Creation vs. Evolution - The Age of the Earth (Fast Facts)

7/28/2019 Creation vs. Evolution - The Age of the Earth (Fast Facts)

1/79

The Age of the EarthFast Facts

J. Quinton FribergSalt and Light Apologetic Ministries


2/79

Table of contentsJ. Quinton Friberg

Chapter 1: Radiometric dating and the age of the earthPages: 4-20

- Introduction to radioactive decay- Introduction to radioactive dating- General assumptions with radioactive dating- Carbon dating- Carbon 14 and a young earth- Potassium- Argon dating- Other dating methods- Dating methods do not agree with each-other- Accelerated decay is happening today- Evidence for Accelerated Radioactive decay in history- Accelerated radioactive decay theories

Chapter 2: Evidence of an old earth? (Part - I)

Pages: 21-36

- The geologic column- Petrification and fossilization- Petrified forests- Tree ring dating- Varves and the Green River formation

Chapter 3: Evidence of an old earth? (Part - II)

Pages: 37-51

- The Coconino Sandstone- Ice core dating- Coral Reefs- Chalk beds- Diatom beds- Stalagmites, stalactites, and cave formation- Fossil fuels- Lithification


3/79

Chapter 4: The earth is young (Part - 1)

Pages: 52-65

- Short period comets- Super Nova remnants-

Spiral armed galaxies- Blue O-Type stars- Jupiter and Saturn energy radiation- Saturns rings- Mountains of Venus- Sun luminosity- Meteoric streams and particle alignment- Enceladus- Titan- IO

Chapter 5: The earth is young (Part - II)

Pages: 66-79

- The moon- Salt and the Ocean- Sediments and the Ocean- Earths magnetic field- Volcanic measurements- Land erosion- Helium-Zircon review- Helium levels in the atmosphere- Population growth- Stone age skeletons and artifacts- Origin of agriculture


4/79

Chapter 1: Radiometric dating and the age of the earth

Introduction to radioactive decay

In this chapter we are going to be looking at the topic of radiometric dating in quitesome depth. I need to warn you before we start there will be a lot of information

and numbers in this chapter that are necessary to understand radiometric dating andthe problems associated with in. Radiometric dating is the most popular argument

used to support the claim that the Earth is billions of years old. To start us off weare going to look at radioactive decay itself so we have a foundation for what we

are talking about.

There are three different types of radioactive decay. There is Alpha decay, Beta

decay, and Gamma decay. The reason that different elements undergo radioactive

decay has to do with their nucleus being unstable. Remember the nuclear is thecenter of the atom where the protons and neutrons are located. In a stable atom thenumber of protons and neutrons are equal inside the nucleus, however when they

are not the atom becomes unstable and uses radioactive decay as a mechanism to

stabilize itself. We are going to spend a moment talking about each of these threedifferent types of radioactive decay, starting with Alpha decay.

Alpha decay is a very commonform of radioactive decay and many

of the different radioactive dating

methods use elements that areexperiencing this type fo decay. In

Alpha decay, the nucleus of anatom emits (gets rid of) two protons

and two neutrons, as those protons and neutrons leave the nucleus of the atom they

grab two electrons on their way out. These two protons and neutrons form into a

different element called helium. Helium is the by-product of Alpha decay,whenever there is Alpha decay occurring there is helium being generated. Once a

nucleus looses the two protons and the two neutrons it becomes a different element

on the periodic table. For example, when a uranium atom undergoes Alpha decaythe process produces a thorium atom + a helium atom. The helium atom (which is

a by-product of all alpha decay) is commonly called an Alpha particle.

Alpha ParticleA helium atom generated by radioactive Alpha decay.


5/79

The next type of radioactive decay is called

Beta decay. There are two different types ofBeta decay, there is Beta plus (B+) decay, and

Beta minus (B-) decay. The Beta decay that is

commonly used for radiometric dating is Betaminus decay. When Beta minus decay occurs

one of the neutrons inside of the atoms nucleusturns into a proton. In the case of carbon-14,

one of the carbon-14 protons (like shown in the picture) turns into a neutron, andthe result is an equal amount of protons and neutrons, which means a stable atom.

Also note that when this happens an electron is emitted (sent out) from the nucleus

and joins the other electrons that are orbiting the nucleus.

The third type of radioactive decay that exists is Gamma decay. In this type of

radioactive decay the nucleus of an atom simply releases a Gamma ray in order(energy) in order to help stabilize the nucleus of the atom. We will not go intomuch detail because there is no radiometric dating technique that uses Gamma

decay.

Introduction to radioactive dating

Now that we have an understanding of what radioactive decay is, lets look at howradioactive dating works. All radioactive isotopes (elements) have what is called a

half life.

Radioactive half lifeThe amount of time it takes for half of a sample of a given

radioactive substance to decay into the daughter product.

Let me give you an example of how this works. The half life of radioactive carbon-

14 is 5730 years. This means every 5730 years half of a sample of radiocarbon-14

will decay into nitrogen. If you have a pile of 5 grams of radioactive carbon-14 andyou sit around and wait for 5730 years, you will only have 2.5 grams left in the pile

because it has passed through one of half life. All radioactive elements have

different half lives, they can be very short, or they can be very long. For example,Sodium-24 is an unstable sodium atom which has a half life of only 15 hours,

which is pretty quick. On the other hand, Uranium-238 has a half life of 4.5 billion

years! If you were to watch a sample of Uranium-238 for your entire life youwould never notice any of it decaying away. Those are just two extreme examples,

most radioactive elements have half lives somewhere between those two, and theone that are used to determine the old ages of the earth have half lives from


6/79

millions to billions of years. Now that you know how half lives work, we are going

to look at the method behind radioactive dating. The idea behind radioactive datingis the comparison of parent and daughter isotope levels in a sample that is being

dated.

Parent IsotopeThe element that is undergoing radioactive decay

Daughter IsotopeThe element that is a by-product of radioactive decay

As we said earlier, uranium decays to thorium,

this would make uranium the parent isotope and

thorium the daughter isotope. The wayradiometric dating works (normally) is by taking

a sample (usually a rock) and measuring the

levels of parent and daughter isotopes within thesample. If you have 50 grams of the parentisotope and 50 grams of the daughter isotope

then you know that the sample has gone through

one half life because the daughter isotope is 50%of the parent and daughter isotope added

together. For example, if you have 10 grams of

Uranium-238 (which has a half life of 4.5 billion years) and you let it decay for onehalf life you will have 5 grams left (because you lose half of it each half life.)

Furthermore, because the sample has gone through one half life you would assume

that the age of the sample is 4.5 billion years old (because the half life forUranium-238 is 4.5 billion years.) An hour glass is a great way to visualize this

scenario, the sand on the top of the hour glass represents the parent isotope that isdecaying into the sand on the bottom of the hour glass (the daughter isotope.) You

compare the amount of parent and daughter isotopes (elements) to get a radioactive

age. The process can get a little more complicated with some radioactive isotopes,

sometimes the daughter product is also radioactive and also decaying away, andscientists have to take that into account. In this chapter we will be examining the

most popular radioactive dating methods and many problems associated with them.

General assumptions with radioactive dating

All radiometric dating methods have certain assumptions involved with them thatwe going to discuss for a moment. Assumption 1: The amounts of parent and

daughter isotopes have not been altered by anything except radioactive decay. Ifsomething besides radioactive decay was able to alter the levels of the parent and


7/79

daughter isotopes inside of a sample, the ratio of parent and daughter isotopes

inside the sample would be thrown off, and an accurate comparison cannot bemade. Assumption 2: When the rock or sample was formed it contained a known

amount of the daughter isotope, typically assumed to be zero. When the rock was

formed it is assumed that there are no daughter elements present and all thedaughter product that we find is a result of radioactive decay. This is an

assumption and has been shown to be incorrect in some instances which we willdiscuss later on in this chapter. Assumption 3: The radioactive decay rate has been

constant throughout history. If the speed that radioactive decay occurs has changedthroughout history, we would not be able to tell how old a sample is. If the half life

of Uranium-238 at one point in history was different than it is today, that would

mean the ages we derive from radiometric dating will be incorrect.

