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CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION, (CONT.)
II) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)
B) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE FROM EARTH WHICH TESTIFY TO A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)
8) METHODS OF AGE MEASUREMENT INDICATE A YOUNG EARTH, (cont.)
c) THE AMOUNT OF METEORITIC DUST POINTS TO A YOUNG EARTH
[pp. 379-380]
"One of these lines of evidence [of a recent earth] is derived from the study of meteorites and comets, of which there are large numbers in our solar system. A tremendous amount of meteoritic material falls each year on earth. Estimates vary widely, but the most careful studies have been made by Hans Pettersson of the Swedish Oceanographic Institute.
'Pettersson calculated that the total quantity of dust of meteor origin in the atmosphere, up to a height of 60 miles, amounts to 28,600,000 tons. ...half the total - 14,300,000 tons of such dust - settles to earth each year and 14,300,000 tons of new dust must enter the atmosphere.'
[Isaac Asimov: '14 Million Tons of Dust Per Year,' Science Digest, Vol. 45, Jan. 1959, p. 34]
...Pettersson confirms this: 'If meteoritic dust descended at the same rate as the dust created by the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa in 1883, then my data indicate that the amount of meteoritic dust landing on the earth every year is 14 million tons.'
[Hans Pettersson, 'Cosmic Spherules and Meteoritic Dust,' Scientific American, Vol. 202, February 1960, p. 132]
The significance of this large amount of meteoritic dust, in terms of the supposed great age of the earth, is noted by Asimov as follows:
'Of course, this goes on year after year, and the earth has been in existence as a solid body for a good long time, for perhaps as long as 5 billion years. If, through all that time, meteor dust had settled to the earth at the same rate it does today, then by now, if it were undisturbed, it would form a layer 54 feet thick over all the surface of the earth.'
[Ibid., p. 35]
Obviously, no layer of meteoritic dust of any appreciable thickness, certainly not 54 feet, is found around the earth's surface, although some indications of such a layer have been found on the ocean bottoms. [But not 54 feet thick]
'Pettersson and Rotschi have found good evidence from the peculiar nickel content of deep sea deposits both in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans that several thousand tons per day of meteoritic material are accumulated by the earth.'
[F. L. Whipple, in Advances in Geophysics (Academic Press, Inc., 1952), p. 131]
'The absence of this meteoritic dust layer on the earth's surface cannot be reasonably accounted for in terms of crustal mixing processes, as Asimov claims. This type of material is composed mostly of iron, with large amounts of nickel and other relatively rare components of the earth's crust, and these elements are not found in sufficient abundance to correspond to the amount supposedly accreted by meteoritic showers. For example, the average nickel content of meteorites is of the order of 2.5 percent, whereas nickel constitutes only about 0.0008 percent of the rocks of the earth's crust.
[Pettersson, op. cit., p. 132]
...Thus, about 312 times as much nickel per unit volume occurs in meteorites as in the earth's crust. This means that the 54 ft. thickness of meteoritic dust would have to have been dispersed through a crustal thickness of at least 312 x 54 ft., or more than three miles, to yield the present crustal nickel component percentage, even under the impossible assumption that there was no nickel in the crust to begin with! Similar calculations could be made for cobalt and other important constituents of meteorites, all testifying that there simply cannot have been meteoritic dust falling on the earth at present rates throughout any five billion years of geologic time!
Similar calculations indicate that enormous quantities of iron would have accumulated on the surface form meteoritic matter during geologic time. Iron is the most abundant element in the metorites and is also abundant in the earth's crust.
'Can this surface iron be, not the earth's original substance, but at least in significant part, the accumulated meteoric dust of ages? According to my calculations, the dust would account for all the iron in the upper 1+ - miles of the earth's solid crust, which certainly accounts, too, for all the iron we've managed to dig up.'
[Isaac Asimov, op. cit. p. 35]
But does anyone actually think that all the iron in the upper 1+- miles of crust was derived from meteoritic dust? Such a proposition seems out of reason, on its face. Yet this is the strange conclusion to which we are led if meteorite dust has been falling on the earth for anything like five billion years."
d) TEKTITES, (METEORITIC GLASS), DISPROVES EVOLUTION
[pp. 381-382]
"The special type of glassy meteorites known as tektites is still more difficult to interpret. These are found in various localities in the form of what seem to have been showers of the particles.
'In contrast to these great ages, the estimated argon ages of tektites...
