What evidence can be offered for a young earth?

Hearing the idea of a young Earth for the first time tends to be a stumbling block to people, regardless of their level of faith. Many do not find it hard to reject evolution, but the idea of the Earth being young when all they've ever hear and read is billions of years is initially a bit of a shock. Most don't question that God created, however, the first question that comes to their mind is, "couldn't He have done it over millions and billions of years?"

As we answer this question, we must first of all consider the fact that the Bible specifically teaches a young earth, making it Biblically and theologically impossible for the earth to be "old." But if the earth is young, science should have some way of confirming that! And, indeed, there is such evidence.

To begin with, lets examine, using a variety of topics, some evidences for a young earth.

Geological Evidence

Varves
One common, yet outdated and fully refuted, argument worshippers of evolution use to support old earth theology is that of "varve layering." Varves are rock formations with alternating layers of fine dark, and coarse light sediment, which were once taught to be annual layers. Out-of-date evolutionary teaching promoted the idea annual changes deposited bands with light layers in summer and dark layers in winter. Many formations appeared to contain hundreds of thousands of layers each layer representing one-year. Thus, the worshippers of evolution used such examples to claim the earth was older than the Bible said.

One highly propagandized example of such layering is the Green River varves in Wyoming, USA. These bands have been widely promoted as evidence for old-earth theology but these bands cannot possibly be annual deposits because we find well-preserved fish and birds all through the varying layers of sediment. It is ludicrous to promote the idea these dead animals could have rested on the bottom of the lake for decades, being slowly covered by sediment. Another problem ‘old-earthers’ have with their varve explanation is that the number of bands is not consistent across the formation as it should be if they were truly annual deposits.(1) Their fossilization reveals catastrophic burial.

Recent catastrophes, such as the 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens in Washington State, demonstrated that these varve, sedimentary-deposits are formed very quickly. The sedimentary flows from the Mt St Helens eruption alone produced 25’ of finely layered sediment in a single afternoon.(2) In addition, a rapidly pumped sand slurry was observed to deposit 3-4’ of fine layers on a beach over an area the size of a football field.(3)

Several studies in varve layer have been conducted in laboratories and in one such case, it was discovered the fine bands formed as the moving water transported the different sized particles sideways into position.(4) The thickness of each band was influenced by the relative particle sizes rather than on the flow conditions.(5) A layered rock was separated into its particles and when it was redeposited into moving water, identical layers formed.(6)

Despite the many evidences refuting the argument of annual layering, evolutions spin-doctors continue to brainwash their students into believing these layers were laid down annually. Many of them all together avoid the many refutations disproving the old theory of annual layering.

Bent Strata
All over the world mountainous regions of strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded in half. The amazing feature in these strata is that the folding occurred without cracking the rock. Conventional geology claims these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. However, common sense tells us a rock formation cannot be bent in half without it crumbling into pieces. But, if these strata were still wet from the receding floodwaters of the Noahican flood then they easily could have been bent as God pulled the "…mountains from the valleys" (Psalm 104:5-9)

Fossil Radioactivity
In rock crystals we find tiny-microscopic pieces of colored radioactive minerals known as radio halos, which offer fossil evidence of radioactive decay.(7) Microscopic, Polonium-210 radio halos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations (Geological periods identified in the Geological Column) in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another rather than hundreds of millions of years apart as promoted in evolutionary theology.(8) "Orphan" Polonium-218 radio halos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply either instant creation or drastic changes in radioactivity decay rates.(9,10)

Soft Sediment Deformation
Most rock layers we see today began as muddy sediments laid down under water, and hardened into rock as the water was squeezed out and the individual grains or molecules pressed together. We can today find several thousand feet of these compressed rock layers stacked on top of one another, such as at the Grand Canyon, where about 5000 feet of horizontally bedded strata can be seen.

Evolutionists say the Tapeats sandstone on the bottom of the Grand Canyon is about 550 million years old, while the Kalbab Limestone at the top is only 200 million years old. These sediments were uplifted to their present high elevation, nearly 7000 feet at the rim, about seventy million years ago, meaning the Tapeats was already 480 million years old at the time of uplift and "deformation".

Well if the flood of Noah's day really happened like the Bible says, and of which we believe the Bible is true, then these Grand Canyon rocks were laid down by the Flood, the Tapeats early in the Flood, and the KaIbab within the next few months. The area was uplifted late in the Flood year, with trapped floodwaters carving out the canyon itself while draining off the uplifted continents.

