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Evidence for a Young Earth

The impassible chasm between evolution and biblical creation is most obviously presented in the difference of views considering the age of the universe. Evolution has its roots in ancient paganism, as Henry Fairfeild Osborn has admitted over a century ago. “Evolution has reached its present fullness by slow additions in twenty-four centuries. When the truths and absurdities of Greek, mediaeval, and sixteenth to nineteenth century speculation and observation are brought together, it becomes clear that they form a continuous whole, that the influences of early upon later thought are greater than has been believed, that Darwin owes more even to the Greeks than we have ever recognized.”1)Henry Fairfeild Osborn, From the Greek to Darwin: An Outline of the Development of the Evolution Idea, Forgotten Books, 2012, originally published by Macmillan and Co. New York, 1894, p. 1 Darwin did not offer us the first presentation of evolution as is commonly thought, neither was it discovered through thorough scientific research but rather regurgitated myths of pagans.2)see Heath Henning, “Evolution is Paganism,” Feb. 29, 2016; https://truthwatchers.com/evolution-is-paganism/ “Evolution, as a natural explanation of the origin of the higher forms of life, succeeded the old mythology and autochthony in Greece, and developed from the teachings of Thales and Anaximander into those of Aristotle.”3)Henry Fairfeild Osborn, From the Greek to Darwin: An Outline of the Development of the Evolution Idea, Forgotten Books, 2012, originally published by Macmillan and Co. New York, 1894, p. 6 Such paganism has always been vastly contrasted with the true and living God of the Bible and His creation account.

Dr. Henry Morris explains how the dates of the biblical creation account are calculated. “The genealogies lists in Genesis 5 give the age of each man in the line from Adam to [Noah] at the birth of the son who is next in line. When these are added, they give a total of 1656 years from Adam to the Flood. A similar list for the postdiluvian patriarchs in Genesis 11 gives 368 years from the Flood until Abraham migrated into Canaan. Abraham’s time is well within the period of recorded history.”4) Dr. Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, Master Books (Green Forest, AR: 1974, twenty-fourth printing 2006), p. 247 Abraham’s birth is generally dated between 2170-2166 BC which is only 1 or 2 years after Noah died. This would set creation around 6100-6200 years ago—about 4100-4200 BC. Various Christian scholars throughout history have calculated the age of the earth based on these genealogies with slight variations.

The following are a few scientific facts that lend strong validation to the Bible’s account of creation’s age.