(Suess, et al., 1951; Gerling and Yaschenko, 1952)
...are only one million to ten million years. Gerling and Yaschenko regard this as evidence against a cosmic origin for tektites.'
[L. H. Ahrens: 'Radioactive Methods for Determining Geological Age,' in Physics and Chemistry of the Earth (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1956), p. 60]
Nevertheless, as Stair, in a summary of the evidence, says:
'Although some investigators believe that these glass bodies are of terrestrial origin, the preponderance of evidence seems to point to a cosmic source as the origin.'
[Ralph Stair: 'Tektites and the Lost Planet,' Scientific Monthly, Vol. 83, July 1956, p. 4]
The significant feature about the relatively small ages indicated for the tektites is that they seem to be smaller than those of some of the terrestrial strata in which they are deposited.
'Each of the major occurrences is thought to be one shower. Those in Czechoslovakia are weathering out of Miocene strata; those in Texas, first described by the writer, are thought to be weathering out of Eocene strata; and those in Australia may be Recent.'
[Virgil E. Barnes: 'Tektites,' Geotimes, Vol. I, No. 12, 1957, p.6]
Another significant fact, difficult to reconcile with uniformitarianism, is that the tektites are apparently not found in any strata earlier than Tertiary.
'Neither tektites nor other meteorites have been found in any of the ancient geological formations.'
[Ralph Stair, op. cit., p. 11]
This, of course, is hard to reconcile with the generally accepted uniformitarian concept that meteorites have been falling on the earth at essentially present rates throughout some five billion years of geologic time. True meteorites, in fact, have apparently not been found in any but Recent deposits.
'It is only the meteorites that escape decomposition in passage through the atmosphere that can possibly be recognized. There probably are many of these, and in the deep sea, where the rate of deposition is extremely slow, cosmic particles may rate high in the sediments as compared to places where other sediments are abundant. No meteorites have ever been found in the geologic column.'
[W. H. Twenhofel: Principles of Sedimentation (2nd Ed., New York, McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 144]
e) THE AMOUNTS OF HELIUM IN THE ATMOSPHERE CORRESPONDS TO A YOUNG EARTH
[pp. 384-385]
"Another type of geophysical chronometer indicating an anomalously youthful age of the earth is the accumulation of radioactively derived gases in the atmosphere. The most important of these, of course, is radiogenic helium, which as we have already pointed out, is derived from the disintegration of uranium and thorium in the earth's crust. Some of this radiogenic helium, of course, escapes and eventually finds its way to the surface, where it it then added to the atmosphere.
But it has been realized for many years that there is not nearly enough helium in the atmosphere to correspond to the supposed age of the earth and the rate of escape of helium from the crustal rocks into the atmosphere.
'It may be reasonably supposed that the entire atmospheric supply of Helium-4 is of radioactive origin. Goldschmidt, considering the known helium content of the atmosphere and the known concentrations of uranium and thorium series in primary rocks, concludes that all the atmospheric helium would have been produced in the course of 2 billion years from 2 kilograms per square centimeter of primary rock. This represents about 1.3% of the total amount of primary rock that has been eroded and, which, therefore, might have been expected to have delivered its helium to the atmosphere.'
[G. E. Hutchinson: 'Marginalia,' American Scientist, Vol. 35, January, 1947, p. 118]
This implies that the true maximum age for the earth on the basis of helium production would be only 1/3% of 2 billion, or 26 million years. And even this is impossibly high because it neglects any primary atmospheric helium and any formerly higher radioactive decay rates, as well as helium that may have made its way to the surface from non-denuded rocks.
The method used for avoiding this conclusion is to assume that the excess helium generated in the past has somehow attained the 'escape velocity,' overcoming gravity and escaping from the atmosphere completely. This requires that the temperatures in the exosphere (the outermost portion of the atmosphere) must be extremely high.
H. Petersen, F. A. Lindemann and others have shown that the amount of helium released from radio-active rocks during the geological life of the earth exceeds the amount now in the atmosphere. Assuming Stoney's mechanism to be responsible for the loss of helium that must have occurred, L. Spitzer deduced that the temperature at the critical level is either about 1800 degrees Centigrade or, though usually less, is occasionally more - perhaps for 2 per cent of the time is 2300 degrees Centigrade; and even greater values may be required, for Mayne has recently concluded that the amount of helium released and lost is far greater than has been supposed. Some theorists find the high temperature mentioned difficult to accept.'
