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A Creationist website, Answers in Genesis, has presented several arguments to "prove" that the Earth is 6,000 years old and therefore that Creationism is more accurate than evolution. The following article examines some of their claims (which can be found here, here(warning: pdf), and here)
But creation scientists believe that most of the fossils—including most of the dinosaur fossils—formed at the time of Noah's Flood, only about 4,500 years ago. This means that fossils must have formed rather quickly.So, is there any evidence that fits with this?
Note how they say creation scientists believe that the flood created fossils. They are assuming this to be true. Therefore, they are searching for evidence that fits with the preconceived conclusion. From a scientific perspective, this methodology is highly problematic. The evidence should point towards a conclusion, rather than vice versa. Moreover, by searching for evidence to support preconceived notions, it is likely that they will cherry-pick evidence and ignore contrary information. Hence, their sources are:
A museum in New Zealand showcases a petrified ham, which formed after a volcano covered a village in ash in 1886 (see Tarawera's night of terror). And a museum in Tasmania features a petrified hat. It was left in a mine, and after fifty years it had changed from being a soft, felt hat into a hard hat! (See 'Fossil' hat.)
These two incidents (one incident and one example, actually) are rather sparse, but let's accept them nonetheless. As Miguel pointed out in What Are Fossils?, there are many ways for fossils to form. Some (like being encased in amber) are almost instantaneous. Some, like petrification, take much longer. Neither example AiG cites is of a petrifaction. One is calcification, the other was coating with ash. Neither of these are the proposed mechanisms of ancient fossil formation, and so irrelevant to a discussion of the speed of petrification.
Further, present day Tigris and Euphrates rivers sit on thousands of feet of fossil bearing sediments, indicating these rivers must have formed after sin
Now, this is also irrelevant, but does reveal their poor grasp of science. Sediment, as a quick look at wikipedia indicates, is
any particulate matter that can be transported by fluid flow and which eventually is deposited as a layer of solid particles on the bed or bottom of a body of water or other liquid. Sedimentation is the deposition by settling of a suspended material.
So, the presence of such sediments is a sign of the great age of the rivers, the exact opposite of their conclusion.
Expected results of the Flood: Rainbow reminds us of God's promise never again to send a global Flood.
Irrelevant also, but just so ludicrous I had to include it.
Which do you trust to tell the truth about the past and about eternal life... the infallible Word of God or the fallible words of man?
This is not scientific. It is utterly meaningless unless one presumes that the Bible is the literal word of God without any human interference, a position that is very difficult to sustain.
It's only a few thousand years old—less than 10,000, probably around 6,000 years or so.'To my surprise, he said, 'That's good.'
'Why?' I blurted out.
'Because,' he replied, 'I've always thought it looked young.'
Which is important, since the subjective evidence of how the world looks is obviously the basis of scientific theories of its age.
If the continents were billions of years old, they would have eroded by wind and water many times over. Mountain uplift and other 'recycling' processes are nowhere near capable of compensating for this.
This assumes that the speeds of weathering and mountain uplifting are constant. Taking this assumption, we get the doctrine of Uniformitarianism, the basis of the "Old Earth" point of view. It is worth noting that geological evidence of both processes indicates great lengths of time are needed for any geologically significant changes. And so, the articles claim can be answered on two counts:
Today, however, most if not all mainstream scientists support uniformitarianism as do most mainstream religious denominations.The understanding of slow geological processes have changed in several ways. Before continental drift (see plate tectonics) was recognized in the 20th century, the surface of Earth was believed to have remained generally unchanged since creation. Cooling from a molten state was believed to have caused shrinkage, which caused mountains and folding of the surface. Currently it is accepted that much of the mantle is plastic and fluid, and the crust is slowly moving over it. It is this relative motion that produces folding, compression, rises, depressions, etc.
Next,
Helium, a light gas, is formed during radioactive alpha decay in rock minerals. It rapidly escapes and enters the atmosphere much faster than it can escape Earth's gravity.2 Even if God had created the world with no helium to begin with, the small amount in the atmosphere would have taken at most around two million years to accumulate. This is far less than the assumed 3,000-million-year age of the atmosphere.