  • Galaxies are rotating, and the outer parts rotate more slowly than the inside. This means that after a few rotations, galaxies will ‘wind themselves up’ so as to destroy the spiral structure.5)Andy McIntosh and Carl Wieland, “‘Early’ galaxies don’t fit!” https://creation.com/early-galaxies-don-t-fit
  • The Faint Sun Paradox: “Evidence now supports astronomer’s belief that the sun’s power comes from the fusion of hydrogen into helium deep in the sun’s core, but there is a huge problem. As the hydrogen fuses, it should change the composition of the sun’s core, gradually increasing the sun’s temperature. If true, this means that the earth was colder in the past. In fact, the earth would have been below freezing 3.5 billion years ago, when life supposedly evolved.”6)Dr. Andrew Snelling, Dr. David Menton, Dr. Danny Faulkner, and Dr. Georgia Purdom, “What are some of the Best Evidences in Science for a Young Creation?” Chapter 10 in The Answers Book 4 (ed. Ken Ham), Master Books (Green Forest, AR: 2013), p. 119
  • Soft tissues that should decay rapidly have been found in dinosaur fossils allegedly millions of years old.7)Heath Henning, “Dinosaur Discoveries and Preserved Soft Tissue,” April 23, 2016; https://truthwatchers.com/dinosaur-discoveries-persreved-soft-tissue/ ,8)Heath Henning, “Why Dinosaur are NOT Millions of Years Old,” Feb. 11, 2017; https://truthwatchers.com/dinosaur-not-millions-years-old/ , 9)Heath Henning, “More Soft Tissues in Dinosaur Fossils,” Nov. 24, 2017; https://truthwatchers.com/soft-tissues-dinosaur-fossils/
  • Supernova Remnants: When a star explodes it hurls debris outwards at 7000 kilometers per second. The distance of this debris is then measured to determine the time of the supernova based on this expansion rate. This has been argued to give an approximate age of the known universe no greater than 7,000 years.10)Jonathan Sarfati, “Exploding stars point to a young universe: Where are all the supernova remnants?https://creation.com/exploding-stars-point-to-a-young-universe , 11)Brian Thomas, “Rare Supernova Recalls Missing Remnants Mystery,” http://www.icr.org/article/6373/245/ I am aware that this was recently contested by creationist Danny Faulkner 12)Danny Faulkner, “Are Old Supernova Remnants Really Missing? Re-Evaluating a Well-Known Young-Universe Argument,” Answers Research Journal 10(2017):245-258 which I answer elsewhere.13)see Heath Henning, Supernova Remnants evidence for young creation, Dec. 22, 2022; https://truthwatchers.com/supernova-remnant-evidence-for-young-creation/
  • The decay rate of the magnetic field from the Earth,14)Dr. Andrew A. Snelling, “Rapidly Decaying Magnetic Field,” October 1, 2012; https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/5-rapidly-decaying-magnetic-field/ Moon, Mercury,15)Brian Thomas, “Mercury’s Fading Magnetic Field Fits Creation Model,”  http://www.icr.org/article/mercurys-fading-magnetic-field-fits Neptune,16)Spike Psarris, “Neptune: monument to creation: According to evolutionary ideas Neptune should not exist! What is its secret?,” https://creation.com/neptune-monument-to-creation Uranus, and Jupiter’s larger moons, Ganymede, Io, and Europa, reveal and age of less than 10,000 years.17)Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., “The Creation of Cosmic Magnetic Fields” PDF available at http://www.icr.org/article/cosmic-magnetic-fields-creation , 18)see Heath Henning Unreliable: The Science and Logic of Bill Nye, Truthwatchers (2016), p. 13-14 free ebook available at https://truthwatchers.com/ebooks/
  • Comets lose mass every time they travel near the sun which is why we see a “tail.” Every comets should have evaporated within 10,000 years.19)Mark Looy , “The Tale of a Comet,” May 6, 2006; https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/comets/the-tale-of-a-comet/
  • The Moon is slowly receding from the earth at about 4 cm (1 ½ inches) per year, and the rate would have been greater in the past. If the moon started from being in contact with the earth, it would have a maximum age of 1.37 billion years contrast to the alleged age of 3.5 – 4.5 billion assigned by radiometric dates of moon rocks. However, The moon could never have been closer than 18,400 km (11,500 miles), known as the Roche Limit, because Earth’s tidal forces (i.e., the result of different gravitational forces on different parts of the moon) would have shattered it.20)Jonathan Sarfati, “The moon: the light that rules the night,” https://creation.com/the-moon-the-light-that-rules-the-night#receding Evolutionists Stephen Jay Gould discussed this problem for their great age issue with no expressed solution. “Consider the following: if you extrapolate back through time the current recession of the moon as