[D. R. Bates: 'Composition and Structure of the Atmosphere,' in The Earth and Its Atmosphere (New York, Basic Books, Inc., 1957), p. 107]
No independent evidence of such high temperatures yet exists. In other words, instead of accepting the obvious conclusion from the helium content of the atmosphere that the earth's age must be much less than usually believed, it is rather deduced that the exosphere temperatures must be sufficiently high to permit helium to escape, regardless of how extreme this requirement may be."
[Dr. Don R. Patton, op. cit., tape #1]:
"One very serious implication [of erroneous conclusions of the age of the earth by evolutionists] is seen in the uranium lead method which decays down to lead from uranium 238, and that's the method that's supposed to determine the age of the earth. It produces as a byproduct Helium 4, which is a relatively rare element in the earth's atmosphere, and so we should be able to test rather accurately here what comes from radioactive decay. Lead, which they do measure, is very common, and so you have to guess how much lead was there to start with and how much was there from radioactivity decay. Helium 4? Almost all of it would come from radioactive decay because it's rare to start with, not like the lead. Well, you look in the rocks and you find it's not there. Yet laboratory tests indicate [that] it should be contained in the lattice work of the rocks for over a hundred million years. But what is there would indicate that it's only a few thousand years old. Well, they know that's not right, and so they assume that it escaped from the rocks: 'Well, if it's not in the rocks, it ought to be in the atmosphere.' And we look in the atmosphere and we find that there is 1/10,000th the amount that ought to be there if this has been going on [for] 4 billion years. Obviously, something's wrong.... If you measure how much is there, calculate how long it would take at the present rate to reach the present volume of Helium 4, you come out with just a few thousands of years. Some would say less than ten, some would say a little more. But it's certainly much closer to the few thousands of years than to the billions of years called for by the evolutionists."
[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes]:
"Studies of the helium method... have shown that low ages based on helium, obtained on common rock-forming minerals, do not necessarily reflect diffusive loss of helium from the lattices of those minerals; under ideal conditions, some mineral lattices even appear to retain helium quantitatively for longer than 108 years."
[Fanale & Schaeffer, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Science, Vol. 149, p. 312]
[pp. 374-376]
"Prior to the Flood, it is highly probable that the ratio of ordinary carbon to radiocarbon in the atmosphere was much higher than at present, mainly because of the global semi-tropical climate and the vast amounts of plant life found around the world. This effect would have been augmented by the smaller amount of carbon sustained in the ocean then than now, since the oceans were smaller and the land areas larger before the Flood. And it is possible that it would be still further augmented by the shielding effect of the thermal... ...canopy, which would have inhibited the formation of radiocarbon in the high atmosphere. All of these factors would have reduced the ratio of radiocarbon to ordinary carbon to a much smaller fraction than now obtains.
Another possible effect of the... ...canopy is very interesting. In addition to the formation of Carbon 14 from nitrogen in the atmosphere by cosmic-ray neutrons, these neutrons also react with deuterium (heavy hydrogen, the hydrogen isotope in heavy water), which would undoubtedly have been present in substantial amounts in such a canopy, to form tritium, a still heavier isotope of hydrogen. Tritium is unstable and decays rapidly by beta decay to an isotope of helium, He 3. But it turns out that there is too much He 3 in the atmosphere to be accounted for by this process operating at present rates during geologic time. The cosmic ray authority, Korff, suggests the following solution of the problem:
'There are two factors which would tend to increase the amount of tritium. One of these is that the intensity of cosmic radiation, and hence the rate of production of neutrons might have been higher at some time in the geologic past... The second possibility invoking action in the past assumes that at a time when the earth was warmer the atmosphere contained much more water vapor, and (the process of generating tritium from deuterium) might have been operating at a much higher rate than at present.'
[Serge A. Korff: 'Effects of the Cosmic Radiation on Terrestrial Isotope Distribution,' Transactions, American Geophysical Union, vol. 35, February 1954, p. 105]
The... ...canopy thus not only provides an explanation for the present excess of atmospheric Helium 3 but also implies that the proportion of cosmic ray neutrons reacting with nitrogen to form radiocarbon would be smaller by the amount reacting thus with the hydrogen. This factor combines with the others mentioned to assure that the per cent of radiocarbon in the carbon dioxide of the antediluvian atmosphere must have been much smaller than at present. Therefore the radioactivity of living organisms ingesting this carbon dioxide would have been much smaller than that of organisms living at present."
f) 'LOW' SALT CONTENT IN THE SEA INDICATES A RECENT CREATION
[pp. 385-387]
"Still another evidence of terrestrial youth is found in geochemical analyses of ocean waters. The salts and other chemicals in the sea are being continually augmented, through the process of land denudation and river transportation of the materials of erosion to the sea. Under the assumption that the ocean originally contained none of a specific element and that the rate of supply has always been the same as at present (neither assumption, of course, valid), it is possible to obtain a maximum age for the ocean, and therefore presumably of the earth, on the basis of the measured quantities and rates existing today.