Carbon dating

The first method of radioactive dating that

we are going to address is carbon-14

dating. Unlike many other dating methods,carbon dating is not used to radioactively

date rocks. Carbon dating is used to date

carbon based life forms that have died atsome point in history. Carbon-14 has a half

life of 5730 years which is low compared

to most elements used for radioactivedating. Due to the small half life carbon-14

cannot be detected after about two hundredthousand years worth of decay. Carbon-14

is formed by cosmic rays bombarding the

upper atmosphere which produces fast

moving neutrons (as shown in the picture.)These neutrons collide with nitrogen atoms in our atmosphere producing

radioactive carbon-14. The ratio of carbon-14 compared to normal carbon (carbon-

12) in the atmosphere is extremely low.Carbon-14 gets into all plants (along with Carbon-12) through the process of

photosynthesis. It also gets into all animals, because animals have either ate plants

or ate other animals that ate plants (there is nothing else to eat.) As long as theorganism (planet or animal) is alive it will continue to take in carbon-14 from the

atmosphere and the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 will be the same as it is in theatmosphere. When an animal or plant dies it stops taking in carbon from the


8/79

atmosphere, and the carbon-14 that is in the sample begins to decay away. One

thing you need to remember though is carbon-12 is not radioactive, so the level ofcarbon-12 in an animal or plant will not change after it has died. However, the

level of carbon-14 will change because it is radioactive and decays to nitrogen

through Beta decay.

The way carbon dating works is comparing the level of carbon-14 in a dead plantor animal to the level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. If the plant or animal thatyou are dating has a measurement 5ppm (parts per million) of carbon-14, and the

atmosphere has a measurement of 10ppm of carbon-14, that seems to indicate that

the plant or animal has been dead for one half life because it has half the amount ofthe atmosphere. If the plant or animal has been dead for one half life that would

give a carbon dating age of 5730 years. Here is another example: If you were to

find a dead plant of animal that had a measurement of 2.5ppm carbon-14, and theatmosphere had a measurement of 10ppm carbon-14, the plant or animal would

have gone through two different half lives. The first half life took it from 10ppm to

5ppm, and the second took it from 5ppm to 2.5ppm. This would mean the plant oranimal is 5730 x 2 (the number of half lives that have gone by) years old. Despite

it sounding scientific, there are many problems associated with the carbon datingmethod.

The problem with carbon dating has to do with the level

of carbon-14 in our atmosphere. According to thecarbon dating method, plants and animals before they

die have the same level of carbon-14 in them as the

atmosphere does. But what if the levels of carbon-14 inthe atmosphere are changing? This has become quite a

problem for the carbon dating method, the level of

carbon-14 in the atmosphere is increasing every day. Inorder for carbon dating to work you have to know the

level of carbon-14 that was in the atmosphere when the animal or plant died,because that is the atmosphere the plant or animal would be equal with at the same


9/79

of its death. If you dont know the level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere when the

plant or animal died, then you cannot get an accurate age for that plant or animal.For example: if you carbon date a dead animal that you find and it has a

measurement of 5ppm and the atmosphere has a measurement of 20ppm, you

would assume that the dead animal has been through two half lives, the first from20ppm to 10ppm, and second from 10ppm to 5ppm. However! We are assuming

the level of carbon-14 in our atmosphere has not changed over time, and that hasbeen shown to be an incorrect assumption. If the animal had died in an atmosphere

with the measurement of 10ppm, not 20ppm like our atmosphere today, that wouldchange the age of the animal. Instead of having gone through 2 half lives (20ppm

to 5ppm) it would only have gone through 1 half life (10ppm to 5ppm.) The fact

that the atmospheric level of carbon-14 is changing and increasing means carbondating cannot be accurate.

Carbon dating also tends to contradict itself and give dates that cannot possible becorrect. For example, Shells from living snails were carbon-dated as being

27,000 years old. (Science Vol. 224, 1984 p. 58-61) These snails are alive! And

they are carbon dating as being 27,000 years old. Another example of a living

organism being dated is Penguins, which have been dated at 8,000 years old. Idont know about you, but these assigned dates seem to be a bit off. Here are some

other examples, Erectus was thought to have vanished some 250,000 years

ago. But even though he used two different dating methods, Swisher kept

making the same startling find: the bones were 53,000 years old at most and

possibly no more than 27,000 years Newsweek (Newsweek, December 23,

1996 , p. 52. p. 52) That is a 96% error between those two numbers, does thatsound very accurate? Another dating error was identified for a skull found

near Paderborn, Germany, that Protsch dated at 27,400 years old. It was

believed to be the oldest human remain found in the region until the Oxford

investigations indicated it belonged to an elderly man who died in 1750

(worldnetdaily, Feb. 19, 2005) They carbon dated the remains of a human being

and said he lived around 27,000 years ago, they then found out that historyrecorded that human dying around 250 years ago! One part of the Vollosovitch

mammoth carbon dated at 29,500 years old and another part at 44,000.

(Troy L. Pewe, U.S. Gov. printing office, 1975 p. 30) One part of the mammothgave a carbon dating age of 29,500 years old, while the other part gave an age of

44,000 years old. There are many more examples like this of carbon dating giving

impossible ages and contradictory ages. The method is not reliable, and manyscientists are aware of this. Take this quote for example from a secular scientist

Professor Brew, who briefly summarized a common attitude among archeologiststowards carbon dating, If a C14 date supports our theories, we put it in the


10/79

main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a foot-note. And

if it is completely out of dating, we just drop it (Earths Catastrophic past

Volume 1Page: 90.) the radioactive dates that go against the evolutionary

theory and against the preconceived notions of these scientists get dropped and

thrown out. Carbon dating cannot be trusted to give reliable accurate dates.

Carbon 14 and a young earth

Over the past several years the Institute for Creation

Research (IRC) has researched quite a bit on the topic

of carbon-14, and their research has been quitesuccessful in showing the earth is not millions of years

old. It was discovered that coal contained measureable

amounts of carbon-14 within it. According to secularscientists and evolution, all of the coal in the worldformed hundreds of millions of years ago. Coal is

made from plants, and the specific way that it is formed will be discussed later on

in a different chapter. However it is important to know that coal is made fromcarbon based organisms (planets.) Carbon-14 gets inside the coal because the

plants and trees that the coal was formed from contained carbon-14 in them. Once

the plants die they stop taking in carbon-14 fromthe atmosphere and the carbon-14 that is inside the

plants when they die begins to decay. As the plants

are turned into coal the carbon-14 inside of themcontinues to decay at the same rate that it did when

the coal was a plant. Remember what I said earlierabout carbon-14? After about 200,000 years so

much carbon-14 will decay away that our

machines would not be able to detect it anymore. This means if we can detect

carbon-14 inside of something it cannot be older than 200,000 years old! This hascaused quite a problem for those who believe that coal formed millions of years

ago, because coal has measureable amounts of carbon-14 within it. This proves

that the coal cannot be millions of years old like the theory of evolution claims.Now there has been one theory presented by evolutionists and secular scientists to

explain how this carbon-14 can be inside the coal after millions of years. The

theory says that the carbon-14 is a byproduct of uranium fission, and is beingproduced inside the coal today. However, to explain the observed14C, then the

coal would have to contain 99% uranium, so colloquial parlance would term

the sample uranium rather than coal. (Dr. Jonathan Sarfati,


11/79

http://creation.com/diamonds-a-creationists-best-friend) The level of uranium

needed to make this scenario plausible does not exist within the coal samples. Dr.Russell Humphreys said: With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14

atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven

impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age)

strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though

such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional

carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s,

have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. (Dr Humphreys,

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp)The layers of sediments that are

supposed to be millions and billions of years old contain detectable carbon-14,

showing that they cannot possibly be that old!

Remember how I told you coal was

supposed to form millions of years agoaccording to evolution and secularscientists? It was bad enough finding

carbon-14 in coal, but the next thing they

found it in was even worse for them. TheInstitute for Creation Research decided to

have some diamonds tested for carbon-14.

