, both well-known stu-dents

of meteorites, and neither man knew of a single

occurrence of a meteorite in sedimentary rocks."—*W.A.

Tarr, "Meteorites in Sedimentary Rocks?" Science 75,

January 1932.

earthly origin, there is definite evidence that they are actu-ally

meteorites.

Every so often, a shower of tektites falls to the earth.

The first were found in 1787 in what is now western

Czechoslovakia. Those in Australia were found in 1864.

They were given the name tektites, from a Greek word for

"molten," because they appear to have melted in their pas-sage

through the atmosphere. Tektites have also been found

in Texas and several other places. Each shower lies on

the surface or in the topmost layers of soil; they are

never found in the sedimentary fossil-bearing strata. If

the earth were 5 billion years old, as suggested by evolu-tionists,

we should expect to find tektite showers in all the

strata. If the earth is only a few thousand years old, and a

Flood produced all the strata, we would expect to find the

tektites only in the topmost layers of the ground and not in

the deeper strata. And that is where they are.

sun, moon, and other factors cause this. If the earth were

really billions of years old, as claimed, it would already

have stopped turning on its axis! This is yet another evi-dence

that our world is not very old.

Lord Kelvin (the 19th-century physicist who intro-duced

the Kelvin temperature scale) used this slowing ro-tation

as a reason why the earth could not be very old. The

decline in rotation rate is now known to be greater than

previously thought (Thomas G. Barnes, "Physics: A Chal-lenge

to 'Geologic Times,' " Impact 16, July 1974).

Using a different calculation, we can extrapolate back-ward

from our present spin rate and 5 billion years ago our

planet would have had to be spinning so fast it would have

changed to the shape of a flat pancake. We, today, would

still have the effects of that: Our equator would now reach

40 miles [64 km] up into the sky, and our tropical areas—

and all our oceans—would be at the poles. So, by either

type of calculation, our world cannot be more than a few

thousand years old.

know, the earth has a magnetic field. Without it, we could

not use compasses to identify the direction of magnetic

north (which is close to the North Pole). Dr. Thomas G.

Barnes, a physics teacher at the University of Texas, has

authored a widely used college textbook on electricity and

magnetism. Working with data collected over the past 135

years, he has pointed out that earth's magnetic field is

gradually decaying. Indeed, he has shown that this magnetic

field is decreasing exponentially, according to a

decay law similar to the decay of radioactive substances.

In 1835 the German physicist, K.F. Gauss, made the

first measurement of the earth's magnetic dipole moment,

that is, the strength of earth's internal magnet. Additional

evaluations have been carried out every decade or so since

then. Since 1835, global magnetism has decreased 14

percent!

On the basis of facts obtained from 1835 to 1965, this

magnetic field appears to have a half-life of 1400 years.

On this basis, even 7000 years ago, the earth would have

had a magnetic field 32 times stronger than it now has.

Just 20,000 years ago, enough Joule heat would have been

generated to liquefy the earth. One million years ago the

earth would have had greater magnetism than all objects

in the universe, and it would have vaporized! It would

appear that the earth could not be over 6000 or 7000 years

old. (On the accompanying graph, beyond the point where

the curve becomes vertical, our planet would have had the

magnetosphere power of a magnetic star!)

"The over-all intensity of the field is declining at a

rate of 26 nanoteslas per year . . If the rate of decline

were to continue steadily, the field strength would reach

zero in 1,200 years."—*"Magnetic Field Declining," Sci-ence

News, June 28, 1980.

"In the next two millennia, if the present rate of decay

is sustained, the dipole component of the [earth's mag-netic]

field should reach zero."—*Scientific American,

December 1989.

less than 10,000 years for the age of the earth.

Next we shall consider EVIDENCE FROM BE-NEATH

THE SURFACE that the earth is quite young:

32 - ESCAPING NATURAL GAS—Oil and gas are usu-ally

located in a porous and permeable rock like sandstone

or limestone, which is sealed by an impermeable rock-like

shale. Fluids and gas can easily travel through the con-taining

rock, but more slowly pass out of the impermeable

cap. Evolutionary theory postulates that tens or hundreds

of millions of years ago, the oil and gas were trapped in

there.