estimated from eclipse data, the moon enters the Roche limit about one billion years ago. Inside the Roche limit, no major body can form. If a large body enters it from outside, results are unclear but certainly impressive. Vast tides would roar across the earth and the lunar surface would melt, which, conclusively from dates on Apollo rocks, it did not. (And the recession rate estimated from modern data-5.8 centimeters per year-is much less than the average advocated by Kahn and Pompea-94.5 centimeters per year.) Clearly, the moon was not this close to us either a billion years ago or ever at all since its surface solidified more than four billion years ago. Either rates of recession have varied drastically, and were much slower early in the earth’s history, or the moon entered its current orbit a long time after the earth’s formation. In any case, the moon was once much closer to us, and this different relationship should have had an important effect on the history of both bodies.21)Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY: 1980), p. 322
  • Each year, water and winds erode about 25 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean. Tectonic plate subduction removes this debris at a rate of 1 billion tons per years leaving 24 billion tons each year. With a little less than 400 meters that have accumulated in the whole ocean yields a maximum calculation of 12 million years. Far less than the 3 billion expected!22) Russell Humphreys, “Evidence for a Young World,” https://creation.com/evidence-for-a-young-world#seafloormud “If sediments have been accumulating on the seafloor for three billion years, the sea floor should be choked with sediments many miles deep…. At this rate, 1,300 feet of sediment would accumulate in less than 12 million years, not billions of years.”23)Dr. Andrew Snelling, Dr. David Menton, Dr. Danny Faulkner, and Dr. Georgia Purdom, “What are some of the Best Evidences in Science for a Young Creation?” Chapter 10 in The Answers Book 4 (ed. Ken Ham), Master Books (Green Forest, AR: 2013), p. 113
  • In 1990, Dr. Steve Austin and Dr. Russel Humphrey calculated the salt entering the ocean with the lowest possible input rate and highest possible output rate, concluding the ocean’s maximum possible age is 62 million.24)Austin and Humphrey, “The Sea’s Missing Salt: A Dilemma for Evolutionists” 1990 This was based on a 0.01-10% of submarine ground water discharge from surface runoff which in 1996 the rate was determine  to be as high as 40%.25)W.S. Moore, “Large Groundwater Inputs to Costal Waters Revealed by 226 Ra Enrichments,” Nature, 380(6575):612-614 (April 18, 1996)., 26)Jonathan Sarfati, “Salty seas: Evidence for a young earth,” https://creation.com/salty-seas-evidence-for-a-young-earth
  • Niagara Falls erosion rate: “Assuming an average thickness of [limestone] about 21 metres (70 feet) and an average erosion rate of two metres (seven feet) per year gives an age for the upstream two miles of the gorge of about 1,400 years. Altogether, the estimate for the whole gorge is 4,400 years… And we have not yet calculated the age effects of increased sediment load, increased water flow, or the possibility of erosion by ice, etc.”27)Larry Peirce, “Niagara Falls and the Bible,” http://creation.com/niagara-falls-and-the-bible
  • Oil formation has been a long favorite argument for evolutionary long ages but these arguments hold little weight in recent observations of oil forming today in the Guaymas Basin and in Bass Strait28)Andrew A. Snelling, “How fast can oil form?” https://creation.com/how-fast-can-oil-form , 29)Andrew A. Snelling, “The recent origin of Bass Strait oil and gas,” https://creation.com/the-recent-origin-of-bass-strait-oil-and-gas “The subsequent conversion of this organic matter into hydrocarbons and then into petroleum is a function more of temperature and pressure than of time. That long ages needs not be required has been strikingly indicated by recent laboratory manufacture of oil from garbage!”30)Dr. Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, Master Books (Green Forest, AR: 1974, twenty-fourth printing 2006), p. 110
  • Mitochondrial DNA mutation rates reveal the mother of all living to have lived within the biblical time frame. “In the 1980s, geneticists analyzed mitochondrial DNA [which is inherited from the mother] from all around the world. They came to a startling discovery (for evolutionists): the similarities indicate that all people on earth are descended from a single human female. Even evolutionists have called her; ‘Mitochondrial Eve’…. However, recent evidence shows that mitochondrial DNA mutates far faster than previously thought. If this new evidence is applied to ‘Mitochondrial Eve’, it indicates that she would have lived only 6,000-6,500 years ago. Of course, this is perfectly consistent with the biblically indicated age of the “mother of all living”, but an enigma for evolution/long age beliefs.”31)Johnathan Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11, Creation Ministry International (Powder Springs, Georgia: 2015), p. 385