The most common chemicals in ocean water are, of course, sodium and chlorine, the constituents of ordinary table salt, sodium and chlorine, sodium chloride. Sodium averages 10.8 and chlorine 19.6 parts per thousand in ocean water, on the average...
[A. S. Pearse and Gordon Gunter: 'Salinity,' Ch. 7 in Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology, Vol. I, Geological Society of America Memoir 67, 1957, Tables I, II. Sodium and chlorine of course occur in many other compounds in the ocean besides that of sodium chloride]
In average river water these proportions are only 0.0085 and 0.0083 parts per thousand, respectively... [Ibid]
Oceans constitute about
315,000,000 cubic miles of water volume and rivers about 50,000 cubic
miles.
[Sir Cyril S. Fox: Water (New York, Philosophical Library, 1952), p. xx]
Of the latter, about 8200 cubic miles annually run off to the seas and are replenished by rainfall. The maximum age of the ocean, as determined from its sodium content is thus computed as (10.8)(315,000), or; about 50 million years. (.0085)(8.2)
The corresponding chlorine calculation yields about 90 million years. Both are obviously vastly less than 5 billion years!
Attempts to make direct estimates of the age of the ocean on the basis of its salt content meet with difficulty. Those based on the amount of sodium in the sea and present rate of erosion put the age at only about fifty million years, a figure that was once accepted as the age of the earth. This figure is only a fraction of that now attributed to the oldest sedimentary rocks, the formation of which depended upon the existence of oceans and continents.'
[Harold F. Blum: Time's Arrow and Evolution (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1951]
The usual way of attempting to sidestep this difficulty is to assume a large amount of 'cyclic' sodium, etc. - material that has somehow been precipitated on the lands and re-eroded and re-transported, perhaps several times. Of such cyclic sodium there is no definite measure, but even the most generous estimates are inadequate to explain the profound discrepancies.
'However it is not thought that the total salt which has been carried into the oceans and has (i) remained there, (ii) been cyclic, (iii) is in rock salt and salt water in the strata can alter the estimate to much more than 200,000,000 years.'
[Sir Cyril S. Fox, op. cit., p. 27]
This appears to be the maximum figure that can possibly be allowed for the age of the ocean on the basis of its most important chemical constituent. But it should be obvious that this is impossibly high because it involves the absurd assumption that the ocean contained no sodium to begin with! Modern marine biologists and oceanographers are, on the other hand, convinced that the salinity of the ocean has always been about as it is now...
...Other chemicals in the ocean give even shorter age estimates, when calculated on a similar basis. See, for a more extended discussion of this subject, a booklet by D. J. Whitney: How Old Is the Earth? (Malverne, N. Y., Christian Evidence League, n.d.).
Also, by the same author, The Face of the Deep (New York, Vantage Press, 1955), p. 27-36).
It seems reasonably certain
that the salinity of the ocean has remained both quantitatively and
qualitatively constant within quite narrow limits since the Cambrian.
[G. Evelyn Hutchinson: 'Future of Marine Paleoecology,' in Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology, Vol. II, Geological Society of America Memoir 67, 1957, p. 684]
Indeed there is no reason to doubt that the oceans as great basins of salt water were already present in pre-Cambrian times.
[C. S. Fox, loc. cit.]
The net result of these considerations would seem to be, quite plainly, that the oceans of the world must be extremely youthful. Both paleobiological and geochemical considerations seem to require that the ocean has always been nearly as saline as at present but that it is continually becoming more saline year by year. This process cannot have been going on for very long...