But natural gas can still get through the shale cap.

A recent study analyzed the rate of escape of gas through

shale caps. It was found to be far too rapid for ac-ceptance

by evolutionary theory. If the world were bil-lions

of years old, all the natural gas would already have

escaped.

first penetrate into oil, a geyser ("gusher") of oil spews

forth. Studies of the permeability of the surrounding rock

indicate that any pressure within the oil bed should have

bled off within a few thousand years, but this obviously

has not happened yet. The excessive pressure within these

oil beds refutes the "old earth" theory and provides strong

evidence that these deep rock formations and the entrapped

oil are less than 7000-10,000 years old. The great pres-sures

now existing in oil reserves could only have been

sustained for a few thousand years.

"Why do we see an explosive gusher when a drill

strikes oil? Because oil, like natural gas, is maintained in

the earth at enormously high pressure—about 5000

pounds per square inch at a depth of 10,000 feet. Sup-

posedly oil and gas have been lying there for millions of

years. But how could they have lasted that long without

leaking or otherwise dissipating those extreme pres-sures."—

decided evidence that the earth's crust is not as old as

evolutionary geologists had thought. *Blumer says that

In contrast, geologists have already located 630 bil-lion

barrels [1,002 billion kl] of oil that can be recovered

from offshore wells. But if our planet were older than

20,000 years, there would be no offshore oil of any kind to

locate and recover through oil rigs.

All of the oil in the world must have been

placed there only in the recent past. We can know this

because if long ages of time had elapsed for earth's his-tory,

then we should find evidence of anciently de-stroyed

oil reservoirs. There would be places where all

the oil had leaked out and left only residues, which

would show in drilling cores! But such locations are never

found. Coal is found in various stages of decomposition,

but oil reservoirs are never found to have seeped away.

rocks are molten; but, if the earth were billions of years

old, long ages ago our planet would have cooled far more

than it now has.

we will learn that many of these were active during the

time that the oceans were filling with water.

would have a far larger amount of volcanic material cov-ering

its surface. Instead we find that the Deluge primarily

laid down the sedimentary deposits.

But even today's volcanoes are an indication of an

early age for the earth. If even the present low rate of vol-canic

activity had continued for the long ages claimed by

evolutionists for earth's history, there would be far more

lava than there now is. Only a young age for our world can

explain the conditions we see on earth's surface now.

were made by R.V. Gentry, and both are discussed

in detail in chapter 3, Origin of the Earth, and in his book,

Zircon crystals were taken in core samples from five

levels of a very hot, dry 15,000-foot [45,720 dm] hole in

New Mexico, with temperatures always above 313° C.

[595.4° F.]. That is more than 200° C. [392° F.] hotter

than the sea-level temperature of boiling water.

to a young age for the earth.

thorium radioactively decay, they emit alpha particles—

which are actually helium atoms stripped of their elec-trons.

Yet helium is a gas and can diffuse out of crystals

much more rapidly than many other elements, including

lead. Since heat increases chemical activity, all that he-lium

should be gone if the earth were more than a few

thousand years old.

in the soil beneath our feet that the earth is quite young,

for it is still in the partially water-soaked condition that

it incurred at the time of the Flood. This evidence indi-cates

that a Flood took place, and that it occurred not more

than a few thousand years ago. This is shown by water

table levels (which, as you know, we today are rapidly

draining).

41 - TOPSOIL—The average depth of topsoil

throughout the world is about eight inches. Allowing

for losses due to erosion, it has been calculated that it re-quires

300 to 1000 years to build one inch [2.54 cm] of

topsoil. On this basis, the earth could only be a few thou-sand

years old.

Hennepin, first mapped Niagara Falls in 1678. From that

time until 1842, the falls eroded the cliff beneath them at a

rate of about 7 feet [213 cm] per year. More recent calcu-lations

would indicate a rate of 3.5 feet [106.68 cm] of

erosion per year. Since the length of the Niagara Falls

gorge is about 7 miles [11 km], the age of the falls would

be 5000 to 10,000 years.