When they got the results back, they foundthere was carbon-14 still detectable inside

of them! This is very hard to explain if

they are billions of years old, there should be absolutely no detectable carbon-14after that long. Plus diamonds are the hardest mineral on earth, and there is no way

that you can contaminate a diamond and put the carbon-14 inside in the recent past.The fact that diamonds contain measureable amounts of carbon-14 is strong

evidence that the earth is not millions or billions of years old.

Potassium- Argon dating

The next method of radioactive dating that we will be

addressing is the potassium-argon dating method. This

is one dating method that is used to give ages ofmillions of years for different sedimentary layers.

Volcanic ash layers are dated by scientists using the

potassium-argon method to determine when the lavaflow formed. Potassium (which is the parent product)

decays to argon (daughter product) with a half life of1.3 billion years. When volcanic lava is in liquid form
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asphttp://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp


12/79

(molten) it is assumed that all the gases within the lava would escape into the

atmosphere and then once the lava solidifies (hardens) the gases that are generatedafter that will be the only gases present. The potassium-argon dating method works

by measuring the ratio of potassium to argon inside of a volcanic rock to determine

when a given volcanic flow solidified. Before we go into specific problemsassociated with this dating method, I want to compare it to carbon dating to show

you that the ages derived from different dating methods do not agree with eachother. In Australia, some wood was buried by a basalt lava flow, as can be

seen from the charring. The wood was: dated: by radiocarbon analysis at

about 45,000 years old, but the basalt was Dated by the K-Ar (potassium-

argon) method at 45 million years. (Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting evolution

page: 111) 45,000 years for the carbon dating method, and 45 million years forthe potassium-argon method, I would say that is a pretty dramatic error. Remember

how I said that it is assumed that there was no argon in the volcanic rocks when

they hardened? Because argon is a gas, and all the gas would escape while the lavawas liquid? This happens to be the fatal assumption in the potassium-argon datingmethod. The levels of argon are not at zero when the lava flow hardens, it has been

shown that there is argon present in the volcanic ash and rocks that was not a

product of radioactive decay of potassium! The primary assumption upon

which K-Ar model-age dating is based assumes zero 40Ar in the mineral

phases of a rock when it solidifies. This assumption has been shown to be

faulty. (CEN Tech. J., Vol. 10, No. 3, p: 342 1996) If you do not know howmuch argon (daughter product) was present when the volcanic ash layer cooled

down there is no way to tell the age of that ash layer! And it turns out to be

impossible to know the level or argon that was present in the ash layer when itsolidified, which means it is impossible to derive an accurate age for the volcanic

ash layer. You can also date a ash layer multiple times using potassium-argondating every time, and the dates will not be consistent with each other. Twenty-

seven samples yielded potassium-argon model ages ranging from 405.1+-10

to 2,574.2+-73 million years. (Dr. Andrew A. Snelling, Earths Catastrophic

pastVolume 2Page: 841) The same lava flow gave ages ranging between 400million years and 2.5 billion years! That is a 650% error between those two

numbers. There is one other problem with the potassium-argon dating method that

I want to bring up. Every time a scientist uses potassium-argon dating to measurethe age of a volcanic ash of known age, the method fails. Below is a list of

different volcanic eruptions that have been dated using potassium argon dating.

The date that the volcano blew up is the first date (historically recorded) and thesecond age is what the potassium argon method says the age is.


13/79

Hualalai basalt, Hawaii (AD 1800-1801) 1,600,000 years

Mt. Etna basalt, Sicily (122 BC) 250,000 yearsMt. Etna basalt, Sicily (AD 1972) 350,000 years

Mt. Lassen plagioclase, California (AD 1915) 110,000 years

Sunset Crater basalt, Arizona (AD 1064-1065) 270,000 yearsAkka Water Fall flow, Hawaii (Pleistocene) 32,300,000 years

Kilauea Iki basalt, Hawaii (AD 1959) 8,500,000Mt. Stromboli, Italy, volcanic bomb (September 23, 1963) 2,400,000 years

Mt. Etna basalt, Sicily (May 1964) 700,000 yearsGlass Mountains, California (


14/79

the age of crystallization. (Dr. Andrew A. Snelling (Ph.D Geology)EarthsCatastrophic pastVolume 2Page: 81) It is possible for contamination tooccur within these rocks being dated. This would cause an under-estimation of the

initial levels of rubidium and strontium inside the sample, which would cause an

over-estimation of the age of the rock. The last problem we are going discusswith this dating method has to do with the mobility of rubidium and strontium

under certain conditions. Under certain conditions, rubidium and strontium canmove around freely and dramatically change the distribution and ratios of those

elements. Recognition of inheritance, open-system behaviors, contamination

and mixing, and the later effects of weathering, together have increasingly

cause Rb-Sr radioisotope Dating to be regarded as unreliable. (Dr.

Andrew A. Snelling (Ph.D Geology) Earths Catastrophic pastVolume 2

Page: 817) Open-system behavior means the different elements can move in and

out of the rock, thus changing the ratios of either the parent element or the

daughter element. Far too many problems have been found with the rubidium-strontium dating method for it to be considered reliable and accurate. The nextdating method we are going to address is the samarium-neodymium method.

Samarium would be the parent element that decays to neodymium. This dating

method suffers several of the same problems as the last one, the first of which isthe mobility of the elements that are used, A study of the Sm-Nd radioisotope

systematics in minerals in two granites has shown that hydrothermal fluids

interacting with the host rocks, as the granites intrudes and crystallizes, are

capable of carrying Sm and Nd in the rocks over distances of at least 1 km.

(Dr. Andrew A. Snelling (Ph.D Geology)Earths Catastrophic pastVolume2Page:822) During the flood you would have exactly these hydrothermalconditions all around the world. Under these conditions samarium and neodymium

would be mobile, and this mobility would cause the parent or daughter isotoperatios to be dramatically changed. The last dating method that I want to mention is

the Uranium-Thorium-Lead method. This one gets a little more confusing because

there are three elements involved. Uranium is the parent isotope of thorium,

thorium is the daughter product of uranium and the parent isotope of lead, lead isthe daughter isotope of thorium. Here is one quote that sums of the majority of the

problems with this dating method, It was found that U (Uranium) appeared to

have been lost from samples which exhibit no discernible effects of alteration,so it was even suggested the leaching of U from surficial rocks might be a

universal phenomenon. This was because concentrations of U, Th (Thorium),

and Pb (Lead), and the isotopic composition of Pb, for whole-rock samples of

granites, showed that open-system behavior is nearly universal in the surface

and near-surface environment, and that elemental mobility is possible to

depths of several hundred meters. (Dr. Andrew A. Snelling (Ph.D Geology)


15/79

Earths Catastrophic pastVolume 2Page: 825) Leeching is the process of

something being sucked out or removed from something else. This woulddramatically alter the parent/daughter ratios inside of these rocks, and the dates

derived using this method would be inaccurate and unreliable. It was also shown

that open-system behavior is extremely common in these rocks, which means thesedifferent isotopes can move into and out of the rocks.

Dating methods do not agree with each other

Many scientists claim that the dating methods all agree with each other and

therefore must be right. ICR (Institute for Creation Research) took multiple

samples from the same lava flow in the Grand Canyon and had them dated usingfour different methods to see if they agreed with one another. The samples in this

first example were taken from the Cardenas basalt layer, it gave a potassium-argon

age of 516 million years, which is less than half of the rubidium-strontium age of1.1 billion years, and the samarium-neodymium age was 1.6 billion years, threetimes the age that the potassium-argon dating method gave. As you can see the

different dating methods do not agree with each other. In another case the samples

gave a potassium-argon age of 1.2 billion years, then another potassium-argon ageof 2.5 billion years, then a rubidium-strontium age of 1.2 billion years, then a

samarium-neodymium age of 1.6 billion years, and a lead-lead age of 1.9 billion

years. There are many more examples of this occurring that we do not have timeaddress. These are just some examples to help you understand that the different

dating methods do not agree with one another. You do not need to memorize the

numbers that I mentioned either.

Accelerated decay is happening today

Several years ago a theory was presented by the creation science community that

radioactive half lives might have been accelerated at some point in the recent past.