...In connection with the salinity of the ocean, a supposed difficulty with the Deluge record has been imagined by some writers, who say that the mixing of salt and fresh waters in a universal Flood would have been fatal to marine creatures accustomed to saline waters and to lacustrine and river fish used to fresh waters. That multitudes of water inhabitants were killed in the Deluge is certain, but there is no reason to suppose the change to have been sudden enough or sharp enough to prevent adaptation of at least some individuals out of each group to their altered environment. The change at the Deluge would, for some time at least, have been to decrease the salinity of most waters and, as Black points out: 'Gunter (1942) found that for every fresh-water fish that has been taken in sea water in North America, no species of marine fish have been taken in fresh water. It seems to be easier for fishes to adapt themselves to excess water than to excess salt' (Virginia S. Black, in The Physiology of Fishes, New York, Academic Press, 1957, p. 195). An interesting note in Science (Vol. 121, May 27, 1955) describes sharks and sawfish, both marine creatures, found in a fresh water mountain lake 20 miles inland and 500 feet above sea level in western Dutch New Guinea. All fish must be adaptable to at least a certain range of salinities, so it is not unreasonable that some individuals of each kind would be able to survive the gradual mixing of the waters and gradual change in salinities during and after the Flood..."
g) THE SMALL AMOUNT OF JUVENILE (ORIGINAL VOLCANIC) WATER INDICATES A YOUNG EARTH
[pp. 387-389]
"As a matter of fact, there is some basis for believing that the water of the ocean has itself come out of the earth by volcanic emanations in the form of steam and that this process, as well, cannot have continued for a period as long as the supposed age of the lithosphere. It is not ordinarily appreciated what tremendous amounts of juvenile water (that is, water reaching the surface of the earth for the first time) are poured out on the earth's surface every time a volcano erupts. It is hard to obtain accurate data, of course; probably the best are those that were obtained on the famous Mexican volcano, Paricutin, during the period 1943-52 of its most active life.
'If the proportion of water to total solids had been nearly constant throughout the period of activity of the Volcano, the total weight of water expelled would have amounted to some 39 million metric tons - the approximate weight of a body of water about six kilometers square by one meter deep.'
[Carl Fries, Jr.: 'Volumes and Weights of Pyroclastic Material, Lava, and Water Erupted by Paricutin Volcano, Michoacan, Mexico,' Transactions, American Geophysical Union, Vol. 34, August 1953, p. 615]
The U. S. Geological Survey personnel making these measurements and studies on Paricutin were of the opinion that all of this water was truly juvenile water. Although there are various theories, most volcanologists now believe this to be true of at least most and probably all of the water expelled from volcanoes.
'Until the turn of the present century many geologists considered lava to get its water by seepage from ocean bottoms. Now generally discarded, this view has been replaced by a startling proposal. Volcanic water, say numerous analysts, comes from '''primary constituents''' - that is, the original matter from which the planet was formed.'
[Gary Webster: 'Volcanoes: Nature's "Blast Furnaces,' Science Digest, Aug. 1956, Vol. 40 no. 2, p.4-9]
The paricutin water described above can be computed as, on the average, about 1/1000 of a cubic mile per year. In view of the fact that there are some 400 or 500 active volcanoes on the continents of the world with several times that number known to have been active in the recent geologic past, we feel it is not unreasonable to guess that the average annual activity of volcanoes in the world has been such as to produce at least one cubic mile of juvenile water each year. Probably this is a gross under-estimate, in view of the tremendous amounts of igneous rocks on and near the surface of the earth which, whatever their method of formation may have been, were certainly accompanied by the expulsion of tremendous amounts of entrapped waters.
It is also known that there are many active volcanoes on the ocean bottom, and there have been many more in the past. Obviously, the number and production of these is almost entirely unknown, but both must be very great. In view of all these factors, we feel that a figure of one cubic mile of water per year, on the average throughout geologic time is a bare minimum estimate of the increment of water added to the ocean.
Since the ocean now contains approximately 315,000,000 cubic miles of water (about 340,000,000 cubic miles if all the water in the earth's crust and atmosphere, rivers, lakes, etc., is added), a simple calculation will yield a figure of 315 to 340 million years as the maximum possible age of the earth, even on the assumption that all the water in the ocean has originated through volcanic action! Once again, this is far less than 4 or 5 billion years.
And of course all this completely ignores the revelation of the initial condition of the created Earth in Genesis 1:2, which describes it as covered with water. Furthermore, it ignores the account of the Deluge, when great volumes of juvenile water were caused to gush forth through the breaking-up of the 'fountains of the great deep' and when great volumes of water entered the ocean through the dissipation of the.... [canopy]"
...A somewhat similar analysis has been made the basis for the now widely-held opinion among geologists that the ocean has indeed been derived by just this method. See W. W. Rubey: 'Geologic History of Sea Water,' Bulletin, Geological Society of America,
Vol. 62. pp. 1111ff. However, for reasons indicated, we believe Rubey and others have grossly over-estimated the time involved."