But, of course, the worldwide Flood, the existence

of which is clearly established by rock strata and other

geological evidence, would have been responsible for a

massive amount of initial erosion of the falls.

There are a number of large waterfalls in the world

which plunge into gorges; and, over the centuries past,

these were dug out as the waterfall gradually eroded away

the cliff beneath it. In each instance, the distance of the

cut that has been made, in relation to the amount of ero-sion

that is being made each year by the falls, indicates

only a few thousand years since the falls began.

photograph of the Mississippi River delta? You can find

an outline of it on any larger United States map. That river

dumps 300 million cubic yards [229 million cubic meters]

of mud into the Gulf of Mexico every year, at the point

where the river enters the gulf. For this reason, the State of

Louisiana keeps becoming larger. Yet, for the amount of

sediment dumping that occurs, the Mississippi delta is

not very large. In fact, calculations reveal it has only been

forming for the past 4000 years.

The Mississippi-Missouri river system is the longest

in the world and is about 4221 miles [6,792 km] in length.

Because, below Cape Girardeau, flatland inundation along

the Mississippi has always been a problem, over a hun-dred

years ago, Congress commissioned *General Andrew

A. Humphreys to make a survey of the whole area. It was

completed in 1861. The English evolutionist, *Charles

Lyell, had earlier made a superficial examination of the

river and its delta and declared the river system to be 60,000

years old since, he said, the delta was 528 feet [1609 dm]

deep.

But Humphreys showed that the actual depth of

the delta was only 40 feet. Below that was the blue clay

of the Gulf, and below that, marine fossils. His discovery

revealed that the lower Mississippi valley used to be a ma-rine

estuary. Using Lyell's formula for age computation,

Humphreys arrived at an age of about 4620 years, which

would be approximately the time of the Genesis Flood.

Ur of the Chaldees was a seaport several thousand years

ago. Today it is almost 200 miles [322 km] from the Per-sian

Gulf. That distance was filled in as delta formation

filled from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Archaeolo-gists

date the seaport Ur at 3500 B.C. Assuming that date,

the delta formed at 35 miles [56 km] for every 1000 years.

old. If that is so, 80,000 years ago the Persian Gulf would

have reached to Paris! At the same rate of delta formation,

120,000 years ago the Gulf of Mexico would have extended

up through the Mississippi River—to the North Pole!

every 1500 years. Measuring the depth of this ooze, it is

clear that the earth is quite young.

An excellent example of this is the topology of

Monterey Bay, California. It is filled with steep underwa-ter

canyons—so steep that small avalanches occur on them

quite frequently. (See *"Between Monterey Tides," Na-tional

Geographic, February 1990, pp. 2-43; especially

note map on pp. 10-11.) If the earth were as old as the

evolutionists claim, all this would long ago have been flat-tened

out.

of years old, the ocean floor would be covered by sedi-ments

from land measuring 60 to 100 miles [96.5 to 160.9

km] thick, and all the continents would be eroded away.

But, instead, we find only a few thousand feet of sediment

eroded away even once. Calculations on the thickness of

ocean sediments yield only a few thousand years for our

planet.

were billions of years old, the rate of sediment deposit

from the continents would have resulted in a minimum of

60 miles [96.6 km] of sediments, on the ocean floors, and

closer to 100 miles [160.9 km].

Plate tectonics theory (chapter 20, Paleomagnetism

[omitted from this book for lack of space; you will find it

in chapter 26 on our website]) declares that gradually

subducting plates bury themselves deep into the earth, car-rying

with them the sediments on top of them. But, ac-cording

to that theory, this would only remove about 2.75

x 10 10 tons [2.49 mt x 10 10 ] per year, or merely 1/10th of

the annual new sediments being added from the continents!

The 60 miles [96.6 km] of ocean sediments needed by

the evolutionists for their theory is hopelessly missing.

a young age for the ocean and thus for the earth.

Of the 51 primary chemical elements contained in sea-water,

twenty could have accumulated to their present con-centrations

in 1000 years or less, 9 additional elements in

no more than 10,000 years, and 8 others in no more than

100,000 years. For example, the nitrates in the oceans could

have accumulated within 13,000 years.

oceans reveals that ours is a young world.