"In Grand Canyon Park, most of these sediments, which were laid down horizontally under water, remained horizontal after uplift. But the uplift Beverly deformed these same sediments along the flanks of the plateau, in some areas leaving them in a vertical orientation. The Tapeats, which today is an extremely hard rock, was bent from horizontal to vertical in a space of 100 feet or so. The nature of this deformation shows that the sediments were almost certainly still soft when bent. They had not yet had time to turn hard. But it only takes a few hundred years at best for sandy sediments to turn to sandstone in the presence of high overburden pressure and adequate cement. Therefore, we are justified in concluding that the Tapeats was not 480 million years old at the time of uplift. It all happened in a short period of time, while the sediments were still soft."(11)

The old-earth advocates can propose an unlikely scenario of flowage under high confining pressure, but clearly, the evidence better fits the young-earth idea, wiping out 480 million years of supposed earth history.

The best part is, the world is full of such examples, producing much geologic evidence for a young earth.

The Fossil Record

Evolutionary theologians once promoted the fossil record as evidence for evolution, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils have not yet yielded a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the process of evolving. What's frustrating is how evolutionists skirt around the evidence that slaps them in the face and in cases where the particular topic is unavoidable, rather than pointing out new discoveries and scientific fact that contradicts their preconceived biases, they refer to old theories in an attempt to maintain the promotion of a rotting theory springing new leaks every day.

This ubiquitous absence of intermediate forms is true not only for "major morphologic transitions," but even for most species. Not only are there no true transitional forms in the fossils; there is not even any general evidence of evolutionary progression in the actual fossil sequences. The superficial appearance of an evolutionary pattern in the fossil record has actually been imposed on it by the fact that the rocks containing the fossils have themselves been "dated" by their fossils. This is circular reason in its most absurd form. Since we do not factually know the precise dates of either, we can't possibly use one to verify the other. Yet for years theologians of evolutionary dogma have been allowed to brainwash the scientific and biblical illiterate.

Let's take a look at some quotes from evolutions pastoral hierarchy:

"The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition. . . ." (12)

"As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the fossil record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly. . . ." (13)

"The fossil record of evolution is amenable to a wide variety of models ranging from completely deterministic to completely stochastic." (14)

"I regard the failure to find a clear "vector of progress" in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record. . . . we have sought to impose a pattern that we hoped to find on a world that does not really display it."(15)

"And this poses something of a problem: If we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about patterns of evolutionary change through time in the fossil record?"(16)

"A circular argument arises: Interpret the fossil record in the terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?"(17)

"In any case, no real evolutionist . . . uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation. . . ."(18)

Mt. St. Helens and Geology

Once again, the eruption of Mt St Helens on May 18, 1980 revealed the true, natural processes of a geological event previously promoted by evolutionists to take millions of years. The giant, floating log mat on Spirit Lake has confirmed some creationist's theories on coal formations. The trees floating in the lake have lost their bark due to the abrasive action from the wind and waves. Scuba investigations of the lake bottom showed that water-saturated sheets of tree bark are especially abundant on the bottom of the lake, where, in areas removed from volcanic sediment added from the lake shore, a layer of peat several inches thick has accumulated. The Spirit Lake peat resembles, both compositionally and texturally, certain coal beds of the eastern United States, which also are dominated by tree bark and appear to have accumulated beneath floating log mats.(19)

Traditional evolutionary theories promoted the idea that coal formation was the process of organic material accumulating in swamps by growth in place of plants and burial. Because peat accumulation is traditionally a slow process, evolutionary geologists believed every inch of coal took better than one thousand years to form. However, the geological fallout from the Mt St Helen's eruption demonstrated, along with many other processes, that peat accumulated rapidly. Swamp peats, however, have only very rare bark sheet material because the intrusive action of tree roots disintegrates and homogenizes the peat. The Spirit Lake peat, in contrast, is texturally very similar to coal.

We now know the only processes needed to transform the peat at the bottom of Spirit Lake into coal is burial and slight heating. This would produce the first stage in the formation of coal and wouldn't need to take millions of years either.

