AGE OF EARTH CONSIDERATIONS (last updated: 24th January 2024)
Much evidence has emerged in recent years to cast doubt on Darwin's theory including the
fact that the fossil record appears to show that 26 out of the 36 Phyla that exist on Earth (Phyla: classification of animals based on body plan) abruptly emerged over a short period
of 13 - 25 million years (recently revised to 10 million years) during what is known as the Cambrian explosion. This is not nearly enough time
for over two thirds of the animal kingdom to have evolved via Darwin's mechanism. This is evidenced by the fact that the fossil record prior to the Cambrian explosion is devoid of any animals that have these body plans. Darwin was aware of this issue and he fully expected that fossils would be found to prove that these phyla had been slowly evolving over the billions of years leading up to the Cambrian explosion that his theory required. The fossils needed to underpin his theory have not been found to date despite exhaustive searches!
Calvin Smith of Answers in Genesis (AiG) has unearthed a lie that has been in front of our eyes since primary school:
most dead fish float; they don't sink. Fossils are the result of rapid rock formations, and evolutionists know this.
Now they have started to change their story and borrow from the creationist's worldview.
Information drives the development of life. But what is the source of that information? Could it have been produced by an unguided Darwinian process? Or did it require intelligent design? The Information Enigma is a fascinating 21-minute documentary that probes the mystery of biological information, the challenge it poses to orthodox Darwinian theory, and the reason it points to intelligent design
Darwin supporting experts agree that
billions not millions of years would indeed be needed for the 26 Phyla to have evolved via Darwin's mechanism so this is a major obstacle for continued belief in the theory of evolution.
Whether we believe in a young Earth (thousands of years old) as the Bible indicates,
or an old Earth (billions of years old) is beside the point. Evolutionists are of necessity old age advocates,
and based on evidence from the fossil record
which evolutionists adhere to they are unable to
offer a plausible explanation for this rapid Darwin confounding emergence of animal kinds.
This admission, and the confusion surrounding it,
should surely signal an end to continued belief that Darwin's theory, or any variant of it, accounts for the origin of life, leaving us with the far more appealing alternative that life came about as an act of creation by Almighty God.
Of course the very talk of the Cambrian explosion with its inherent long ages
is anathema to young Earth believers (Genesis believers) but we decided it was important to include this argument if only to highlight one of the many fallacies inherent in Darwin's Theory of Evolution. For the benefit of the record, the Cambrian explosion is said to have occurred 518 million years ago.
However we do not wish this resource to become a forum for debating the age of the Earth as it has no significant bearing on the issue we are concerned with here of how life originated on Earth. It is left to the reader to form his/her own judgement on this thorny issue that does however have a major bearing on the veracity of Darwin's theory of evolution. It is a major stumbling block for Darwin's theory because without long ages his theory is unsustainable. Of course our arguments make clear that it is unsustainable even with long ages.
We would only add that support for Charles Darwin's theory requiring long ages came from a book written by the geologist Charles Lyell entitled 'Principles of Geology' published in 1830. Lyell in his book attempted to overturn the long held paradigm of catastrophism replacing it with uniformitarianism as an explanation for Earth's geological history, and this also requires long ages. Lyell made little secret of his desire to abandon biblical history so with little more than a wave of the hand he set geology on a path that permitted no place for it at the table of ideas.
Lyell favoured an indefinitely long age for the Earth and believed uniformitarianism evidenced the passage of hundreds of millions of years, so his theory lent support to Darwin's theory that required an Earth history encompassing long ages of the order of billions of years. Of course these figures were pure
conjecture because scientific methods were not available at the time to establish their veracity.
Prior to their work the age of the Earth was believed to be of the order of thousands of years in tune with the Genesis account in the Bible. Most geologists today believe that the evidence points to a blend of the two theories of catastrophism and uniformitarianism, but there is no consensus of opinion.
These theories are hardly rocket science, it goes without saying that Earth's geological features are either the result of erosion due to the passage of time, or result from catastrophic events such as earth quakes or tectonic plate movements, also continental wide flooding, and common sense suggests a blend of the two.
Most of the arguments for long ages in geology, such as the need for millions of years for diamonds, coal and other mineral deposits to form have been disproved. Diamonds, coal, opals, etc., can be manufactured over a period of weeks or even days using modern laboratory techniques that simulate natural processes that have occurred deep in the earth's crust. The entire subject of Geology is in disarray.
In conclusion one could justifiably say that the two Charlie's had a meeting of minds at a crucial time in history in the middle 1800's to support one another's theories placing a feather in each other's cap. They were motivated mainly by a common desire to overturn the Bibles teachings so they embarked on a war of attrition against it which has continued to this day. Both are now under considerable fire simply because their theories are no longer sustainable in the light of modern discoveries.
If you would like help with the age of the Earth issue and much more we recommend:
Dr Mark Harwood discusses these topics and more, focusing especially on why an old Earth sits in conflict with the Bible, while also providing evidence for a younger age of the Earth
Science is based on observation, and the only reliable means of telling the age of anything
is by the testimony of a reliable witness who observed the events. The Bible claims to be the communication of the only One who
witnessed the events of Creation: the Creator himself. As such, the Bible is the only reliable means of knowing the age of the
earth and the cosmos
The earth is only a few thousand years old. That's a fact, plainly revealed in God's Word. So we should expect to find plenty of evidence for its youth. And that's what we find in the earth's geology, biology, paleontology, and even astronomy.
There is also an excellent chapter on this very subject written by Dr Jim Mason, Ph.D. Experimental Nuclear Physics in the book Evolution's Achilles' Heels described in the link above. Dr Mason reveals that radiometric dating, the method used to date ancient materials, has been proved time and again unreliable (to the extent that rocks known to be less than 100 years old are regularly determined to be hundreds of thousands, even millions of years old). The main difficulty inherent with the method is reliance upon certain assumptions, for example starting condition data, and as no one was around at the time to record its correct value it has to be guesstimated. According to Mason, if anything, radiometric dating points to a young Earth rather than to an ancient one.
Dr Tas Walker discusses at length the complications surrounding radiometric dating and just how unreliable it is. The method used by
scientists with a World view based on naturalism is to keep on testing using different samples, and varying the dating method if
necessary, until they get the result they want to best feather their own nests. If this doesn't work they will massage the data
to achieve success. In other words they have a preconceived idea of what the age of the sample should be, and will not stop until
they obtain a result in tune with it. This is not science, it is manipulation of results to fit a long ages ideology. The public
need to be aware that scientists are no less unscrupulous than other members of society when it comes to furthering their careers:
In 1980, Mount St. Helens (in Washington State, USA) erupted, blasting the top and side off the mountain.
You will by now have gathered, based on our arguments above and statements on other pages, that we have come to fully accept the position set by the ID movement that there is intelligent design in nature, and the good news is that it reinforces the traditional understanding that life came about as an act of creation by an Almighty God.
The ID community of scientists do not generally dispute this obvious conclusion but rightly insist that their discoveries are not informed, or influenced in any way, by the Genesis account in the Bible.
This illustration conveys how information reliably points to design far more easily than deconstructing all of the junk science floating around the Internet claiming that natural processes can generate large quantities of information for free
All can replicate themselves with seeming ease, an act far beyond even the most complex human artifact. Some can even reconstruct themselves completely from tiny fractions cut surgically from the cell!
Calvin Smith of Answers in Genesis (AiG) has unearthed a lie that has been in front of our eyes since primary school:
most dead fish float; they don't sink. Fossils are the result of rapid rock formations, and evolutionists know this.
Now they have started to change their story and borrow from the creationist's worldview.