"Estimated old ages for the earth are frequently based

on 'clocks' that today are ticking at very slow rates. For

thought to be very slow, implying that some coral reefs

must be hundreds of thousands of years old. More ac-curate

measurements of these rates under favorable

growth conditions now show us that no known coral

formation need be older than 3,500 years (A.A. Roth,

'Coral Reef Growth,' Origins, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1979, pp.

88-95)."—W.T. Brown, In the Beginning (1989), p. 14.

Next we shall consider EVIDENCE FROM LIVING

THINGS that the earth is quite young:

have no known enemies except man. And only recently

did man (with his saws) have the ability to easily destroy

them. Insects do not bother them, nor even forest fires.

seem to be the original trees that existed in their

timber stands. Sequoia gigantea, in their groves in the Si-erra

Nevada Mountains, never have any dead trees

("snags") among them. Unless man cuts them down, there

is no evidence that they ever die!

The University of Arizona has a department that spe-cializes

in tree dating. *Edmund Schulman of its Den-drochronological

Laboratory discovered a stand of still

older trees in the White Mountains of California. These

were bristlecone pines (Pinus longalva).

Beginning in 1978, Walter Lammerts, a plant scien-tist,

spent several years working with bristlecone pine seed-lings

in their native habitat of Arizona. He discovered that

the San Francisco Mountain region, in which they grow,

has spring and fall rains with a very dry summer in be-tween.

Working carefully with the seedlings and giving

them the same type of watering and other climatic con-ditions

that they would normally receive,—he found

that much of the time the bristlecone pines produce

two growth rings a year. This is an important discov-ery,

for it would indicate that the sequoias—not the

The Age of the Earth 149.bristlecone pines—are probably the oldest living

things on earth.

Think of it! Today we have just ONE generation of

the Sequoia gigantea! Both the parent trees and their off-spring

are still alive. There is no record of any tree or other

living thing that is older than any reasonable date given

for the Genesis Flood. In the case of the giant sequoias,

there is no reason why they could not have lived for many

thousands of years beyond their present life span.

For additional information on tree ring dating, see

chapter 6, Inaccurate Dating Methods.

on the evidence from living things, it is of interest

that one researcher, *H.T. Band, discovered in the early

1960s that natural selection was not eliminating the "ge-netic

load" (the gradually increasing negative effect of

mutation on living organisms). Thus mutational defects

are accumulating, even though some are only on reces-sive

genes. Calculations, based on genetic load, indicate

that life-forms could not have continued more than sev-eral

thousand years—and still be as free from mutational

defects as they now are.

Much more information on mutations, including a

more complete discussion of genetic load, will be given in

chapter 10, Mutations.

Next we shall consider EVIDENCE FROM

CIVILIZATION that the earth is quite young:

(The information given in this section is somewhat

paralleled by material to be found in Ancient Cultures and

As Far Back as We Can Go, near the end of chapter 13,

Ancient Man. Additional material will be found there.)

the writings, language, and cultures of ancient mankind

started off fully developed—but are not found to have be-gun

until about 2000-3000 B.C.

historical dates assigned to the beginnings of Egyptian and

Sumerian history are based primarily on king-lists. The

earliest records are the Egyptian king-lists, dating from

about the First Dynasty in Egypt, between 3200 and 3600

B.C. But internal and external evidence indicates that these

dates should be lowered. An Egyptologist writes:

"We think that the First Dynasty [in Egypt] began not

before 3400 and not much later than 3200 B.C. . . A.

Scharff, however, would bring the date down to about

3000 B.C.; and it must be admitted that his arguments

are good, and that at any rate it is more probable that the

date of the First Dynasty is later than 3400 B.C., rather

than earlier."— * H.R. Hall, "Egypt: Archaeology," in En-cyclopedia

Britannica, 1956 edition, Vol. 8, p. 37.

who lived many centuries later, in 250 B.C. Manetho's

writings have only been preserved in a few inaccurate quo-tations

in other ancient writings. Barton, of the University

of Pennsylvania, points out the problem here:

"The number of years assigned to each [Egyptian]

king, and consequently the length of time covered by the

dynasties, differ in these two copies, so that, while the

work of Manetho forms the backbone of our chronology,

it gives us no absolute reliable chronology."—George

A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, p. 11.