Since the evidence is once again stacked against them, some evolutionists have tried to make the argument that the pre-Flood world could not possibly have produced enough vegetation to make all the coal we find all over the world. However, such an argument is based on misinformed assumptions. First, the pre-Flood land mass was most-certainly greater prior to the flood. Second, the climate was quite tropical and therefore much more productive before the flood. We know this because of all the fossilized vegetation we find in the most remote parts of Antarctica are of plants only know to grow in mild, tropical climates.(20) Third, it has been discovered that much coal was derived from forests, which floated on water (21) Fourth, because of these previous facts listed above, we can now point out calculations based only on today's area of land would be wrong. Fifth, and finally, the estimates of how much vegetation is needed are based on the wrong idea that coal forms slowly in swamps and that most of the vegetation rots. As previously explained, we now know this to be wrong and such a global catastrophe as the Noahican Flood would have buried the vegetation quickly, producing a hundred times more coal than from a swamp.(22)

Another out-of-date argument evolutionists once promoted for old-earth, evolutionary dogma prior to the Mt St Helens eruption was that of the petrified forests of Yellowstone National Park. The tree stumps were once interpreted as buried and petrified in place by up to 50 successive geological events. After each burial, a new forest sprouted out of the debris on top of the previous one. Because of this, evolutionists argued such a process would take hundreds of thousands of years, which, of course, is inconsistent with the Biblical time-scale.

What does the evidence truly show? Well, the fact that the tree trunks and stumps have been broken off at their base and do not have proper root systems gives overwhelming evidence the trees did not grow where they now rest but were rather uprooted from elsewhere and carried to their present location by a catastrophic debris-flow.(23) Furthermore, trees from different layers have the same ‘signature’ ring pattern, demonstrating they all grew at the same time.(24)

The evidence against evolutions, old-earth dogma is mounting at an alarming rate of speed and as we continue to witness, truth regarding Biblical history defends itself. Mount St. Helens provided a rare opportunity to study transient geologic processes, which produced, within a few months, changes geologists might otherwise assume required many thousands of years. These revelations challenge the traditional way of thinking promoted in school textbooks. But better yet, these processes and their effects allow events such as the Mt St Helens eruption to serve as mini-laboratories for catastrophism.

The Sea

The oceans provide ample evidence to support Biblical chronology in both, sodium/salt accumulations and sea floor sedimentation, which evolutionists still struggle to logically answer.

One of the oldest dating methods in use involves the measurement of the accumulation of sodium's in the ocean. We can calculate a relative or maximum age of the oceans by calculating the rate in which sodium accumulations takes place, the rate at which they are removed, and their current quantities.

It has been proven and accepted that sodium levels accumulate at a rate of 73% faster then they leave(25,26) and when we consider sodium levels in today's oceans and calculate backwards using the accumulation rates to subtract, of course we're assuming the oceans had no sodium to start with, we come up with a maximum age of 42 million years.(27) This is a far cry younger than the 3 billion evolutionists promote. But you may say, "Well, this age is still older than the 6,000 – 8,500 years the Bible refers to." Yes, but no evolutionists in the world would attempt to defend evolution if the earth were proven to be absolutely no more than the 42 millions years old as their only friend is time.

Using the same formula but this time with salt accumulation levels leaves us with a figure of less than 62 million years in age and again, this is assuming there would be no salt in the ocean to start with. However, recent studies in subterranean groundwater discharge has proven the rate influx to be greater than previously supposed.(28) It had long been assumed that subterranean groundwater discharge occurs at a rate only from 0.01% to 10% the rate of surface runoff (the latter, of course, mainly from rivers). Using radioactive tracers, T.M. Church reports in ‘Nature’ magazine that this rate of underground flow can amount to as much as 40% that of all the world's rivers. Church remarks that this find can radically alter our understanding of oceanic chemical mass balance.(29) It also means that salt enters the ocean at much greater rates than previously suspected, and the oceans are all the more decisively constrained to be young in age.

If we add to this evidence the runoff effects from the Noahican Flood the numbers would be significantly impacted as such a catastrophic runoff would have carried enormous amount of minerals across the earth thus increasing the ocean's salt level which would significantly reduce the age easily down to the 6,000 – 8,500 year old window the Bible proclaims.

Each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.(30) This material accumulates as loose sediment (i.e., mud) on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of the mud is less than 400 meters.(31)

Plate tectonic subduction is the only known way to remove the mud from the ocean floor. This is a process where the sea floor slides slowly, a few centimeters annually, beneath the continents, which takes some of the sediment with it. One particular scientific journal claims this process removes only about one billion tons per year.(32) As far as anyone is aware, the other 24 billion tons per year simply accumulate on the sea floor. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present amount of sediment in less than 12 million years. Again, this age is inconsistent with the Bible's chronology simply because of logical variables we haven't added in yet, but most importantly, this figure is generous to evolutionists and it is in no way friendly to their theology.