That is to say the half life would have been much smaller than what we observetoday and large amounts of radioactive decay would be able to happen very

quickly. One problem many people had with this theory arose from a

misconception that radioactive half lives cannot be altered. However, thisassumption that radioactive half lives cannot change was debunked multiple times.

One survey that was done in the scientific literature showed that there had been

two dozen experiments where decay rates changing had been reported. Otherexperiments have shown that radioactive decay rates can be accelerated to a billion

times the normal rate under certain conditions. There are other factors that alsoneed to be further studied, For example, we need to explore how isotopes


16/79

behave deep within the earth during partial melting, and also in magma-rock

systems during crystallization. (Dr. Tas Walker

http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_1/j14_1_04-05.pdf)We do not know

everything there is to know about radioactive decay and behaviors, much research

is still needed in this field. It was also shown that the solar activity can change thedecay rates of certain elements, New observations have found that those

nuclear decay rates actually fluctuate based on solar activity. (Br ian Thomas,

M .S. http://www.icr.org/article/5656/) It would not be correct to say that decay

rates are unchangeable, it has been demonstrated multiple times that the rate ofradioactive decay can be changed.

Evidence for Accelerated Radioactive decay in history

If we are going to claim that radioactive decay

was accelerated at some point in history weneed evidence to support that claim. We will belooking at an experiment that was conducted by

the RATE team that provides strong evidence

of accelerated radioactive decay at some pointin earths history. Inside granite rocks you find

little black mica, and sometimes inside of this

mica you find microscopic zircon crystals.These zircon crystals are radioactive due to

uranium atoms that are inside of them. If you

remember back to the beginning of this chapter we discussed the three differenttypes of radioactive decay, uranium decays by means of Alpha decay. Because

uranium decays by Alpha decay that means while it is decaying there is Alphaparticles (helium) that are being generated in the process. Helium is the second

lightest element on the periodic table, and also is a noble gas, which means that it

does not like to bond with other atoms. It is light weight which means that it can

move around quickly, and sense it is so small and non-reactive, it can also leak outof almost anything that it is in. People use helium to find leaks in different

products they are making, because helium escapes out of things extremely well.

There is no exception for the zircon crystals, helium is consistently leaking out ofthe zircon crystals at the same time that it is forming inside of the crystals. There

is a picture/graph to help illustrate this on the next page. This picture represents a

zircon crystal, inside of this crystal you have two processes occurring; you havenuclear decay (uranium
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_1/j14_1_04-05.pdfhttp://www.icr.org/article/5656/http://www.icr.org/article/5656/http://www.icr.org/article/5656/http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_1/j14_1_04-05.pdf


17/79

decaying to lead) and you have helium being

formed in the process. Once the helium isformed from the Alpha decay it starts to escape

out of the zircon crystal. The lead (daughter

product) does not escape out of the zirconcrystal though which means you can tell how

many helium atoms have been generated bylooking at how many lead atoms are present,

because for each lead atom you have thereshould be one helium atom. The RATE team

took multiple samples of zircon crystals and sent them to the words best helium

leakage laboratory to measure the rate at which the helium atoms are escaping outof the zircon crystal. They figured out the rate for the different zircon crystals, it

varies depending on how deep the zircon crystal was in the ground, because the

warmer it gets the quicker the helium will leak out of the zircon crystal. Thelaboratory took all these different things into account, they measured the rate atwhich helium leaks out of the crystal, they measured how much helium is in the

crystals still, and they measured the total amount of helium that has been generated

in the life time of that zircon crystal by nuclear decay. If you find out allthis information you can use it to date the zircon crystals. All the information was

gathered and they figured out that the helium has only been leaking out of the

zircon crystals for about six thousand years,which means the granite rock that contain the

zircons would have to have formed at that

time. This is a problem because secularscientists believe these rocks formed billions

of years ago, not six thousand years ago. Butwe are talking about accelerated radioactive

decay, not the age of the earth, so why bring

this up? Well it turns out that when you date

the zircon crystals by means of radioactivedecay (uranium-lead) you get an age of 1.5

billion years! If these rocks were millions of

years old like secular scientists claim, therewouldnt be helium in them still. Here is a graph to illustrate the data. The pink

line represents the predictions if the rocks and zircon crystals were millions of

years old. The red line shows the prediction if the Bible is correct. And the blueline shows the actual data that was found, see how well it matches the Biblical

predictions? The old earth predictions were off by a factor of 100,000. Thecreationists made their predictions based on the Bible long before they knew the


18/79

date, and they were right on the money! This also has great implications when it

comes to accelerated radioactive decay. The zircon crystal and helium leakage isgiving an age of six thousand years for the age of these crystals, and the

radioisotope dating method is giving an age of 1.5 billion years. This means 1.5

billion years of nuclear decay had to happen in the past six thousand years! This isstrong evidence that the rate of radioactive decay was accelerated in the past,

which means all dates derived from radioactive dating would be wrong and appearmuch older. As you have probably guessed many secular scientists do not like this

conclusion and some of them have tried to show that helium leakage is not anaccurate dating method. There have been some theories presented to explain how

the observed helium levels could be inside of the zircon crystals if they were

billions of years old.

The first theory claims the temperature in that region was cooler in the past. The

warmer the temperature the faster the helium escapes out of the zircon, because thewarmer it gets the quicker the atoms move around. If you cool down the area thatmeans the atoms would move slower and the helium would not leak out as quickly.

This theory has two primary problems associated with it. First off the thermal

(heat) history for the area these zircons were taken from shows it would have beenwarmer (not cooler) in the past then it is today, this is due to volcanic history in the

area. Secondly, in order to account for all the helium that is in these zircons they

would need to have temperatures as low as liquid nitrogen (196 degrees Celsius.)There is no way that this area could have been that cold in the past!

The next theory questions the measurements done by the laboratory. Inside of thesezircon crystals 1-2% of the helium is not tightly bound to the crystal. This means if

you take it to the laboratory for measurements 1-2% of the helium will leak out ofthe zircon at a faster rate than the rest of the helium will. Some people claim that

when the laboratory made the measurements of how quick the helium leaks out of

the crystals they were only measuring this 1-2% that initially leaks out of the

crystals very quickly, and because they were measuring this 1-2% of rapidlyleaking helium their measurements were incorrect. The problem is the laboratory

knows this happens, and they recommend that people ignore the initial

measurements, which the RATE team did. They only used the measurements of theleaking rate of the other 98% that leaks out of the zircon at a steady rate.

One last scenario claims that the helium was put into the zircon crystals in therecent past by outside forces. The problem is, If the helium in the zircons were

excess and came from outside them, it would have had to come through the

biotite. As I pointed out on p. 9 of CRSQ 2004, the helium concentration in


19/79

the biotite is two hundred times lower than the concentration in the zircon.

That means, according to the laws of diffusion, that the helium is presently

leaking out of the zircons into the biotite, not the other way around. (Dr.Russell Humphreys http://www.trueorigin.org/helium01.asp) There is no way

the helium inside of these zircon crystals came from an outside source, the levelsof helium we measure in the biotite would be different then we observe if this were

the case. The theory that claims the helium came from an outside source says avolcano lava flow is responsible for the helium. The secular scientists who

originated this theory wants fluids (from magma) to carry the helium into thegranite rock, through the biotite, and into the zircon crystal. He claims this

happened in the recent past sometime between 100,000 years ago and 1,400,000

years ago. This scenario has some serious problems associate with it. First off thehelium would have escaped from the magma before it reached the zircons, which

means once the magma got there no helium would be available. Secondly, the

temperatures would have rose dramatically from this magma interacting with thegranite rock and zircon crystals, But lets assume for the sake of argument that

the helium somehow gets into the zircons. Now it has to stay there. The

magmatic fluids would raise the temperature of the zircons considerably

higher than their present temperature, and temperatures would remain high

for dozens of millennia. (Dr. Russell Humphreys

http://www.trueorigin.org/helium01.asp) If the temperatures got raised by the

magma this would cause the helium into the zircons to leak out dramaticallyquicker, remember what we said earlier about temperature and helium leaking?

The higher the temperature is the quicker the helium will leak out of the zircon. If

the helium was put inside the zircons by magma flows, the temperature would beraised so high that all the helium should have escaped by now (which it hasnt.)