"In the course of a single century's research, the earli-est

date in Egyptian history—that of Egypt's unification

under King Menes [first king of the first Egyptian dy-nasty]—

has plummeted from 5876 to 2900 B.C., and not

Do we, in fact, have any firm dates at all?"—Johannes

Lehmann, The Hittites (1977), p. 204.

It is difficult to obtain exact clarity when examining

ancient Egyptian texts. A number of Egyptologists think

that Manetho's lists dealt not with a single dynasty—

but with two different ones that reigned simultaneously

in upper and lower Egypt. This would markedly reduce

the Manetho dates.

Manetho's king-list give us dates that are older than

that of any other dating records anywhere in the world.

But there are a number of scholars who believe that (1) the

list deal with two simultaneously reigning sets of kings;

(2) that they are not numerically accurate; and (3) that

and Egyptologists that ancient Egyptian

records exaggerated victories while never mentioning de-feats.

The Egyptians had a center-of-the-universe attitude

about themselves, and they repeatedly colored or falsified

historical reporting in order to make themselves look bet-ter

than other nations around them.

In contrast, it is highly significant that well-authen-ticated

Egyptian dates only go back to 1600 B.C.! Ex-perts,

trying to unravel Egyptian dating problems, have

come to that conclusion.

"Frederick Johnson, coworker with Dr. Libby [in the

development of, and research into, radiocarbon dating],

cites the general correspondence [agreement] of radio-carbon

dates to the known ages of various samples taken

from tombs, temples, or palaces out of the historical past.

Well-authenticated dates are known only back as far as

1600 B.C. in Egyptian history, according to John G. Read

B.C. is still as yet controversial."—H.M. Morris, W.W.

definitely lower archaeological dates and bring them into

line with Biblical chronology.

We planned to include a more complete study on this

subject in chapter 21, Archaeological Dating, but we had

to heavily reduce it for lack of space. However, you will

find it in chapter 35 on our website, evolution-facts.org.

an expert in ancient Near Eastern civilizations, comments:

"The dates of Sumer's early history have always been

surrounded with uncertainty."—*S.N. Kramer, "The Sum-erians,"

in Scientific American, October 1957, p. 72.

(We might here mention that the carbon-14 date for

these earliest Near Eastern civilizations is not 3000, but

8000 B.C. In chapter 6, Inaccurate Dating Methods, we

will discover that radiocarbon dating seriously decreases

in reliability beyond about 1500 years in the past.)

cause of apparent disharmony between archaeological and

Biblical dates, see chapter 35, Archaeological Dating, on

our website).

It is conservatively considered that the first books of

The Age of the Earth 153.the Bible were written by Moses c.1510-1450 B.C.

(The date of the Exodus would be about 1492 B.C.) Chro-nological

data in the book of Genesis would indicate

that Creation Week occurred about 4000 B.C., and

that the date of the Flood was about 2348 B.C.

Some may see a problem with such a date for the Gen-esis

Flood. But we are dealing with dates that are quite

ancient. The Flood may have occurred at a somewhat ear-lier

time, but it may also be that the earliest-known secu-lar

dates should be lowered somewhat, which is probably

the case here. It is well to remember that, in seeking to

corroborate ancient dates, we can never have total certainty

about the past from secular records, such as we find in

Egypt and Sumer.

A solar eclipse is strong evidence for the dating of an

event, when ancient records can properly corroborate it.

We can understand why the ancients would mention

solar eclipses since, as such rare events, they involve the

blotting out of the sun for a short time in the area of umbra

(the completely dark, inner part of the shadow cast on the

earth when the moon covers the sun). Yet, prior to 2250

B.C., we have NOT ONE record of a solar eclipse ever

having been seen by people! This is a very important

item of evidence establishing a young age for the earth.

