Are you brainwashed?

I have a very important question for you. Are you brainwashed? I am sure you are saying, "of course not!". Well it's a simple one question test to find out if you have been brainwashed. Are you ready?

Can you give me one piece of scientific evidence that creationist use as evidence for a young earth? No? How about one piece of evidence we use for biblical creation in general? Still thinking? If you don't have one piece of evidence in your knowledge about biblical creation, you have been brainwashed! It's not your fault, you can't even talk creation (apart from God) in schools. You hear about millions of years everywhere you go, evolution is treated as fact, and their dating methods are talked about like they are proven to be with out error. School, TV, internet, newspapers you name it. How come you don't know the other side? Now if you just said, "there is none no credible evidence that's why I don't know any" then please read on. I will present plenty; than it's up to you with what you do with this information, but at least you will know there is another side to the argument.

The old-earth idea was developed historically, not from letting the physical facts speak for themselves but by imposing anti-biblical philosophical assumptions onto the geological observations. Here is a small sampling for evidence of creation and a young earth. Many of this writing is from www.answersingenesis.org (with my own stuff mixed in I am not a scientist!). I recommend you check that site out it's great! All I ask is you use logic and do a bit of research when deciding your view on eternity. Of all things to be sure on; where you will spend eternity should be at the top of your list.

Evidence for a young earth

The almost complete absence of evidence of erosion or soil layers or the activity of living things (plant roots, burrow marks, etc.) at the upper surface of the various strata (showing that the stratum did not lay there for thousands or millions of years before the next layer was deposited). See the grand canyon, there is NO EROSION on these layers that have been exposed for millions of years? That should insult your intelligence

Polystrate fossils (usually trees) that cut through more than one layer of rock (even different kinds of rock supposedly deposited over thousands if not millions of years). The trees would have rotted and left no fossil evidence if the deposition rate was that slow.

Soft-sediment deformation (bending rocks!)—that thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks (of various layers) are bent (like a stack of thin pancakes over the edge of a plate), as we see at the mile-deep Kaibab Upwarp in the Grand Canyon. Clearly the whole, mile-deep deposit of various kinds of sediment was still relatively soft and probably wet (not like it is today) when the earthquake occurred that uplifted one part of the series of strata. This was a quick process, rocks do not bend when made over millions of years! You can see these clearly in the grand canyon.

Red blood cells and hemoglobin have been found in some (unfossilized!) dinosaur bone. But these could not last more than a few thousand years—certainly not the 65 million years from when evolutionists think the last dinosaur lived.

Many fossils that show (require) very rapid burial and fossilization. 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. 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. Fully-articulated skeletons (e.g., whales or large dinosaurs such as T-Rex) are preserved. Or we find many creatures' bodies contorted. All this evidence shows that these creatures were buried rapidly (in many cases even buried alive) and fossilized before scavengers, micro-decay organisms and erosional processes could erase the evidence. These are found all over the world and all through the various strata.

The continents are eroding too quickly. 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.

There is not enough helium in the atmosphere. 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.

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.

The mother ichthyosaur apparently 'freeze-framed' in the process of giving birth. Then there are the fossil fish which are found either in the process of swallowing other fish or with undigested fish intact in their stomachs.

The oceans are nowhere near salty enough. Each year, the world's rivers and underground streams add millions of tons of salt to the sea, and only a fraction of this goes back onto the land. Using the most favorable possible assumptions for long-agers, the absolute maximum age of the oceans is only a tiny fraction of their assumed billions-of-years age.

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.

b) Stalactites and stalagmites.

Many examples in Creation magazine have shown that cave decorations form quickly, given the right conditions. The photo (in Creation magazine) is of a mining tunnel in Mt Isa, Queensland, Australia. The tunnel was only 50 years old when the photo was taken and it shows stalactites and stalagmites.

c) Opals.

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.

d) Rock and fossil formation.

Scientists have long known that petrifaction can happen quickly. The 'petrified' bowler hat (below right, by Renton Maclachlan) is on display in 'The Buried Village', an open air museum dedicated to the Mt Tarawera eruption, in New Zealand. There was a roll of no. 8 fencing wire which, in only 20 years, became encased in solid sandstone, containing hundreds of fossil shells. Petrified wood can also form quickly under the right conditions—one process has even been patented.

Despite some inevitable unsolved problems in such a complex issue, it is thus not hard to establish:

i) The reasonableness of believing what the Creator of the world says in His Word, the Bible, about the world being thousands, not millions or billions, of years old.

ii) The fact that the earth neither 'looks old' nor 'looks young' as such—it all depends on the 'glasses' through which the evidence is interpreted. We all need to be aware of how much we have been conditioned by our culture to 'see' geological things as 'looking old'.

What about the radioactive dating methods?

Facts:

1. ALL dating methods (including ones that point to thousands, not billions of years, are based on assumptions—beliefs, no matter how reasonable-sounding, that you can't prove, but must accept by faith. For example:

Assuming how much of a particular chemical was originally present;

Assuming that there has been no leaching by water of the chemicals in or out of the rock;

Assuming that radioactive decay rates have stayed the same for billions of years, and more.

2. Radiometric 'dating' labs do not measure age—they measure amounts of chemicals, then from this they infer age, based on the underlying assumptions.

3. When the assumptions are tested by measuring rocks of known age—e.g. recent lava flows—they often fail miserably.

4. Objects of the same age, tested by different methods, have been shown to give 'dates' varying by a factor of a thousand.