According to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged 3 billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with mud dozens of kilometers deep. Creationist believe that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of mud within a short time about 4,450 years ago.

The Universe

Earth's Magnetic Field
Once again we find can find much evidence in the cosmos to support Biblical chronology. From the magazines we read to the movies we watch, one would never believe evidence for creation could be found in such an evolutionary corner but it most certainly is there.

When we examine the total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field we find an increase by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1,000 years.(33) The inadequacy of evolutionary theories presented over the past 15 years have clearly revealed the desperate nature evolutions dogs find themselves in in trying to counter such overwhelming evidence for a young earth. The creationist explanation soundly adheres to the laws of physics while logically explaining 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.(34) This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data.(35) 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 10,000 years old.(36)

Galaxy Rotations
The stars comprising the Milky Way rotate about the galactic center with individual speeds. The inner ones rotate faster than the outer ones. The rotation speeds are so incredibly fast they reveal a relatively young age for the universe, in contrast to evolutionary brainwashing. The older the galaxy, the slower the speeds as their rotations would be winding down from the point of creation. These speeds demonstrate a limit of a few hundred million years in age at the most, otherwise it would it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.(37)

Evolutionary theologians teach the galaxy is 10 billion years old. Evolutionists are well aware of this fact, so much so they have named it, "the winding-up dilemma." Their camp has proposed many theories in an effort to explain it, but each one has failed miserably after brief moments of excited-popularity. This same problem of our galaxy also applies to other galaxies.

New theories have recently been proposed but each have a variety of conceptual problems and recent discoveries of a very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the Whirlpool galaxy made by the Hubble Space Telescope have called these theories into serious question.(38)

Comets are short-lived
Evolutionists promote the age of comets to be the same as the solar system, which they say is 5 billion years old. There's a problem with this theory however. We today can observe the disintegration of much of the material that comprises a comet each time it orbits close to the sun. Based on the rate it loses its mass, we can easily conclude that comets are no way older than 100,000 years. In fact, many comets have typical ages of 5,000 – 10,000 years.(39)
Evolutionists attempt to defend this fact by slinging three illogical improbabilities:

1) Comets come from an unobserved spherical "Oort cloud" well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

2) Improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system.

3) Other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.(40)

These ideas are so absurd yet it's all the evolutionists have for a defense and defend it they do. And none of these assumptions have been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations. If creationists made such assumptions they would throw back in our face comments like, "That just proves creationists aren't scientists."

Helium Escape
Radioactive elements produce helium as they decay. A small, calculable level escapes into space but even taking this loss into consideration, and using the evolutionary assumption of a 3.5 billion year old Earth, how is it then the earth’s atmosphere only contains .05% of what should be present.(41) The calculations of loss/decay are not wrong but rather the age of 3.5 billion years is what makes the calculation not work.

As it turns out, the levels of helium present in the atmosphere would have accumulated at their present rates in less than 2 million years. Again, the Genesis Flood would have released more of the helium from the crust thus reducing the age of the atmosphere considerably.

A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows that helium produced by radioactive decay in deep, hot rocks has not had time to escape. Though the rocks are supposed to be over one billion years old, their large helium retention suggests an age of only thousands of years.(42)