"The earliest Chinese date which can be assigned with

any probability is 2250 B.C., based on an astronomical

reference in the Book of History."—*Ralph Linton, The

Tree of Culture (1955), p. 520.

script, from which descended our present alphabet.

come from radiocarbon dating, from methods other than

written human records, or from the suspect Manetho's

Egyptian king-list.

know that differences in dialect and language suddenly

developed shortly after the Flood, at which time men sepa-rated

and traveled off in groups whose members could un-derstand

one another (Genesis 11:1-9).

reveal that a majority of them are part of large "lan-guage

families," and most of these appear to radiate

outward from the area of Babylonia.

For example, the Japhetic peoples, listed in Genesis

10, traveled to Europe and India, where they became the

so-called Aryan peoples. These all use what we today call

and comparative philology expert at Yale University, gives

this estimate:

"Indo-European, I conjecture, was spoken on the Bal-tic

coast of Germany late in the fourth millennium B.C.

For more information on languages, see chapter 13,

explosion is especially the result of improved sani-tary

conditions at childbirth and thereafter. In earlier cen-turies,

many more children died before the age of three.

changes between 1650 and 1850, provides us with the fact

that at about the year 3300 B.C. there was only one fam-ily!

"The human population grows so rapidly that its

present size could have been reached in less than 1%

(3200 years) of the minimum time assumed (½ million

years) for man on the basis of radiometric dating."—Ariel

A. Roth, summary from "Some Questions about Geo-chronology,"

in Origins, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1886, pp. 59-60.

The rate of world population growth has varied greatly

throughout history as a result of such things as pestilences,

famines, wars, and catastrophes (floods, volcanoes, earth-quakes,

and fires). But with all this in mind, estimates

generally focus on 300 million as the population of the

earth at the time of Christ. Based on small-sized fam-ilies,

from the time of the Flood (c. 2300 B.C.) to the time

of Christ, the population by that time would have been

about 300 million people.

If, in contrast, the human race had been on earth for

one million years, as the evolutionists declare, even with a

very low growth rate of 0.01 (1/100) percent annually, the

resulting population by the time of Christ would be 2 x

10 43 people (2 x 10 43 is the numeral 2 followed by 43 ze-ros!).

A thousand solar systems, with nine planets like ours

could barely hold that many people, packed in solid!

the earth was 20 million years old. Thirty-five years later,

in 1897, he doubled it to 40 million. Two years later, *J.

Joly said it was 90 million. *Rayleigh, in 1921, said the

earth has been here for 1 billion years. Eleven years later,

*W.O. Hotchkiss moved the figure up to 1.6 billion

(1,600,000,000). *A Holmes in 1947 declared it to be 3.35

billion (3,350,000,000); and, in 1956, he raised it to 4.5

billion (4,500,000,000). Just now, the age of the earth

stands at about 5 billion years. Pretty soon, someone will

raise it again.

Men dream up theories, and then they call it science.

"These dates for the age of the earth have changed,

doubling on average every fifteen years, from about 4

million years in Lord Kelvin's day to 4500 million

now."—*Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (1984),

p. 235.

"Dr. A.E.J. Engel, Professor of the California Insti-tute

of Technology, comments that the age for the earth

accepted by most geologists rose from a value of about

50 million years in 1900 to about 5 billion years by 1960.

He suggests facetiously that 'if we just relax and wait

another decade, the earth may not be 4.5 to 5 aeons [1

aeon = 1 billion years], as now suggested, but some 6 to

8 or even 10 aeons in age.' "—H.M. Morris, W.W.

Boardman, and R.F. Koontz, Science and Creation

(1971), p. 74 [referring to *A.E.J. Engel, "Time and the

Earth," in American Scientist 57, 4 (1969), p. 461].

in this chapter, (1) ultraviolet light has only built up a thin

layer of moon dust; (2) short half-life radioactive non-ex-tinct

isotopes have been found in moon rocks; (3) the moon

is receding from earth at a speed which requires a very

young earth;—and on and on the solid evidence goes,

throughout the remainder of the chapter you have just com-pleted.

Read it again. It is solid and definite. (4) The lack

of ancient human records on solar eclipses is alone enough

to date man's existence on the earth. Men are so intelli-gent

that, in various places on earth, they have always kept

written records—yet such records do not exist prior to

about 4300 years ago.