Is there a mechanism that could be responsible for this

massive sudden increase of radioactive decay? One

theory has been presented that uses String Theory to

show that this amount of decay is possible. In StringTheory, every point in existence is associated with a

six dimensional manifold called a Calabi-Yau, The

Calabi-Yau spaces have holes, and insuperstring theory the sizes of coupling constants

are related to the diameters of these hole (Dr.

Eugene Chaffin, Theoretical physicist) This quote is say that these differentpoints (Calabi-Yaus) have different size holes within them and the size of these

holes controls the different forces in our universe. The strong nuclear forcecontrols Alpha decay inside the nucleus of an atom and if you change the diameter


20/79

(size) of the hole that controls the strong force you can change how fast/slow

radioactive decay happens. This is one physically way that radioactive decay canbe massively accelerated.

Accelerated radioactive decay theories

Accelerated decay is not the only mechanism available to explain the large amountof radioactive material we find here on earth, some theories suggest that God

created the daughter products of radioactive decay already inside of the earth. Thetheory proposed suggests that large quantities of daughter elements were mixed

into the crust of the earth during the flood year. Or that God created the daughter

elements already in the crust of the earth, and the flood just mixed them aroundmore. There is no reason why God could not have created these different elements

in the original creation. Some people have a problem with the idea that radioactive

decay was happening before Adam and Eve sinned,after all decay doesnt sound like something thatwould be in Gods perfect creation. There are many

physical problems that come about if you have decay

starting after the fall, and these are not just smallproblems. When radioactive decay occurs heat is

generated from the process. The heat from radioactive

decay is responsible for the mantle of the earth being a plastic like rock, and not asolid rock. If there was no radioactive decay our mantle would be smaller than it is

today because the heat generated from radioactive decay causes the mantle to

expand. Do you see the problem? The crust of the earth is on top of the mantle andis solid, which means if you have radioactive decay start directly after the fall of

Adam and Eve the mantle is going to suddenly warm up and expand. If the mantlesuddenly expanded due to the heat of radioactive decay the crust of the earth

(which is solid) would blow apart because of the mantle expanding beneath it. This

would kill everything on the surface of the earth, and inside of the oceans. And it

may surprise you to hear that this is not the biggest problem! It gets worse fromhere. Thermonuclear fusion is a process that takes multiple steps of radioactive

decay to work, and the sun powers itself through thermonuclear fusion. This means

if there is no radioactive decay there is no sun, or stars. If you take away the sun Ithink we all know what would happen, everything on earth dies! There is no way

that radioactive decay could start after the Adam and Eve sinned, it would have to

be occurring by the fourth day of creation when the sun was made. Plus if youthink about it the word decay is a word that we humans decided to use when

referring to the process. Radioactive decay is simply the transformation of differentelements, not the destruction of them.


21/79

Chapter 2: Evidence of an old earth? (I)

Introduction

Back in the year 1830 Charles Lyell published a book titled Principals of Geology,in this book Lyell promoted the idea of uniformitarianism in the study of Geology.

Geology - The study of the solid Earth and the processes by which it is shaped and

changed.

Geology is a very wide area of study having to do with rocks, sedimentary layers,

minerals, fossil fuels, and much more. Lyells book convinced Darwin and manypeople of that time period that the flood was not responsible for the different

geological features and rock layers that we see on earth, and claimed instead that

they were a result of millions of years of gradual processes. In this chapter we aregoing to be addressing several of processes and features of the earth that secularscientists have claimed proves the earth is millions of years old.

The geologic column

The geologic column, often called the geologic

time scale, was founded on the idea that the rocklayers making up the surface of the earth were

sucessively laid down over millions of years.

According to the geologic time scale, the futherdown you go inside the crust of the earth the

older the rocks get. There are different namesgiven for different layers and depths of the

geologic column (as shown in the picture.) The

geologic time scale is charted out until the era

know as cambrian, any lower than that isconsidered Precambrian rock. Some of the

names used for the different sections of the

geologic column may sound familiar to you,many people have probably seen the movie

Jurassic park, Jurassic is one of the names for

s section of the geologic column. Now aboutnow you are probably wondering how they

determine which layers are which in the


22/79

geologic column. Each layer is assigned something called an index fossil.

Index Fossil - fossils used to define and identify different geologic periods

The theory of evolution proposes that different species of organisms came intoexistence by the process of evolution and then after some time went extinct, or

evolve into a different kind of animal over millions of years. This would give you amechanism to identify strata layers and their ages around the world by looking at

what fossils are contained in those layers. If there is a trilobite, they would assumethat the layer is Cambrian rock, because the trilobite is the index fossil of the

Cambrian era. Something you need to know about the dates of fossils and

sedimentary layers, some sceintstis will claim that the dates corresponding to thedifferent parts of the geological column are derived from radioactive dating. This is

far from true, the geologic column was created before any radioactive dating

methods were invented. Another thing you need to know is the geological columncannot be found at any one place on planet earth, It needs to be emphasized that

the rock layers making up the pages of this book of earth history (the

geologic column) are not all found exposed to view at any one spot on the

earths surface. (Dr. Andrew A. Snelling (Ph.D Geology)EarthsCatastrophic pastVolume 1Page: 299) We are going to spend some time

now addressing some of the different problems that have arisen for those who

promote the geological time scale.

Now that you know what the geologic column is,

lets look at all those problems associated with it!This picture shows a small scale example of the first

issue that we will be discussing. In many differentareas around the world, there are strata thousands of

feet thick that are bent and folded into hairpin shapes

like you see in the photo. According to secular

geology and uniformitarianism these different layersof strata should take millions of years to form,

however the bending of these strata (which are located in many mountains)

occurred without the rock cracking! Which proves that the entire formationthousands of feet thick, had to be wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred,

which also means the entire formation had to be formed at the exact same time!

This does not work if you believe that the layers were laid down over millions andmillions of years. Secular scientists have attempted to solve this problem for

uniformitarianistic geology, The conventional explanation is that under the

pressure and heat of burial, the hardened sandstone and limestone layers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossilhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_columnhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_columnhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil


23/79

were bent so slowly they behaved as though they were plastic and thus did not

break. However, pressure and heat would have caused detectable changes in

the minerals of these rocks, tell-tale signs of metamorphism. But such

metamorphic minerals or recrystallization due to such plastic behavior is not

observed in these rocks. (Dr. Andrew A. Snelling (Ph.D Geology)http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v4/n2/folded-not-fractured)If these rocks had been under the amount of pressure proposed, and then wereslowly uplifted and bent without cracking, there would be signs inside the rocks

that it happened, and those signs are not there. There has been no scientificallysound explanation to explain these rocks that are bent without any cracking.

However, the Bible has a fantastic explanation of how this can occur, the Bible

says there was a flood 4400 years ago that covered the entire world and formedmany of the different geologic features that we see today.

Paraconformities are where one rock stratum sitson top of another rock stratum, sometimes

between the two rock stratum we find ephemeral

markings, these would be things like raindrops,ripple marks, and animal tracks. If these two

different stratums were laid down millions of years

apart from each-other there should be noephemeral markings present. Any markings made

would have been eroded away very quickly. There

is no way that you can get animal tracks (for example) to preserve themselves forthousands and millions of years until the rock stratum above is in place. The

presences of ephemeral markings has eliminates the idea that there are millions ofyears of gap time between these different rock stratums. The evidence all points

to the different strata layers being laid down very quickly and at the same time!

Just like the Bible says said they were.

The next issue with the idea that all the strata layers around the earth formed

slowly over millions of years comes from poly-strata fossils.