5. The fact that there is some consistency to radiometric dates is explained in part by the tendency to publish only data consistent with the 'evolutionary age' already 'established' by fossils. Most radioactive dating laboratories prefer you to tell them what age you expect. It is hard to see why this would be necessary if these were 'absolute' methods. The entire geological 'millions of years' system was largely in place, based on the philosophical assumptions of men like Charles Lyell and James Hutton, before radioactivity was even discovered. Where a radioactive date contradicts the 'system', it is invariably discarded.

6. If a 'radiometric' date and a 'fossil' (evolutionary) date conflict, the radiometric date is always discarded.

The deep time 'determination' is an interpretation; the actual scientific data are isotope ratios. Each chemical element usually has several different forms, or isotopes, which have different masses. There are other possible interpretations, depending on the assumptions. This can be illustrated with an hourglass. When it is up-ended, sand flows from the top container to the bottom one at a rate that can be measured. If we observe an hourglass with the sand still flowing, we can determine how long ago it was up-ended from the quantities of sand in both containers and the flow rate. Or can we? First, we must assume three things:

We know the quantities of sand in both containers at the start. Normally, an hourglass is up-ended when the top container is empty. But if this were not so, then it would take less time for the sand to fill the new bottom container to a particular level.

The rate has stayed constant. For example, if the sand had become damp recently, it would flow more slowly now than in the past. If the flow were greater in the past, it would take less time for the sand to reach a certain level than it would if the sand had always flowed at the present rate.

The system has remained closed. That is, no sand has been added or removed from either container. However, suppose that, without your knowledge, sand had been added to the bottom container, or removed from the top container. Then if you calculated the time since the last up-ending by measuring the sand in both containers, it would be longer than the actual time.

Of course we can't assume any of these things over billions of years. The fact is evolutionist only use dating methods that give them the ages they want, there are many dating methods that give them a young age, and these methods are usually more consistent, but are thrown away!

Anomalies in dating methods

There are many examples where the dating methods give 'dates' that are wrong for rocks of known historical age. One example is rock from a dacite lava dome at Mount St Helens volcano. Although we know the rock was formed in 1986, the rock was 'dated' by the potassium-argon (K-Ar) method as 0.35 ± 0.05 million years old. Another example is K-Ar 'dating' of five andesite lava flows from Mt Ngauruhoe in New Zealand. The 'dates' ranged from <>

What happened was that excess radiogenic argon (Ar*) from the magma (molten rock) was retained in the rock when it solidified. The secular scientific literature also lists many examples of excess Ar* causing 'dates' of millions of years in rocks of known historical age. This excess appears to have come from the upper mantle, below the earth's crust. This is consistent with a young world—the argon has had too little time to escape.

If excess Ar* can cause exaggerated dates for rocks of known age, then why should we trust the method for rocks of unknown age?

Another problem is the conflicting dates between different methods. If two methods disagree, then at least one of them must be wrong. For example, in Australia, some wood was buried by a basalt lava flow, as can be seen from the charring. The wood was 'dated' by radiocarbon (¹⁴C) analysis at about 45,000 years old, but the basalt was 'dated' by the K-Ar method at c. 45 million years old! Other fossil wood from Upper Permian rock layers has been found with ¹⁴C still present. Detectable ¹⁴C would have all disintegrated if the wood were really older than 50,000 years, let alone the 250 million years that evolutionists assign to these Upper Permian rock layers.¹²

According to the Bible's chronology, great age cannot be the true cause of the observed isotope ratios. Anomalies like the above are good supporting evidence, but we are not yet sure of the true cause in all cases. A group of creationist Ph.D. geologists and physicists from Answers in Genesis, the Creation Research Society, and the Institute for Creation Research are currently working on this topic. Their aim is to find out the precise geochemical and/or geophysical causes of the observed isotope ratios. One promising lead is questioning Assumption 1—the initial conditions are not what the evolutionists think, but are affected, for example, by the chemistry of the rock that melted to form the magma.

There are many other solid reasons for not accepting fallible man-made methods, such as radioactive 'dating', as an authority in opposition to the clear testimony of God's infallible Word. See Q&A: Radiometric Dating.

The earth is old!

But let us stretch our minds still further. It concerns the way we use words such as 'old' or 'young' for the earth's age. I actually believe that the earth is old—very old. It is thousands of years old—as many as six thousand, in fact. Does that angle surprise you? My point is to make us aware of how we have allowed our culture to condition us into thinking that a thousand years is a very short time, and that 'old' always means millions or billions of years.

That is why tourists, coming across the 'petrified waterwheel' in Western Australia gawk in amazement. 'It only took sixty years to cover this thing in solid rock?' Sixty years, with water carrying dissolved limestone dripping night and day onto an object, is actually an incredibly long time. It is our culture, soaked in the myth of 'deep time', that has indoctrinated us into the belief that a million years (an unimaginable time period, in reality) is only like 'yesterday'.

We need to recapture our thoughts from this enslavement to secular philosophy (see Colossians 2:8, 2 Corinthians 10:4–5). The Bible concurs with this way of looking at things. In 1 Chronicles 4:22, it refers to human records as 'ancient'. But it is clear from the Bible's genealogies that at the time of its writing, 'ancient' meant no more than some 4,000 years—certainly not billions. This realization puts things in perspective when Scripture also talks of 'ancient mountains' (Deuteronomy 33:15), an 'ancient' river (Judges 5:21) and 'ancient times' (Isaiah 46:10). Compared to a person's lifetime, these things are indeed ancient—thousands of years old. The 'millions of years' idea is nowhere found in the Bible.