References
1. Garner, P., "Green River Blues," Creation 19 (3):18–19, 1997.
2. Ham, K., "I got excited at Mount St Helens!" Creation 15 (3):14–19, 1993.
3. Batten, D., "Sandy stripes: Do many layers mean many years?" Creation 19 (1):39–40, 1997
4. Julien, P., Lan, Y., and Berthault, G., "Experiments on stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures," CEN Technical Journal 8 (1):37–50, 1994.
5. Snelling, A.A., "Nature finally catches up," CEN Technical Journal 11 (2):125–6, 1997.
6. Berthault, G., "Experiments on lamination of sediments," CEN Technical Journal 3 :25–29, 1988.
7. Gentry, R. V., "Radioactive halos," Annual Review of Nuclear Science 23 (1973) 347-362.
8. Gentry, R.V., et al, "Radiohalos in coalfield wood: new evidence relating to time of uranium introduction and coalification," Science 194 (15 Oct. 1976 315-318
9. Gentry, R. V., "Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and cosmological perspective," Science 184 (5 Apr. 1974) 62-66.
10. Gentry, R. V., Creation's Tiny Mystery , Earth Science Associates (1986) P.O. Box 12067, Knoxville, TN 37912-0067, pp. 23-37, 51-59, 61-62.
11. S. Austin, "Grand Canyon; Monument to Catastrophism", ICR, 1998
12. Steven M. Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process (San Francisco: W.M. Freeman and Co., 1979), p. 39.
13. Tom Kemp, "A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record," New Scientist (Vol. 108; December 5, 1985), p. 67.
14. David M. Raup, "Probabilistic Models in Evolutionary Biology" American Scientist (vol. 166. January/February 1977), p. 57.
15. Stephen Jay Gould, "The Ediacaran Experiment," Natural History (vol. 93; February 1984), p. 23
16. Niles Eldredge, op. cit., p. 52.
17. Tom Kemp, op. cit., p. 66.
18. Mark Ridley, "Who Doubts Evolution?" New Scientist (vol. 90; June 25, 1981), p. 831.
19. Steven A. Austin, "Mt. St. Helen’s and Catastrophism," Impact Article #157, ICR, July 1986.
20. Henry M. Morris, "The Genesis Record," Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1976
21. Hayward, Ref. 1, p. 122.
22. Sarfati, J., "The Yellowstone petrified forests," Creation 21 (2):18–21, 1999.
23. Same as #21.
24. Morris, J., "The Yellowstone Petrified Forests," ICR Impact Article #268, October 1995.
25. Austin, S. A. and D. R. Humphreys, "The sea's missing salt: a dilemma for evolutionists," Proc. 2nd Internat. Conf. on Creationism, Vol. I[, Creation Science Fellowship (1991) in press. Address, ref. 12.
26. Austin, S. A., "Evolution: the oceans say no!," ICR Impact No. 8 (Oct. 1973) Institute for Creation Research, address in ref. 2.
27. Same as #26.
28. Church, T.M. 1996. An underground route for the water cycle. Nature 380:579-580.
29. Same as #28.
30. Gordeyev, V. V. et al , "The average chemical composition of suspensions in the world's rivers and the supply of sediments to the ocean by streams," Dockt. Akad. Nauk- SSSR DI (1980) 150.
31. Hay, W. W., et al, 'Mass/age distribution and composition of sediments on the ocean floor and the global rate of subduction,' Journal of Geophysical Research, 93, No B12 (10 December 1988) 14,993-14,940.
32. Same as #32.
33. Merrill, R. T. and M. W. McElhinney, Ile Earth's Magnetic Field, Academic Press (1983) London, pp. 101 - 106.
34. Humphreys, D. R., "Reversals of the earth's magnetic field during the Genesis flood," Proc. lst Internat. Conf. on Creationism (Aug. 1986, Pittsburgh) Creation Science Fellowship (1987) 362 Ashland Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15228, Vol. 11, pp. 113-126.
35. Coe, R. S. and M. Pr6vot, "Evidence suggesting extremely rapid field variation during a geomagnetic reversal," Earth and Planetary Science Letters 92 (April 1989) pp. 292-8.
36. Humphreys, D. R., "Physical mechanism for reversals of the earth's magnetic field during the flood,"Proc. 2nd Intern. Conf. on Creationism, Vol. 11, Creation Science Fellowship (1991) in press (ref. 12).
37. Scheffler, H. and H. Elsasser, Physics of the Galaxy and Interstellar Matter, Springer-Verlag (1987) Berlin, pp. 352-353, 401-413.
38. Same as #37.
39. Steidl, P. F., "Planets, comets, and asteroids," Design and Origins in Astronomy, pp. 73-106, G. Mulfinger, ed., Creation Research Society Books (1983) 5093 Williamsport Dr., Norcross, GA 30092.
40. Whipple, F. L., "Background of modem comet theory," Nature M (2 Sept 1976) 15.
41. Vardiman, L., The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere: a study of the helium flux through the atmosphere, Institute for Creation Research (1990) P.O.Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021.
42. Gentry, R. V. et al, "Differential helium retention in zircons: implications for nuclear waste management," Geophys. Res. Lett. 9 (Oct. 1982) 1129-1130. See also ref. 22, pp. 169-170.

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