[pp. 389-391]
"...If the earth is as old as claimed, emission of volcanic materials at present rates would have produced a volume of material equal to or greater than the volume of rock in all the continents of the world! This is the basis of J. T. Wilson's remarkable theory that the earth's crust has developed in just this way.
'The emission of lava at the present rate of 0.8 km.3/year throughout the earth's history of 4.5 x 109 years or even for the 3 x 109 years since the oldest known rocks were formed would have poured out lava of the order of 3 x 109 km.3 on the Earth's surface.. This corresponds approximately to the volume of the continents (about 30 km. x 1.1 x 108 km.2). A slightly higher rate of volcanism in the early stages of the Earth would allow for the emission of the oceanic crust as well.'
[J. Tuzo Wilson: 'Geophysics and Continental Growth,' American Scientist, Vol. 47, March 1959, p.14]
Surely the idea that all the rock and soil materials of all the earth's crust have been built up by volcanic emissions during geologic time is no less strange in terms of traditional uniformitarianism than is the Deluge theory. Although, as we have emphasized, volcanic lavas are of great extent over the earth's surface, they nevertheless constitute a relatively small proportion of all rocks. Wilson's supposition is that the granites and other rocks were originally lavas which have since been eroded and metamorphosed from their original condition. This theory is quite speculative, of course, and has not yet attracted any great following. Nevertheless, the arithmetical calculations lead to such a conclusion.
In fact, more realistic calculations would show that the continents could have been derived by volcanic action in much less time than 4.5 billion years. This figure was based on an average lava emission of 0.8 km.3/year. But this latter figure was taken from work by Sapper, which in turn was based on lava flows since 1500 A.D...
[Ibid.]
...But it is apparent that this rate must be much less than the average rate during geologic time in view of the vastly greater extent of volcanic activity in the past than in the present. Even on the basis of present activity, however, this seems low. The materials (lava and ash) derived from Paricutin during its ten years of activity were over 2000 million cubic meters in volume, which therefore averaged 0.2 cubic kilometers per year. Thus, only four such volcanoes would produce Wilson's 0.8 cubic kilometers per year. If, as we have surmised, the minimum average figure should be at least 1,000 volcanoes, then the above estimate of age would be reduced from 4.5 billion to less than less than 20 million years. And this on the assumption that all the earth's crust developed uniformly in this manner!"
i) THE AMOUNT OF PRESSURE IN UNDERGROUND OIL RESERVES TESTIFIES TO A YOUNG EARTH
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #1]:
"He looked at the pressure in the oil reserves, and he says [that the earth's age] is less than 10,000. You've got tremendous pressures there and that's why you have the gushers sometimes very dramatically blowing debris into the atmosphere. We can measure the porosity of the rocks, we know how much pressure they'll hold for how long. We find that [the pressure will hold for] just a few thousands of years. And yet there's the pressure still there today."
j) CONCLUSION RE: METHODS OF TIME MEASUREMENT
[pp. 390-391]
"We have now discussed a number of lines of evidence that seem plainly to show that the estimate of 4 or 5 billion years for the age of the earth must be much too great. Such diversified processes as the fall of meteorites, the break-up of comets, the influx of dissolved chemicals into the ocean, the escape of helium into the atmosphere, the growth of the ocean, and the growth of continents by volcanism, all give ages much less than this. And this is on the basis of the geologist's own principle of uniformity! Obviously, in terms of the revealed facts of an initial grown Creation and the great discontinuity in all natural processes at the time of the Deluge, even these latter ages must be too large.
Just how much too great is as impossible to determine by scientific calculation as it is to determine the true age of the earth by any of the radioactive minerals. Once again we emphasize that the only certain basis of prehistoric chronology must come by way of divine revelation. This revelation, in the Bible, records a Creation and subsequent universal Flood, both occurring only a few thousand years ago! And nothing in true science can possibly negate this; nor, in fact, when the data are rightly understood, does it even seem to do so."