Poly-Strata fossilsFossils running through multiple layers of sedimentary layers
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v4/n2/folded-not-fracturedhttp://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v4/n2/folded-not-fractured


24/79

Trees are a very common type of poly-strata,

they are found fossilized running throughmultiple layers of sediments. This causes quite

the problem for those who believe these layers

formed over millions of years, the trees are in the uprightposition and sometimes they are even upside down! If

you believe these layers formed slowly you must believethat the tree stood upright for tens of thousands of years

while the sedimentary layers built up around it. But like Isaid earlier these trees are sometimes found upside down

in the sedimentary layers, this causes even greater

problems. If the trees are upside down they will have noroots to hold them upright for millions of years, which

means they will fall over unless they are buried

extremely quick. Furthermore,if you believe these trees stoodupright for millions of years

while the sedimentary layers

built up, the top of these trees would have decayed quitea bit, however this decay is not observed in these poly-

strata trees. Later in this chapter we will be looking at

fossilized tree forests and see how a flood is the best explanation for theseobservations. There are modern day examples of poly-strata fossil trees forming

quickly inside sedimentary layers, and we will be look at those examples later on

in this chapter. Many scientists have claimed that the process of fossilization (orpetrification) takes millions of years to occur, this claim has also been shown to be

false, and will be addressed in details later in this chapter.

If you remember back to the last chapter we discussed carbon-14 being found in

fossil fuels (coal) and diamonds deep inside the crust of the earth. Other things

(such as fossil wood) have also been found to contain measureable amounts ofcarbon-14 in them. This is bad news for the geologic column, this means any layer

that detectable carbon-14 is found cannot be older than 200,000 years. Yet the

geologic time scale says these layers are millions of years old! Carbon-14 is strongevidence that the geologic timescale is not historically accurate.

Petrification and fossilization

In this section we will be discussing the process offossilization and the speed at which it occurs. Many


25/79

people have been taught that fossils take millions of

years to form, from the pressure of the rocks andsedimentary layers above them. However, there is

strong evidence that fossilization occurs very rapidly.

The most stunning evidence in the fossil record ofrapid burial and fossilization comes from fossils of soft-bodied creatures like Jelly

fish that have been found. Mawsonites spriggi, when discovered, was identified

as a fossilized jellyfish. It was found in a sandstone bed that covers more than

400 square miles of outback South Australia. Millions of such soft-bodied

marine creatures are exquisitely preserved in this sandstone bed. Consider

what happens to soft-bodied creatures like jellyfish when washed up on a

beach today. Because they consist only of soft jelly, they melt in the sun and

are also destroyed by waves crashing onto the beach. Based on this reality, the

discoverer of these exquisitely preserved soft-bodied marine creatures

concluded that all of them had to be buried in less than a day!(Dr. Andrew A. Snelling(Ph.D Geology) http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n2/world-graveyard)400 square miles in Australiacontains these soft-bodied fossilized creatures, in order for this to happen they all

had to be buried within a day! Sounds like something that would happen in a

worldwide flood, and something that would not happen if the sedimentary layerstook millions of years to form in this area. This is not the only place where these

soft-bodied creatures are found fossilized, they are found in many different places

all around the world. There is more evidence that fossils had to form rapidly. Thispicture shows a fossil of one fish eating another fish! In order to capture this

moment the fish would have to be rapidly buried and fossilized. The fossil in this

picture was found at the Green River formation, which we will be discussing indetail later in this chapter. Again fossils like this are found all around the world!

This is not one isolated example. Another fantastic example of rapid fossilizationcomes from a fossil showing a marine reptile (ichthyosaur) giving birth! It does not

take millions of years to give birth (thank goodness), in order to capture this

moment the fossil would have to be formed very quickly.

Petrification is a type of fossilization, it occurs when all

biological material is turned into stone by impregnation

with silica. The poly-strata we talked about a moment agoare examples of trees that have been petrified. Secular

scientists have stated that the process of petrification takes

millions of years to happen. However, this idea stands indirect opposition to modern day examples of petrification

happening very rapidly. The first example pictured here is of a petrified acorn.There was a young boy (7 years old at the time) who wanted to see if some acorns
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n2/world-graveyardhttp://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n2/world-graveyard


26/79

would sprout if he put them in a bucket of water, after he put them inside the

bucket he forgot about them, his mom found them the next year and found thatthey had all petrified. The acorns are now at dinosaur adventure land in Pensacola

Florida.

This picture is shows a cowboy boot that was

found with the cowboys leg/foot still in it! Youmight be wondering about now why I am

showing you this picture, after all not everyonewants to see the remains of a cowboys leg/foot.

Well it turns out that the cowboys leg petrified

and turned to stone inside the boot! The boot wasmade in the 1950s, which means the cowboys

leg has petrified since that time. This again is evidence that petrification does not

take millions of years to happen. Petrified sacks of flower were found in thebasement of an old abandoned house in Arkansas. The house was made in 1910,this means since the time the house was made all these sacks of flower had

petrified. Another example of rapid petrification was observed when the grave of a

Tennessee doctor was dug up. Fourteen years after the doctor died his wife diedand they wanted to bury her beside him, they dug a hole for the coffin but found

that the hole quickly filled up with water because of an underwater spring they did

not know about, so they buried the wife somewhere else. However, the Grandkidsstarted worrying about their Grandpa (the doctor) being buried where there was an

underwater spring and flowing water, so they dug up his grave. When they opened

the coffin they found that his body had petrified in less than 14 years.

A group of men were looking through a house inMontana that had been abandoned around 30 years

ago. While they were looking they found some jars of

pickles in the pantry. On one of the jars the top had

rusted off and the pickle inside of the jar had petrifiedand turned to stone. This happened in less than 30

years! A body of a

petrified man was foundon a beach many years ago in Montana, the man was

58 tall and the man who found the body travelled

around showing it off at different places.A petrified waterwheel was found, petrified cowboy

hat from New Zealand was also found. There was a62 year old lady who was having cramps in her side,


27/79

she went to the hospital to see what was wrong, and they found a petrified baby

inside of her. The baby had been there for many years and had died and petrifiedinside of her body in a matter of years. This type of scenario has also been reported

many other times. Someone found a petrified hammer in a military barracks from

world war two. There is a petrified crayon at dinosaur adventure land in PensacolaFlorida, the crayon had to petrify in a matter of years. The July 2004 issue

of Sedimentary Geology included a paper by five Japanese scientists reporting

their experiments on the rapid petrification of wood as an indication that

silicified (petrified) wood found in ancient strata must likewise have been

rapidly petrified.(Andrew Snelling Ph.D Geology http://www.icr.org/index.php?chapter=articles&action=view&ID=13)The evidence is mounting in favor of rapid petrification and many secular

scientists now agree millions of years are not required.

Petrified forests

In Yellow Stone national part (and multiple placesaround the world) we find layers of petrified

forests stacked up on top of each other. There are

18 stacked forests in Yellow Stone that reach 2000feet in height. At Mt. Amenthyst-Specimen Ridge,

there are 27 of these stacked forests on top of each

other, at Mt. Hornaday there are 31 successiveforests, and at least 65 levels in the Specimen

Creek area. The secular interpretation proposes

that one forest grew and then after hundreds orthousands of years a volcano blew up a buried the

forest and a new forest grew on top of the old one.These forests are buried in volcanic ash and debris, and so this interpretation seems

quite reasonable. If after a volcano eruption it takes 200 years for the next forest to

begin to grow (reforestation), and then another 500 years for the trees to grow

fully, then it would have taken a minimum of 45,000 years to form the 65 levels atSpecimen Creek. Hopefully at this point you are waiting for me to tell you why

this interpretation is incorrect and inconsistent with the scientific evidence, so

without further ado we will look at the problems with this interpretation, and seehow these observations support the Biblical history of a worldwide flood.

There is loads of evidence that the petrified forests and the trees that are in themgrew elsewhere. That is to say they did not grow where the forests are stacked on

top of each other, but were transported there from other areas due to a catastrophicevent. In many different cases trees will be passing through the layer above them
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=13http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=13http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=13


28/79

(Poly-Strata) this indicates that they were transported there. If the tops of trees had

been penetrating into the forest above them, the tops of those trees would besubject to infestation and rotting, If these were successive forests that grew in

place, the tops of any tree stumps protruding into the next growing forest

would be subject to infestation by insects, rotting, and decay, yet the petrified

wood tissue in these tree stumps looks as fresh as the wood tissue in living

trees. This is the first way we can tell that these forests did not grow successivelyon top of each other.

