The Bible and the Young Age of the Earth

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Creation or Evolution: It's about time.



Up until the 17 and 18 hundreds most everybody believed that the earth was young. A mere 6 thousand years or so.

No where in the Bible does God tell us the exact year of Creation. But by simply studying the scriptures we can certainly get an idea of when this took place.

Creationists believe the earth is young



In the 1650's a well known bishop named James Ussher studied the genealogies in the old testament. By doing so he calculated that the earth was created in 4004 B.C. ("Get a grip on evolution" by David Burnie)

Now I don't think you can get it down to the exact year like Ussher's 4004 B.C. date, but we can look at Genesis and get a general idea of when God made the universe.

I believe we can also study some natural processes that agree that the earth is not millions or billions of years old.

Evolutionists believe the earth is old



Evolutionists claim that the Earth and the solar system is about 4.55 billion years old (plus or minus about 1%). They believe this amount of time is necessary for all the life forms on earth to evolve.

Why don't we hear of people challenging these dates?



It is a rare thing for someone to publicly dispute the alleged "millions of years" age of the earth. When someone does they are often attacked or accused of being ignorant.

I believe we can use critical thinking skills to rule out a millions or billions of years date for the earth.

The present is not the key to the past



We can not look at current rates of rock formation, erosion, etc to determine the age of the earth because there may have been factors in the past that are not happening in the present. In fact the Bible tells us just that. A flood covered the entire earth (read my commentary on Genesis 6) this would alter, shift and mix up the entire face of the earth. This flood also altered the rate of sediments laid down, the formation of sedimentary rock and also the rate of erosion.

Something that may take many years to form today (the Grand Canyon for instance) could have formed quite quickly during the flood.

The Bible even predicted that in the "last days" there would be those who scoff at the bible, and claim that "all things continue as they were from the beginning" (II Peter 3:3) . This seems to say that there would be a predominance of uniformitarianism thinking. Mountains form slowly today, so they assume that they must have formed slowly in the past. The Creation model tells us that mountains formed quickly as the result of the flood.

No matter how old the earth is, Evolution is impossible



Everything we know of Science (entropy etc..) tells us that even if the world was millions or even billions of years old, evolution would still be impossible (the chapter on mutations will explain this).(opens new window)

In the popular press we are led to believe that the antiquity of the earth is a proven fact. We are told that all Scientists believe the world is old, and that all of our dating methods confirm this.

The truth is, many well qualified Scientists, and lay people alike are well justified in their belief that the earth, and universe is quite young.

A secret they have learned is one that you may never have been told. It is this: Though a few assorted dating methods give the age of the earth in millions of years, there are far more that limit the age of the earth to a mere few thousand years.

- Why are we not told of these?

It is because they go against the politically correct notion of Evolution.

Click HERE to see a picture demonstrating the drastic difference in time between the Theory of Evolution, and Creation.

Evolutionists believe that the universe slowly began to form 20 billion years ago. They believe the earth is about 4.6 billion years old. (references)

While many Young Earth Creationists believe that the earth was Created instantaneously about 6 thousand years ago.

Both of these are belief systems. Neither one can be proven because no one was there to witness the event, and it can not be repeated. But we can examine the evidence and decide which one is more plausible.

This page will present you with the evidence for a young earth, and a young universe. I will then let you decide which one the facts better support.

The Rocks



There are many layers of rock all over the world. These rock are separated into layers one on top of the other in what is called "rock strata" .

Can we tell how old the earth is by looking at this strata?

The layers of rock on the bottom would have to have been laid down before the layers on top. But how long before? This is one area that Creationists and Evolutionists disagree on.

Evolutionists believe that each layer represents a period of time.. or an era. A layer may have been laid down over a hundred or even a few thousand years.

Though it seems reasonable at first to think that you can look at the numerous layers of rock to estimate the age of the earth (estimating that each strata is hundreds or thousands of years old), those who do so will run into many problems.

First, we don't know how long it took for those layers to form. We weren't there. We can't assume a steady rate of accumulation based on how long it takes today.

If there was a world wide flood (as described in Genesis) then many layers of soft sediments would stratify at one time. These soft sediments would later harden as the waters receded and form rock.

If there was a flood, then you could have what appeared to be "millions of years" of strata formed in a period of a few months.

The study of such formations is called Catastrophic Geology. There are many excellent creationist books on this subject. A few are listed below:

1. "Field Studies in Catastrophic Geology" by Carl R. Froede Jr.

2. "Sea Floor Sediments and the Age of the Earth" by Dr. Larry Vardiman

3. "Studies in Flood Geology" by John Woodmorappe

There are also some excellent videos:

1. "Biblical Geology: Properly Understanding the Rocks" by Dr Tas Walker

2. "Geologic Evidences for Very Rapid Strata Deposition in the Grand Canyon (DVD)" by Dr Steven Austin

3. "The Geology Book" by Dr John D Morris





Question:

"Rock does not form in thousands of years. this CAN be proven. Go to a body of water that existed long ago that has dried up and tell me if the entire thing is rock. If rock could form in thousands of years, then any area(after the "flood" receded) not covered by water would be rock. how would you explain this? and how would the soft sediments produce many layers? Wouldn't there just be the one?"

from Sunny M. age 19, 11/8/01

My response: Like I said before we have different things happening today than happened at the time of the flood. The pressure of all these sediments would be enough to form rock. There would be many layers all formed at the same time. They are different layers (not just one layer) because the sediments were stratified while wet, based on their density. Take a jar, fill it with sand, and rock of different sizes. Then fill it with water, and shake it. As it settles the particles will separate based on their density, and will settle into layers. If the water receded (like in the flood) and a great deal of pressure was added (a million pounds of wet sediments laying on top of each other) then these would form rock in a very short period of time. We simply don't have the pressure exerted on the sediments today that existed at the flood.

Not all sediments would become rock.

The Grand Canyon



If you look at the Grand Canyon you will see thousands of layers of sedimentary rock. The Creationist and the Evolutionist can both look at the same evidence but come to different conclusions.

The evolutionist who believes in an ancient earth will look at these layers of rock and determine that these layers formed slowly over millions of years.

The Creationist who believes the Bible looks at the same evidence but comes to a different conclusion as to how these layers were formed. The Creationist knows that these layers could not have formed over millions of years. As there is little or no erosion between the layers. This is consistent with all the layers being laid down at the same time (the flood).

The Creationist interpretation is that the Grand Canyon was formed as a result of the flood. The receding flood waters would cut through the soft sediments, leaving the canyon. These soft sediments later hardened into their present form.

The canyon may have formed while it was solidifying, as the waters receded (possibly very quickly) it would cut through these layers like butter. Some people claim that it took a little bit of water (the small river) a lot of time (millions of years) to form the canyon. But it could have been the opposite.

A lot of water (the flood) and a little bit of time.

For more information read:

1)"Grand Canyon: A Different View" Compiled by Tom Vail

2) "Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe" by Dr Steven Austin

Videos:

"The Grand Canyon Catastrophe: New Evidence of the Genesis Flood" by Keziah & American Portrait Films

"The Grand Canyon: Monument to the Flood" (VHS)

"Mount St. Helens: Explosive Evidence for Catastrophe" (VHS) Dr Steve Austin

"The Grand Canyon: A Biblical View by Dr. Andrew A. Snelling

"Geologic Evidences for Very Rapid Strata Deposition in the Grand Canyon (DVD)" by Dr Steven Austin

Polystrate fossils