[Dr. Don R. Patton, op. cit., tape #1]:
"We'll look at the illustrations given by William Stansfield, professor of Biological Sciences, California, Polytechnic State University. Now, he is an evolutionist, he is an anti-creationist, [he] debates [against creationism], he is very strongly opposed to the idea that the earth is young; but he acknowledges that there are some strong indications of a young age for the earth. For example, he cites water from volcanoes: it produces juvenile water. He said [that] it indicates the earth [is] less than half a billion years old... He says [that] we've got about 600 active volcanoes around the world and just 70 producing at the rate of the average would fill the oceans [with water] in about 4.5 billion years, the 600 we've got would do it in 500 million. He talked about the Helium in the atmosphere... He said that [that] indicates an age of less than 150 million. I think the figures indicate an age of less than 10,000. But even his dates certainly don't fit with the billions of years that are required for the evolutionist. He talked about lavas from volcanoes and points out that four volcanoes at the average rate [of lava flow] could produce the earth's crust in 4 billion years. Yet we have 600 of them going - active in the world today. And we know that the volcanic activity was much greater in the past. He talked about uranium accumulation. It's 100 times faster than it's being depleted from the ocean. It's accumulating rapidly. He said that [that] indicates an age of less than a million. He looked at the pressure in the oil reserves, and he says [that the earth's age] is less than 10,000. You've got tremendous pressures there and that's why you have the gushers sometimes very dramatically blowing debris into the atmosphere. We can measure the porosity of the rocks, we know how much pressure they'll hold for how long. We find that [the pressure will hold for] just a few thousands of years. And yet there's the pressure still there today. We looked at population dynamics and we find that in 2 million years - supposed to be the age of man - increasing at the population rate with only two people beginning, you get to 102700 which is just a ridiculous number... of people on the earth. Just an infinitesimal portion of that, Stansfield says, is what we have on the earth today.... Meteoric dust - millions of tons per year coming to the earth. Where is it? No indication of it in the strata. There's good ways to detect it - from the Nickel. We talked about radiocarbon in the atmosphere? He says that... [that] indicates the earth [is] less than 20,000 years old. It only takes 30,000 years to reach equilibrium and it's 30% short - I think his figures are conservative. But he acknowledges that there are a lot of indications... that indicate that the earth is young. But he has an answer for that, 'course he doesn't believe those indications. And his answer is seen as we continue to look at a quotation in.. his book THE SCIENCE OF EVOLUTION. 'By this methodology, creationists stand guilty of the crime they ascribe to evolutionists, namely, uniformitarianism - that is, assuming everything remains the same. All of the above methods for dating the age of the earth, its various strata, are questionable because the rates are likely to have fluctuated widely over our history. He said, 'A method that appears to have much greater reliability for determining absolute ages of rocks, is that of radiometric dating.' So he looks at the great number that indicate that the earth is young and says, 'We can chuck that, because we know this is a crime to assume things remain constant. I'm going to stick with the radiometric dating....' But, then he goes on to critique that in the next paragraph. He says, 'If... [And I think that's a big if] we assume that
(1) a rock contained no Pb206 when it was formed,
(2) all Pb206 now in the
rock was produced by radioactive decay of U238,
[Of course, we know that's not the case]
(3) the rate of decay has been constant, [And... good reason to question that]
(4) there has been no differential leaching by water of either element, [And we know that happens] and
(5) no U238 has been transported into the rock from another source...
[And I would add, you know that this has been constant for billions of years, which really makes it extreme] then ... [He says, with all of these assumptions, then] we might expect our estimate of age to be fairly accurate. Each assumption is a potential variable, the magnitude of which can seldom be ascertained...
[Well, I'll accept his conclusion, regarding this. And notice the next paragraph which I think is a fair assessment of the reasonableness of these assumptions. He says... that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different]:
In cases where the daughter product is a gas, as in the decay of potassium (K40) to the gas argon (Ar40) it is essential that none of the gas escapes from the rock over long periods of time... It is obvious that radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological 'clock''
[W. D. Stansfield, Prof. Biological Science, Cal. Polyt. State U., THE SCIENCE OF EVOLUTION, 1977, P. 84]
When we don't really know the beginning conditions, and we know we don't. And when we don't observe over the period of time but just a short portion of the period of time and extrapolate over billions of years, then we know we don't know. Actually, when the creationists have more methods and extrapolate over a shorter period then their conclusions ought to be more scientifically valid. When you look at the actual evidence... there is much stronger, valid scientific evidence for concluding that the earth is young. You have to ignore very obvious points and make a number of... unwarranted assumptions to come up with the conclusion that it's old."