The next issue with these forest all growing in the area we find them over long

periods of time comes from the variety of species of plants and trees that we find,

The most abundant of the fossilized tree stumps are Sequoia (redwoods),

with pines being second in abundance. From identifications of the fossil wood,

pollen, leaves, and needles, the number of plant species represented in these

Yellow-stone petrified forests is over 200. This represents a diverse groupingof species including exotic genera such as cinnamon, breadfruit, katsura, and

Chinquapin that presently restricted to southeastern Asia. We would not

expect such an ecological diversity if the trees represent a forest in the position

of growth. These species range from temperate (pine, redwoods, willows) to

tropical and exotic (figs, laurels, breadfruit), and from semi-desert to

rainforest types. (Dr. Andrew A. Snelling, Earths Catastrophic Past, Volume

2Page: 954) The diversity of these forests shows the trees had to be transportedfrom many different areas around the world. There is no way to get exotic,

temperature, and tropical trees and plants to grow in the same forest.

If these petrified forests grew and were buried where we find them, we would

expect to find certain fossils and traces of animals that would have lived in theforest. If a volcano buried these forests many of the animals would not have been

able to escape and should be fossilized or left traces that they were there. Animals

like snails, amphibians, reptiles, insects, spiders, and worms would not be able to

escape the rapid burial of a volcano. The problem is we dont find any traces ofthese animals or fossils of them! Now if the forests were transported to where they

are, and the sedimentary layers were laid down by water rapidly, this can all be

explained.

Another problem with the scenario of these forests growing where they are found

is something called soil horizons. The soil in the Yellow Stone national parkpetrified forest shows no detectable amounts of lay in them, this means the soil

layers do not represent newly formed soil in a forest, but instead were laid down bysome other methods (like water.) The absence of clay shows there was no


29/79

significant passage of time between the different soil layers in this forest. This

proves that these forests did not grow where we find them, and had to betransported to their present location by some means. But how could this occur?

Lets look at a modern day example.

Mount St. Helens has become a very popular

example of how catastrophic conditions cancreate many of the geological features we see

around the world, including these petrifiedforests. The one thing we do know is these

forests could not have grown where we find

them today, all the evidence says they

originated somewhere else. How could they be

transported? A flood (water) would be the onlypossible way. When Mount St. Helens erupted

in May of 1980, it blew millions of trees off

the mountain, many of those trees ended up ina lake nearby the volcano (Spirit Lake.) There

is a lot to talk about when it comes to geologyand Mt. St. Helens, but I am going to leave the

majority of that discussion for a later chapter. I

want to talk about what happened to the trees

in the Lake though. Thousands of trees formed a log-mat on Spirit Lake that would

move around and completely cover different parts of the lake at different times.After a while these trees started to sink down to the bottom of the lake, get stuck inthe mud, and petrify. Some of the trees sink down a are in the vertical position,

while someare in the horizontal position. Sound familiar? This is very similar towhat we observe in the petrified forests in Yellow Stone and other places. During

the worldwide flood everything would be under water! And thousands of

volcanoes (much large than Mt. St. Helens) would erupt. This would cause billions

of trees to float around in log mats during the flood, these trees would be able to

float and travel great distances, explaining the vast variety and diversity of speciesobserved. Volcanic layers would be provided from the thousands of volcanoes

erupting all over the world creating volcanic mudflows. There would be no soilhorizons if they formed by a flood, because the soil layers would all be laid down

rapidly by water. All that we observe in these petrified forests can be explained by

a worldwide flood.


30/79

Tree ring dating

The next topic on our list to discuss is that of

Dendrochronology. Dendrochronology is a fancy

scientific word for tree rings dating. Im sure we wereall told when we were kids, that if you count the rings

on a tree you can tell how old the tree is. If there arefive rings, then you assume the tree is five years old,

and if there are 30 rings you know the tree is 30 yearsold. This is true for a lot of different trees, the tree in

your backyard is probably as old as the number of rings

that it has, however there are some instances when itcan be inaccurate and not knowing that has caused

many people to doubt the Biblical timeframe given in

the Bible. According to secular scientists, the oldest tree alive in the world today isdated (by counting tree rings) at 4300 years old. Interested to note, that wouldmean it started growing right after the Bible says the flood happened, which is an

interesting coincidence. Before we go into the issue Dendrochronology presents to

a Biblical time-frame, we are going to look at an issue that it presents to those whobelieve the earth is millions of years old. We have for many organisms something

called an upper-limit on their age, this is the maximum age that organism can get

before it will die. It does not mean that they will all get to that point, most of themdo not, but it provides an upper age of the organism weather is be a plant or

animal. The oldest trees in the world are the Bristol Cone Pines (BCP) and are

located in the white mountains of California. The oldest tree (by counting rings) asI said earlier is dated around 4300 years old, and it is called the Methuselah tree.

The problem is these trees have not been given an upper limit on their age and theyshould be able to survive for tens of thousands of years. The question then is, why

do we not have any trees with more rings? 4300 is the upper limit on the age of this

tree, because the trees typically produce at least one ring a year. Why is there not a

tree 10-20 thousand years old? They should be able to survive that long. This isstrong evidence that at some point a few thousand years ago, all the BCPs in the

world got destroyed, and the one we have now have only been growing since then.

This is exactly what you get in a Biblical history, the flood would destroy all thetrees and plants on the earth, and after the flood these trees would start to grow

again and should not be older than about 4400 years. However, as I said earlier the

amount of rings do not always tell us the age of a tree, although they typicallyproduce one ring a year, they can produce more if needed.


31/79

If you cut open one of these trees you

will find that there are thousands ofrings, and you will also find that the rings

have different patterns. These patterns

correspond to the climate and weatherthey are experiencing at the time.

Because you can see different patternsinside the rings of trees, some people

have tried to extrapolate tree rings datingto dead trees that are found in the same

area. If that doesnt make sense dont

worry, Ill explain it. If you find a distinct pattern in the rings of a tree, you canthen go to a dead tree and find that same pattern in its rings. If you look at the

oldest point on a living tree, and then you find that same pattern in a dead tree (that

died thousands of years ago) you can then move your time frame even furtherbackwards, because you can identify when the dead tree died and how many ringsit had before the living tree started to grow. If a living tree has 2000 rings, and you

find that there is a distinct ring pattern

between rings 30-40 (early in the treeslife) and you then look at a dead tree and

find that same distinct pattern, but instead

of being between rings 30 and 40, thatpattern appears between rings 1030 and

1040, that means the dead tree is 1000

years older than the living tree, and youcan then go even further back in history

with the oldest of these trees. Some have claimed that you can use tree ring datingand go back 9-10,000 years, which would disprove the Biblical timeframe if it

were true. Have these trees really been growing for 9-10,000 years? Or is there

another explanation to these observations? Lets look at what science has to say.

A very important factor in explaining this is the

climate that these trees which they are dating grow

in. The White Mountains of California are some ofthe worst conditions for plant life on the planet,

Conditions are so bad that few other plants can

survive: short cool summers with a growing

season thought to be only several weeks long;

desert-like aridity, many trees grow out of little more than cracks in dolomitic

rocks. Strong winds coupled with air that in the summer is said to be the


32/79

driest on earth. (Mark Matthews, http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_95-103.pdf)Some say these

mountains have the worst conditions on earth for plant life, but despite theseconditions this is where to BCPs are found. Keep these conditions in mind because

they will play an important role later on.

The first issue with extending tree ring dating back to deadtrees has to do with the proposed age of these dead trees.

In all BCPs with over 1,500 rings something called stripegrowth takes place. In stripe growth trees, most of the tree

has died, but there remains a thin strip of living bark

running up the side of the tree that provides water andnutrition for the top of the tree which is still living. The

dead portions of these trees have been rotted down to the

pith (center) after 1-2000 years of erosion. The questionthen is this, how can dead wood lay on the ground for upto 7,000 years while the dead wood in stripe growth trees

disintegrates entirely in a fraction of that time? Perhaps

the wood on the ground is not as old as they think it is.There is no way this dead wood can lie on the ground for 7,000 years and not

rot/decay away. After 1-2000 years it should be completely disintegrated, just like

the wood in stripe growth trees.