This seems convincing at first, but going over Wikipedia reveals some misinformation. The helium source they are talking about here is the alpha particle, technically only the nucleus of the atom. This is what wikipedia has to say about alpha particles:
Because of their charge and large mass, alpha particles are easily absorbed by materials and can travel only a few centimeters in air. They can be absorbed by tissue paper or the outer layers of human skin
So the evidence suggests that the quantity of helium released into the atmosphere would be taken up again fairly quickly, or at least would not pose a great problem to the age of the Earth.
4) Many processes, which we have been told take millions of years, do not need such time-spans at all.
a) Coal formation.Argonne National Laboratories have shown that heating wood (lignin, its major component), water and acidic clay at 150°C (rather cool geologically) for 4 to 36 weeks, in a sealed quartz tube with no added pressure, forms high-grade black coal.
Now, I don't approach the author's level of expertise, but the requirement of sealed quartz tubes is rather suspect. Is all coal packed in quartz? If not, then wouldn't addition of this variable dramatically weaken the evidence? Oh wait, it would. Adding additional variables makes causality harder to prove.
Despite the common teaching that it takes millions of years to form opal, Australian researcher Len Cram has long been growing opal in his backyard laboratory. His opal (photo right, by Dr Cram) is indistinguishable, under the electron microscope, from that mined in the field. He was awarded an honorary doctorate (by a secular university) for this research. All he does is mix together the right common chemicals — no heat, no pressure, and definitely no millions of years.
This is also highly relevant. Especially since this demonstration proves that all opals are produced this way. Even though industrial processes are often better at producing materials than natural ones are, this must be the case.
Each year, the world's rivers and underground streams add millions of tonnes of salt to the sea, and only a fraction of this goes back onto the land. Using the most favourable possible assumptions for long-agers, the absolute maximum age of the oceans is only a tiny fraction of their assumed billions-of-years age.
The oceans were originally fresh water, first off. Second, any student of chemistry can tell you about solubility. At a certain point, a solution is saturated and will absorb no more solute. The exact limit of the ocean's solubility is, of course, open to debate, but this mechanism does suggest that the salt concentration of the oceans would not be increasing arithmetically for very long.
Finally, let's consider this argument:
There are billions of fossil fish in rock layers around the world which are incredibly well-preserved. They frequently show intact fins and often scales, indicating that they were buried rapidly and the rock hardened quickly. In the real world, dead fish are scavenged within 24 hours. Even in some idealized cold, sterile, predator-free and oxygen-free water, they will become soggy and fall apart within weeks.3 A fish buried quickly in sediment that does not harden within a few weeks at the most will still be subject to decay by oxygen and bacteria, such that the delicate features like fins, scales, etc. would not preserve their form. Rapid burial in the many underwater landslides (turbidity currents) and other sedimentary processes accompanying Noah's Flood would explain not only their excellent preservation, but their existence in huge deposits, often covering thousands of square kilometres.
This explains why fossils are so rare and why the well-preserved ones take place in special circumstances, where these problems do not occur. In fact, it is more appropriate to view fossils as an aberration, an exception to the ecosystem's recycling of valuable resources. The process of fossilization must begin quickly, before the specimen can be recycled. Provided nothing disturbs the fossil, it can take quite long to form and still have the same results. The loss of detail and structure in fossils often comes from the loss of "soft" material from the specimen, leaving only the "hard" skeleton and similar structures.
The author's claim, that the fossil evidence is best explained by the Great Flood, is a very easy one to test and falsify. We know the length of the storm, so it would not be that difficult to pour water into a controlled environment for that period of time. Any other conditions could be used, just so long as investigators try to recreate the conditions at the time of the Flood. Two conditions are required to present the same evidence that the fossil record currently gives us. First, fossils must be formed. Second, these fossils must be (loosely) organized in term of increasing complexity. The more complicated, and often heavier, species must fossilized layers of sediment above simpler, lighter species. Although this result would contradict physics, it is not hard to test. Until such an experiment has been performed, though, the claim that fossils were formed in from the flood remains far from scientific acceptance.
