A Young Earth - A letter to Jan
Dear Jan,
I was reading the February ‘Here and There’ comments in the
War Cry when I noticed the words "a log that’s been scientifically dated
as 45,000 years old!" And a little further on the words "logs found
mainly around Northland and dated 40,000, 36,000, 16,000 . . ." and I
wondered if you understood the terrible implication of these statements?
The first implication is that you are denying the Bible’s
chronology. According to the Bible, our planet is very young, around about 6
thousand years. There are many clear evidences for a young earth, based on very
accessible data, which I will not list here, but you may follow this line by
reading the books listed at the end of the letter.
I know it is easy to accept what seems to
be ‘scientific’ statements about an ancient earth, but this is a common
failing of the fallen nature - to accept human reasoning rather than stand on
the Word of God. I have done it myself several times, unfortunately.
But I presume that the dating, which you mentioned, is based
on some sort of radiometric system, i.e. Carbon dating.
Carbon14, or radiocarbon as it is often called, is
manufactured in the upper atmosphere by the action of cosmic rays. Ordinary
nitrogen (N14) is converted into C14.
Ordinary carbon (C12) is found in the air we breathe, which,
of course, is cycled by plants and animals through nature, so that all living
things contain carbon.
When C14 has been formed, it behaves just like C12, but the
difference is that once formed it begins to decay back to C12. (This is because
of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which shows that all complex things decay
downwards to become less complex).
So C14 decays back to N14, and it does so at a measurable
rate.
But there are many great difficulties involved in measuring
the amount of C14 in things, and many presumptions are involved.
1. First of all we don’t know how much C14 was in a
substance when it died. We have to assume a certain amount, so when we measure
the C14 we can make a calculated guess.
2. We have no real idea how much carbon has intruded into
the substance, for example, during the Industrial Revolution the whole carbon
cycle was upset. Tree-ring studies show fluctuations in carbon, so there might
have been fluctuations in the past which we don’t know about. We have to assume
that the carbon cycle has been steady for thousands of years,
otherwise the system of dating things by Carbon14 cannot be accurate.
The discoverer of C14 dating, W.F.Libby,
had great problems with it. In his day he already knew that C14 was entering
the system about 12% faster than it was leaving. So Libby built this imbalance
into his system.
Modern analysis of the method which Libby started now has a
built in error rate of about 35%. Which means that the
assumptions have to increase in order to get the results the scientists want.
Here are some of the errors which C14 have revealed.
Coal from
Natural gas from Alabama and Mississippi, dated by modern
geologists as being 50 to 135 million years old had a C14 date of a mere 30,000
to 34,000 years respectively.
Bones of a sabre-tooth tiger from
the LaBrea tar pits (near Los Angeles), which were
dated by evolutionists as about 100,000 to 1 million years old, had a C14 date
of only 28,000 years.
These (above) dates were obtained by modern C14 methods, and
the results surprised and puzzled the scientists, because despite all their
assumptions, and despite drastic modification of the C14 parameters, they
obtained results which totally defied their expectations.
Other C14 results.
A freshly-killed seal, dated by C14 yielded an age of 1,300
years old.
Living mollusc shells, dated by
C14, yielded an age of 2,300 years old.
Living snail’s shells, dated by C14, yielded an age of
27,000 years old.
(I can supply sources for all this information)
The work of Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell have combined to strike tremendously
destructive blows at the Church, and, sadly, there are many ‘men of the cloth’
who actually preach the atheistic dogma of these two godless men. Gradually the
poison of Darwin and Lyell has filtered down into the
church, until today, where we find born-again Christians who hold the view that
the Genesis account and the long-age view of the earth can be somehow combined.
Some Christians hold that the "days" of Creation were not really 24
hours, despite the huge problems. Some other Christians say that God ‘used’
evolution, despite the fact that Jesus and other NT writers totally denied
this. It is a sad state of affairs when the Church actually helps the enemy to
chip away at its own foundation!
Once the earth is assumed to be ancient, i.e. tens of
thousands of years old, the concept of gradual change over millennia is easier
to accommodate. Once vast ages are assumed, the possibility of evolution may
even be entertained. The supernatural can then be pushed further away. The
tremendous world-wide Flood, which implies divine intervention, may be
relegated to the back of the mind, or banished completely. Once the view is
assumed that the earth is more than 35,000 years old, all sorts of errors can
creep in, and Scripture will be further eroded.
Let us, as Christians, take our stand by faith on the Word
of God, and not give ANY ground to the unbelievers!
Before I close, here is a quote from a firm evolutionist,
William D. Stansfield, Ph.D. (Animal Breeding,
Instructor of Biology,
"All the above methods for dating the age of the earth,
its various strata, and its fossils are questionable, because the rates are
likely to have fluctuated wildly over earth history. A method that appears to
have much greater reliability for determining absolute ages of rocks is that of
the radiometric dating . . ."
"It is obvious that that radiometric techniques may not
be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a
given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite
different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely
reliable long-term radiological "clock". The uncertainties inherent
in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists . . ."
At least this man was willing to admit the failings of
radiometric dating, but what a pity that the general public, including many
Christians, have carried on assuming that ‘science’ is up-to-date and accurate,
when in fact it is in tatters. Far better that Christians hold on to the plain
statements of Scripture, which never changes.
Books I recommend that you read :
The Answers Book edited by Don Batten
The Young Earth by John Morris
The early Earth by Ken Ham
After the Flood by Bill Cooper
Creation Scientists Answer their Critics by Duane Gish
The Revised Quote Book
Stones and Bones by Carl Wieland
The Collapse of Evolution by Scott Huse
In the Minds of men by Ian Taylor
The Bible - God means what He says, and says what He means.
An address to apply to for further information
: ‘Answers in Genesis’
Howick
Phone/Fax (09) 537 4818
Yours faithfully,