  • After the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in May 18, 1980, massive mudslides formed the “Little Grand Canyon” 1/40th the size of the Grand Canyon in a few days. Such catastrophes give us reasons to believe Noah’s world-wide flood caused geological formations rapidly a few thousand years ago and reject millions of years of uniformitarian processes.32)see Heath Henning, Evidence of a World-Wide Flood,” Jan. 3, 2018; https://truthwatchers.com/evidence-world-wide-flood/ , 33)see “Mount St. Helens”: Video; https://answersingenesis.org/geology/mount-st-helens/
  • Radio carbon dating actually offers good evidence against long ages. “Even if every atom in the whole earth were carbon-14, they would decay so quickly that no carbon-14 would be left on earth after only 1 million years….Yet for 30 years, AMS radiocarbon laboratories have subjected all samples, before they carbon-14 date them, to repeated brutal treatments with strong acids and bleaches to rid them of all contaminations…. Carbon-14 does form from such [decaying uranium] transformation of nitrogen, but actual calculations demonstrate conclusively this process does not produce the levels of radiocarbon that world-class laboratories have found in fossils, coal, and diamonds.”34)The Answers Book 4, ed. Ken Ham (Master Books (Green Forest, AR: 2013), p. 125-127 Carbon 14 found in diamonds is especially difficult to explain away for long agers.35)Jonathan Sarfati, “Diamonds: a creationist’s best friend, Radiocarbon in diamonds: enemy of billions of years,” https://creation.com/diamonds-a-creationists-best-friend
  • Helium Leakage: “During the radio active decay of uranium and thorium contained in rocks, lots of helium is produced. Because helium is the second lightest element and a noble gas -meaning it does not combine with other atoms -it readily diffuses (leaks) out and eventually escapes into the atmosphere. Helium diffuses so rapidly that all the helium should have leaked out in less than 100,000 years. So why are these rocks still full of helium toms?36)Dr. Andrew Snelling, Dr. David Menton, Dr. Danny Faulkner, and Dr. Georgia Purdom, “What are some of the Best Evidences in Science for a Young Creation?” Chapter 10 in The Answers Book 4 (ed. Ken Ham), Master Books (Green Forest, AR: 2013), p. 122 Furthermore, “If we assume no helium was in the original atmosphere, all the helium would have accumulated in only 1.8 million years even from an evolutionary standpoint.”37)Dr. Andrew Snelling, Dr. David Menton, Dr. Danny Faulkner, and Dr. Georgia Purdom, “What are some of the Best Evidences in Science for a Young Creation?” Chapter 10 in The Answers Book 4 (ed. Ken Ham), Master Books (Green Forest, AR: 2013), p. 124
  • The human population growth refutes millions of years as one of the most obscene idea ever. “The evolutionary model, on the other hand, with its million-years history of man, has to be strained to the breaking point. It is essentially incredible that there could have been 25,000 generations of men with a resulting population of only 3.5 billion. If the population increased at only ½ per cent per year for a million years, or if the average family size were only 2.5 children per family for 25,000 generations, the number of people in the present generation would exceed 102100, a number which is, of course, utterly impossible (as noted in an earlier chapter, only 10130 electrons could be crammed into the entire known universe).”38)Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, Master Books (Green Forest, AR: 1985), p. 169

These are just a few a the multitudes of other points that could be addressed. If you are curious for more scientific facts that validate a young age of creation, Don Batton has composed an excellent list of sources.39)Don Batton, “Age of the earth: 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe,” https://creation.com/age-of-the-earth

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Heath Henning
Heath Henning
Heath heads the Set Free addictions ministry on Friday nights at Mukwonago Baptist Church and is involved in evangelism on the University of Wisconsin Whitewater campus, offering his expertise in apologetics at the weekly Set Free Bible Study every Tuesday evening. He currently lives in East Troy, Wisconsin with his wife and nine children. Read Heath Henning's Testimony

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