But in case you are not convinced that the wood could not have been laying there

for 7,000 years without decaying away, there is yet another problem, The claim

that wood can lay on the ground undecayed for 7,000 years is even more

fantastic when one considers the rate at which the mountains that these trees

are growing on are eroding away. LaMarche has found an erosion rate of

about 1 foot per 1,000 years in the White Mountains in general and a higher

rate in the areas where the oldest trees grow. How is it possible that seven

feet of dolomitic surface, can erode away over the course of 7,000 years, while

dead wood could remain essentially in place on the surface of the ground over

that same period? Can the dead wood really be that much more resistant to

destruction than the rocks are? (Mark Matthews, http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_95-103.pdf)There is no way that this wood can lay on the ground for anywhere near 7,000

years without eroding away.
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_95-103.pdfhttp://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_95-103.pdfhttp://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_95-103.pdfhttp://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_95-103.pdfhttp://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_95-103.pdf


33/79

The reason these trees have so many rings has to do

with the climate that they live in. In the areas wheregrowing conditions are the best, the trees tend to

have only hundreds (not thousands) of rings. It is in

the areas with the worst conditions and the leastamount of moisture where these old trees are found.

Young trees, and trees that are in the areas with moremoisture tend to grow one ring per year, because the

young trees do not need as much water as the olderlarger trees. The trees that are large and live in the

driest parts of the White Mountains have to grow

multiple rings per year in order to conserve water.Growing multiple tree rings in a year is a water

conservation method, and the older BCPs in the very dry conditions have to do this

in order to survive. Some scientists will claim that they have watched new treesgrow and after several years they cut them down and count the rings to see if theygrew one per year, and every time they have done that the trees had only grown

one ring per year. Remember what I said earlier? Smaller (younger) trees do not

have to grow multiple rings, because they do not need as much water as the largertrees (which do grow multiple rings.)

Varves and the Green River formation

The Green River Formation of Wyoming, USA, is often

referred to as irrefutable evidence that the earth ismillions of years old. The Green River Formation is a

dried up ancient lake that has several million thin layersof shale, it is assumed that each of these layers

represents a year of the lakes history, the coarser (Rough

or loose in texture) layers would form in the summer

and the finer layers would be formed in the winter. A pair of these two layers iscalled a varve, and they are assumed to form annually (like tree rings.) It isnt a big

surprise then that many people assume this proves the earth is millions of years

old, after all, if there are millions of varves that each take a year to form, the lake(and earth) must be millions of years old. There are however, some assumptions in

this explanation of the Green River Formation (GRF), there is ample evidence that

the formation had to form very quickly, and that these annual layers actuallyformed extremely rapidly.


34/79

The first issue we are going to be addressing is the idea that

these varves (layers) form annually. There have been manyexperiments and observations that show that varves can form

extremely quickly, including many local floods that have

happened. A 12 hour flood in Colorado for example depositedmore than 100 layers (varves.) Field observations and

laboratory experiments suggest laminae can form in as little

as a few minutes, seconds, or almost instantaneously, such

as during the June 12, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens, when a hurricane-

velocity, surging-flow of volcanic ash accumulated a 24 foot thickness of finely

laminated ash. (Dr. Andrew A. Snelling, Earths Catastrophic past Volume

2Page: 948) Mt. St. Helens has provided great evidence for the rapid formationof these types of layers. The flood would have many of the same conditions that

were present at the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, there would be rapidly moving

liquid which is a key factor in the rapid formation of these varves. It is not correctto say that these are annual varves, they have been observed to form much quicker,especially under the conditions that would be present during a worldwide flood.

Inside the Green River Formation there are twovolcanic ash layers. According to secular scientists

these ash layers were laid down separately, with 1-

2000 years separating them. If a volcano eruptednear this lake the ash layer would cover the entire

lake at the same time, and after that volcanic layer

has been laid down the varves would begin to formon top of it. Because the entire Green River

Formation is one lake the number of varves (layers)between the two different ash layers should be exactly the same, because the same

number of varves would form on all parts of the ancient lake. It turns out that at

one part of the formation there are 1160 varves between the two volcanic ash

layers, but in another part of the formation there are 1568 layers separating thevolcanic layers. This shows that the varves are not forming annually because the

number of varves between the volcanic layers would have to be identical.

The next issue with the Green River Formation simply being ancient lake comes

from the variety of fossils found there. the inventory of fossils includes

amphibians, turtles, lizards, snakes, crocodilians, birds, bats and many

mammals, sponge spicules, worm trails, snails, clams, spiders, ticks, mites,

clam, shrimp, crustaceans, crayfish, prawns, many varieties of insects


35/79

including beetles, flies, mosquitoes, wasps and moths, as well as many varieties

of plants, including ferns, sycamore, maple, oak, pines, and even well

preserved flowers. Among the bird fossils are enormous concentrations of an

extinct shore bird.(Dr. Andrew A. Snelling, Earths Catastrophic pastVolume 2Page: 951) The extreme variety of species shows that this cannot bean ordinary ancient lake, there has to be a way all these creatures from many

different types of habitats ended up being buried and fossilized together. Theexplanation given by naturalistic scientists of an ancient lake does no satisfy the

issue, only a worldwide flood can explain observation. In a worldwide flood deadcreatures could float far distances before being buried, and you would have a

mixing of multiple habitats in one area.

The most compelling proof that the Green River

Formation had to form quickly is the well preserved

fossils that are found there. Why is it important thatthese fossils are preserved? In order to preserve fossilsto the extent that you find in the Green River Formation

you must bury them rapidly or they will decay away

and fall apart. Scientists have done experiments wherethey put dead fish carcasses at the bottom of lakes to see how long it take for them

to decay, they found that after six and a half days all the flesh decays away and

bones start to disconnect. Well preserved fish fossils provethat these different varves cannot be annual; the fish would

have to lay on the ground un-decayed for hundreds of years

if they were annual, which has been demonstrated to beimpossible. Birds have hollow bones that tend not to be

well preserved in the fossil record, so how then did these

birds lay dead on the bottom of a lake protected from

scavenging and decay for thousands of years, until a

sufficient number of very thin annual varve layers had build up to bury

them? (Dr. Andrew A. Snelling, Earths Catastrophic past Volume 2

Page: 951) Birds are extremely hard to fossilize under any conditions, and the fact

that we have well preserved bird fossils in the Green River Formation is irrefutable

evidence that these varves had to form extremely quickly.

Incase the well preserved fossils are not enough proof

of rapid formation, there have been fossils found in theGreen River Formation of one fish eating another fish.

This is undeniable proof that these fossils had toformed extremely rapidly. All the evidence supports


36/79

the notion that the Green River Formation was formed rapidly.

Many times when something is used to prove the earth is millions of years old, it

turns out verifying something the Bible says. The Green River Formation shows

evidence of rapid burial, which can only be explained by a flood. The formationalso contains species from dozens of environments, which can only be explained if

there is a worldwide flood to move them around.

In the next chapter we will continue our study on the topic of Geology and see howthe Bible accurately explains all observations that have been made in the field.

Many times secular scientists and non believers forget (or never knew) the Bible

teaches a world-wide flood which explains the geologic features we see today.When it comes to geology and the Bible, the answer usually involves the flood.

After all, the Bible says the mountains and valleys and different landscapes of this

world were formed by the flood (Psalms chapter 104.) Before we end this chapter Ido want to talk about one more thing. While it is interesting to study science andhow the flood can account for all the different geological features in the world, we

need to keep in mind the reason God sent the flood in the first place. And God

saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every

imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it

repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at

his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from

the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the

fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found

grace in the eyes of the LORD. Genesis 6:5-8. God sent the flood to destroymankind and all land animals from the face of the earth. This means God has the

power to judge his creation, and God has told us that there will be anotherjudgment in the future (by fire.) However, God provides a way out of the

judgment, anyone in the world could have repented and boarded the Ark with

Noah, but they chose not to. And anyone has the option to trust Christ as their Lord

and savior, which is the ark of the coming judgment, but many individuals chooseto reject that opportunity.


37/79

Chapter 3: Evidence of an old earth? (II)

The Coconino Sandstone

In this chapter we will continue ourdiscussion in the field of geology, looking at

different features around the world th

Documents

Creation vs. Evolution - The Age of the Earth (Fast Facts)